Urbanears products are almost ridiculously minimalistic in their design, but they come across as extremely hip. Anyone who appreciates how the plain white Apple earplugs stand out in public knows exactly what I mean.

The Urbanears product I’ll be reviewing is their Plattan headphone line.

Urbanears products come with a couple of staple features that add value to their products. One is the external mic/remote – which even comes with adaptors for compatibility with various mobile devices/phones. The audio cable’s outer shielding is braided fabric – which allows more flexion that would normally stress out (or bunch up) a regular earphone cable. The Plattans are surprisingly light for the type of headphones they are and can be folded up for easy transport.

They’ve certainly made good on the looks and practicality department, but let’s now get into how they actually sound.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that these headphones don’t suffer from the same sickness most consumer-level headphones suffer from;  namely the extreme overcompensation with the bass/treble while neglecting the mids. In fact, the Plattans seem to favor the mid frequencies a tad, which unfortunately makes it sound like the highs have been compromised.

But I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing for the average listener, this sonic signature can in fact be useful for people on the go. The thing with frequencies is that when your background noise gets louder, the first to go are the mids (as they blend with the noise) that leaves you with the lower and higher frequencies. While admittedly these add definition and punch to the sound, the “body” will always live in the mids. So if you have a pair of phones that only prioritize the highs/lows, the only way to get that clarity back over the background noise is to turn up the volume – and of course listening to music at unreasonable levels can damage your ears.

All in all, given the implications of every factor mentioned in this review, this pair of headphones are really for those people who want to make a visual statement (what I’d like to call “the fashionable DJ look”) while getting a decent and practical sound out of their headphones. Any shortcomings the Urbanears Plattan may have as far as audio goes is more than made up for in other departments.

LIKES

• Light and comfortable to use
• Appealing, hip design
• Features standard to Urbanears (remote/mic, fabric cable, etc.)

DISLIKES

• A bit lacking on the high freqs because of the strong mids.
• Can easily get dirty because of the matte plastic and fabric elements.
• Not enough sound isolation

Philippine SRP – P2,950

Reviewed by Carlo Santos

Vic

Vic spends entirely too much on gadgets. So rather than try and kick the habit, he decided to become the Reviews Editor of Technoodling. Now, he has a perfectly good excuse. It's not an addiction: it's a job. His favorite noodle: Pappardelle.

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