Urbanears may not be in the same category as the likes of Sennheiser and Bose, but the company has been releasing high-quality and accessible headphones for a number of years now. Most recently, the company took the wraps off of the new Urbanears Jakan wireless in-ear headphones.
The headphones come in at $79.99, which isn’t bad — but there are cheaper wireless headphones. Are they worth the cash? We put the Urbanears Jakan wireless headphones to the test to find out.
Design
The overall design of the Urbanears Jakan headphones isn’t bad at all. There are a number of things that make the headphones unique, including the color schemes, the overall shape of the earbuds, and the nylon string that helps keep the earbuds in your ears — similar to the Google Pixel Buds.
In terms of build quality, the Urbanears Jakan headphones are clearly pretty well-built. The earbuds themselves are built from plastic, but it seems to be a high-quality and strong plastic that we don’t expect to break easily. The cable is strong too — it’s protected with a braided nylon, which is always handy.
Unlike other in-ear headphones, the Urbanears Jakan don’t have customizable earbud sizes. There aren’t any ear tips in the box, but the earbuds are shaped in a way to where it shouldn’t matter. You can, however, customize how much braided nylon sticks out the earbuds to keep the earbuds in your ears.
Part way down the right side of the cable, you’ll find a single-button remote. Thankfully, that single button has a lot of different features. You can press it in for some functions, while it also acts as a joystick for other functions. You will need to get used to using it, but we found it not to be too hard. That remote also has a microUSB port for charging, which was very disappointing — it’s time for companies to switch to USB-C.
In general, the Urbanears Jakan headphones are well-designed and good-looking.
Comfort
The Urbanears Jakan headphones may not have ear tips that you can swap out, but they’re still relatively comfortable. The earbuds, we found, were a little big, and after long periods of listening that can cause your ears to get a little uncomfortable.
Still, perhaps because of the larger earbud size, the headphones were good at staying in the ears. Even with some movement, we didn’t feel like they would fall out easily.
Sound
In the end, the most important thing to consider is how the headphones sound — and while they don have a few things going for them, we ultimately didn’t love the sound quality on offer.
Let’s start with the bass, which is by far the most powerful frequency range of these headphones. Kick drums really punch through the music, while bass guitars are thick and heavy. We would argue that the bass was perhaps a little too heavy, as it overshadows other aspects of the headphones quite a bit.
The mid range is where things seriously start to go downhill. The low miss are there, but they’re a bit muddy. The high mids, on the other hand, seem to have been cut quite a bit — to the point where vocals and guitars don’t cut through a mix at all.
The highs are the worst thing about these headphones — they’re almost nonexistent. This was really very disappointing to hear — high end helps ensure that headphones sound clear and detailed, and there was almost no detail or clarity on offer here.
The Urbeanears Jakan headphones aren’t for audiophiles. If you like a lot of bass and don’t care much about any other aspect of the headphones, they might be fine for you — but otherwise, we recommend steering clear.
Performance
The Urbanears Jakan headphones connect to your listening device through Bluetooth 4.2, and as such you’ll get a listening range of 10 meters, or up to 33 feet. We found that the headphones were fine at retaining a good connection — and we didn’t really experience too many skips or jumps.
The battery life of the headphones sits in at 12 hours, which is pretty good. It’s not spectacular — for example the Jaybird Tarah Pro headphones offer 14 hours. But 12 hours still isn’t bad at all.
Conclusions
The Urbanears Jakan headphones have a lot going for them — but they’re let down by a few major issues. While we like the design, and the battery life is pretty good, the sound quality is pretty lackluster — and we think that’s a pretty big issue.
So what should you get instead? Well, you could save a bit of cash and go for the JBL E25BT headphones, which offer a much better sound quality. Or, you could spend a little more money and go for the Focal Spark Wireless headphones, which have an even better sound quality.
Still, because of the decent design and good performance, we’re awarding the Urbanears Jakan headphones the Headphone Review Bronze Medal. You can get the Urbanears Jakan headphones for yourself at Amazon.