There are many brands out there across so many electrical product ranges that have made looks everything and the actual functionality secondary. Headphones are one of the greatest examples of this, with people seemingly happy to pay good money for the right shape and colour with nary a thought for the bit that actually matters: sound quality. So when my partner came home one day loudly enthusing about a pair of Skullcandy 'phones she'd seen, you can imagine my heart sank, style again seeming to triumph over substance. But not for long! The mission: find a good looking AND good sounding pair of headphones. One further caveat: they needed to be HTC compliant. A tricky thing in the iAge that seems to have crept up on us.
That combination of requirements brought me neatly to Sweden-based Zound Industries' unassuming and barely advertised (so far as I can see) Urbanears website. It was very clear within the first few moments that the looks were spot on - instead of Skullcandy's loud and garish excess, all of the ranges, not least of all the Plattan, have that trademark Swedish minimalism to them, albeit in a bewildering array of colours that still say 'look at me, I'm wearing cool headphones'. I don't want to play the genre snob, but it's fair to say that the 'Urban' in Urbanears has the hipster more in mind than the hip-hop artist. I think it's rather telling that Urbanears have recently set up a pop-up store in Shoreditch, East London.
With that in mind I also managed to try a pair before committing to buy. What struck me next after the achingly-cool looks was the quality of the construction. The headband is sturdy and covered with fabric rather than plastic, which is more comfortable, harder wearing and better looking (in my opinion). The cups themselves are a rubberised plastic that's nice to touch and again feels less brittle and a little more expensive than the alternatives. Even better, the whole affair folds away neatly and without fuss into a bundle roughly the size of a fist. A 1.2m fabric (not plastic) cable finishes off the look perfectly, adding the benefits of strength and a massively reduced likelihood of tangling and knotting, and a multi-function button and mic that we will come to in a moment.
Actually popping the headphones on and having a listen was a marvellous experience. These aren't noise-cancelling, and yet even in a loud store pretty much all noise was gone once the comfy foam cups were over my ears. A side note on those foam cups: my partner and I both wear glasses and found the tops of our ears were a little sore after 3 hours+ of listening. A break of a few moments were needed to get comfortable again. This does mean, in the headphones' favour, that they are very snug and not prone to slipping or sliding. Better yet, and back to my in-store test, even at top volume, only I could hear my music, my Dad only able to listen in by practically leaning on my shoulder. Suffice it to say that wearing these, you won't bother anybody and they won't bother you. But what about the all important sound? Bass is very well defined and treble decent. My main note of caution would be the middles (where the vocals largely exist), which, though by no means bad, felt a bit warbly on some songs. If your phone or MP3 player has an equalizer or equivalent app*, the full potential of the headphones is unlocked and this issue is easily remedied. Overall volume, which can be a frustration on some sets, will cater even to those who hate your eardrums most of all. Extended listening revealed greater depth and detail in some familiar songs that I hadn't noticed on the sets we'd been using, which is always a strong recommendation of a pair of earphones when I'm buying.
Finishing off the package are two great extras; the multifunction remote and the mysterious sounding Zound plug. The in-line remote sits neatly in front of the left shoulder when the headphones are worn and features a mic and single button, which clicks nicely and certainly when pushed. Call quality was excellent even in a noisy environment for me and my recipient both. The HTC support is present (as is support for Nokia, which I have not tested), although effects varied from phone to phone. By default, the remote uses one click to play, pause, answer or hang-up as appropriate, two to skip forwards a track and three to skip backwards. On my partner's phone running Android 2.2 'Froyo' it works fine. On mine, which runs 2.3 'Gingerbread,' calls to the last person spoken to kept getting placed any time two or more clicks were detected. Again, this was easily remedied with a free app* and indeed the functionality even extended, but Urbanears and Google need a chat about this sooner rather than later, as less experienced buyers would be left bewildered by this.
Already convinced that these were nonetheless perfect for my partner, the Zound plug finished it off perfectly. An unassuming little 3.5mm socket sits in the right earcup, allowing any standard set of headphones to be plugged in to listen to the same single MP3 player or phone. If other sets of Plattan are plugged in it in theory allows the chain to continue. We tried it with two sets and there was no noticeable degradation in audio quality for the second listener (in this case my partner with her set) or a significant difference in battery drain. It would be interesting to see if anybody has tried daisy-chaining more than three pairs of these together and what the results were.
To round it all off, the Plattan's incredible £40 price tag meant that Santa brought not one but two pairs of these to our house on Christmas Eve, the now sadly discontinued dark red for my partner and the black set you see here for myself. As mentioned, quite the selection of colours remains available with examples of the discontinued colours still loitering at some retailers on and off the high street. Yes, the HTC support isn't perfect and you'll need to download an app or two* if you're using them with a phone, but it was the work of five minutes to turn an already great set of headphones into a superb set for the asking price and a set that I believe is genuinely unrivaled at this and even slightly higher price points. Great looking, good sounding, well priced and HTC support (more or less) to boot. We declare these headphones a winner!
*(For your reference, the downloaded apps to make the headphones work best with an HTC Desire HD running 2.3.5 'Gingerbread' were Smart Android Apps' 'Equalizer' and Christoph Kober's 'Headset Button Controller'. The remote was tested without problem on an HTC Wildfire running 2.2 'Froyo'.)
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