With the freedom to walk around untethered, Michael Fereday has been testing a Sennheiser headset
The Urbanite XL Wireless product is a Bluetooth on-the-ear type headset from Sennheiser. This particular model is a collapsible headset, which comes packaged with a standard micro-USB lead for battery charging, an audio lead with built-in remote and microphone plus a draw-string soft cloth carry case for transporting the headset when not in use.
As you would expect with Sennheiser, some effort has gone into the design of this product. The unit’s headband is made up of a sturdy material stitched onto an off-white compressed rubber layer that sits on the head. When necessary, you can extend this headband by up to 3cm at each end using aluminium sliders, while the earpieces have a degree of flexibility to ensure a better fit for different head sizes and shapes.
My initial impression of the headband was that it did not look too comfortable, but impressions can be deceptive. Even for lengthy listening sessions, I found this headset, with its well-padded earpieces, was very comfortable. However, it did have a tendency to slide a little if I made the mistake of inclining my head forward for any reason.
Having mentioned that the earpieces are well padded, I should point out that they also contain other features. On the outside of each earpiece there's a touch sensitive panel providing access to different features. The panel on the left allows you to adjust volume level, track cycling and phone call options depending on whether a swipe, single tap, double tap or a combination action is implemented. I found it took a good deal of practise before I felt confident of achieving the desired action at the first attempt.
The functionality of the touch panel on the right earpiece was far easier to master. It's just used for NFC (near field communication) connectivity to establish a Bluetooth pairing with support for the latest 4.0 version of the technology. A three-way switch on the left earpiece can also be used to establish a Bluetooth connection. Up to eight different Bluetooth pairings can be stored.
While the headset’s internal lithium battery is rated at 25 hours of wireless use, there's always the possibility that you might forget to recharge it, leaving you with a dead battery. In such circumstances, you can use the provided audio lead to connect to your smartphone or tablet. It's not immediately obvious, but the jack plugs at each end of this lead are of a different size. The L-shaped jack plug is of the 3.5mm variety and is used for attaching to the mobile device, while the straight jack plug is 2.5mm and links to the headset.
While you do have a choice of attaching this audio lead to an appropriate socket on the left or right earpiece, the make-up of the lead and the one-way connection arrangement does mean that the remote feature is positioned close to the earpiece. This is necessary to ensure that the microphone is near enough to the mouth to pick up sound. However, it does mean that accessing the functionality of the remote will need to be carried out by touch alone. Some could find this to be rather fiddly. Michael Fereday
A well-designed headset with touch sensitive controls.