Urbanista has revealed a new pair of cheap noise-canceling headphones, the Urbanista Miami. These over-ear cans are set to offer a much more affordable alternative to the AirPods Max, launching in mid-February for just $149.
That’s a full $400 less than Apple’s headphones, and since the Urbanista Miami also include an ambient sound mode, on-ear detection and up to 50 hours of battery life, this could be one to look out for on our best cheap noise-cancelling headphones list.
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That battery life looks like it could be a particular highlight — 50 hours is an outrageously long time for a pair of over-ear wireless headphones to last, though this is without ANC enabled. Urbanista says you can also get 40 hours of playback with noise cancellation engaged, which still puts the Miami far beyond the AirPods Max (20 hours) and the Sony WH-1000XM4 (30 hours) on stamina.
In terms of specs, the Urbanista Miami feature dual 40mm drivers and can connect to iOS, Android and Windows devices via Bluetooth 5.0, though it doesn’t look like the high-quality aptX codec is supported. However, the Miami do offer on-ear detection, so music will pause automatically if you take them off your head, and the inclusion of an aux cable in the box indicates the headphones will have an auxiliary output. This is a notably absent feature from the AirPods Max, forcing you to buy a separate Lighting-to-3.5mm cable if you wanted a wired connection.
The Urbanista Miami comes in four colors: Pearl White, Midnight Black, Ruby Red and Teal Green.
Clearly, the big appeal here is the combination of active noise cancellation and the relatively low price; there are only a small handful of quality over-ear, ANC headphones available for that kind of money. So if the sound quality is up to scratch the Urbanista Miami could be quite the bargain, especially if the 40-hour battery life with ANC stands up to testing.
On that note, we’ll need to put the Urbanista Miami to the test ourselves, so stay tuned to see if they can truly succeed and join the best AirPods Max alternatives.
