To some people, a good sounding speaker is only as good as it looks! Take for instance, the Urbanista Brisbane, a a good-performing speaker equally matched by its elegant design, featuring knit fabric material with a ribbed texture to it, covering most of the speaker, aside from the rubberized base of the speaker and the sides, which integrate passive radiators.
The knitted fabric and rubber cover on the ports, provide IPX5 water resistance; hence the Urbanista Brisbane speaker is not waterproof so, you cannot submerge it in water.
The connectivity ports include a micro USB charging port and a 3.5mm auxiliary socket to hard-wire the Urbanista Brisbane speaker to an audio source.The newer Brisbane Plus speaker is also IPX5 rated but has a USB-C charging port instead.
On top of the speaker, there are four clicky psychical buttons, which are rubberized and raised, providing good tactility. Having fewer buttons makes the speaker have a neater design without compromising in functionality as you still get dedicated volume buttons to volume up and to volume down.
The outer perimeter of the sides of the Urbanista Brisbane speaker feature a thick, soft layer of rubber, which provides protection to the passive radiators, as well as side impacts. The Urbanista Brisbane dual speakers deliver good stereo imaging, thanks to the size of the speaker housing, which measures 21.5cm long, 5cm wide and 10cm tall. The total weight is 712 grams.
The Urbanista Brisbane speaker also features a TWS function, which allows you to pair two Brisbane speakers together and play music in sync. The Bluetooth TWS function is a, particularly, useful function to have on a bluetooth mono speaker as it allows you to turn it into a stereo speaker with left and right audio channels.
While stereo reproduction is good, paring the Urbanista Brisbane to another Urbanista speaker would technically allow you to create an even better stereo sound because of the wider stereo separation created. This is because, with stereo speakers such as the Brisbane speaker, the stereo separation is limited by the close proximity of the speakers drivers inside the housing.
Another advantage you get when pairing two speakers together is double the audio output. The Urbanista Brisbane 52mm speakers are capable of firing 16 watts (8 watts each) of power so, in TWS function, the output would double to a whopping 32 watts.
On 50% volume and, while connected to a Bluetooth 5.0 device, the internal 8,000mAh li-po battery can power the Urbanista Brisbane speaker for a cool 10 hours from a single 3-hour charge. While the speaker is charging, you can also play music, thanks to pass-through audio while charging, which is a neat feature not all bluetooth speakers are equipped with.
The 10-meter working range of the Bluetooth 5.0 chip inside the Urbanista Brisbane is stable without drops or loss of range, provided that the Urbanista Brisbane has direct line of sight to the connected audio source.
The speaker drivers inside the Urbanista Brisbane have low impedance (~5 ohm), which allows a high volume output, despite the speaker's moderate sensitivity rating (80dB +/- 3dB).
The addition of passive radiators to the Urbanista Brisbane, not only adds metallic-like styling to it but, it also increases the bass frequency, which is deep and responsive.
The Bluetooth chip inside the Urbanista Brisbane does not support aptX nor AAC, other than the standard bluetooth codec, which for the purpose of the Brisbane speaker provides good quality sound to fill a small/medium size room. There is also a good-sounding microphone built-in to the speaker with high amplification, which provides a long voice range up to a couple of hundred meters. Buy it on Amazon. Check out the review of the Miami ANC headphones.