Urbanista has launched the Stockholm Plus, the next edition of the original Stockholm true wireless earphones that hit the market in 2019.
According to Urbanista, the $69 Stockholm Plus is available now in five different colors and will have improved features over the first version of the earbuds. Here’s what we know about these new earphones so far.
Design
Among the five colors that the Stockholm Plus will be available in include midnight black (shown above), fluffy cloud, rose gold, olive green, and titanium. Otherwise, quite frankly, the Stockholm Plus don’t look much different than the originals in terms of design.
There are bigger drivers in the Plus than the first generation (12mm compared to 10), which could mean these new earphones may be able to produce sound with more expansive presence. For now, the only other notable aspect of the Stockholm Plus’ design is the earphones’ touch controls, which are meant to help manage incoming calls and music. We’ve had both good and bad experiences with touch controls, but we’ll reserve judgment until we’ve tested out the Stockholm Plus for ourselves.
Features
The Stockholm Plus have better features than the original Stockholm earphones, though that wasn’t exactly a high bar to clear in the first place. The original earphones had 3.5 hours of playback and 14 hours of battery life total with the included case and had no weather resistance rating to speak of. By contrast, the Stockholm Plus have 20 total hours of battery life (but still just 3.5 hours per charge) and an IPX4 weather resistance rating to give these earphones protection against splashes and sweat.
That may be a significant step in the right direction for the Stockholm Plus, but it’s still a ways away from industry standards. The cheaper JLab Go Air offer five hours of juice per charger, while for $50 more, you can seriously upgrade your features with the ANC-enabled Edifier TWS NB.
The Stockholm Plus do also have Bluetooth 5 technology, voice assistant compatibility with Siri and Google Assistant, and small perks like stereo sound during phone calls. Plus, they offer one of the more important features for most consumers — affordability.
Audio quality
Urbanista has repeatedly touted the sound of its various earbuds, with acoustic audio engineer Axel Grell involved with several of them. Adding to that, Urbanista says the Stockholm Plus have new microphones and a new chipset along with those aforementioned new larger drivers to improve the sound quality experience.
We’ve enjoyed the sound of some Urbanista products (the Athens), but not others (the London ANC). We haven’t heard the Stockholm Plus yet, so we’ll hold off on saying just where these new earphones will fall on the scale.
