The Urbanears Pampas are the company's first circumaural (over-ear) Bluetooth headphones.
At $149, they're a little pricier than what we're used to seeing from Urbanears, but they're certainly no less stylish.
Sonically, these are bass-forward headphones that will appeal to fans of deep lows, but the overall sound signature is balanced enough for the highs not to be overpowered.
We wouldn't mind seeing some accessories or extra features for the price, but bass lovers looking for an attractive pair of headphones will be pleased.
Design
Available in beige, black, or green, the Pampas have a distinctly Urbanears look, with cloth-covered headbands and earcups matched with matte plastic.
The faux-leather circumaural earpads are stuffed with memory foam.
The overall fit and feel is secure and the earpads are exceptionally comfortable, though the headband's pressure can make itself known during longer listening sessions.
As always, Urbanears keeps the design spare.
The right earcup houses a USB-C port for the charging cable, pinhole mics, and a single multifunction control that is both a button and a switch.
Holding it powers the headphones up or down, while tapping it controls playback or answers and ends phone calls.
A double tap summons your phone's voice assistant.
Pushing it to the left or right skips forward or backward a track, while pushing and holding it fast forwards or rewinds.
Pushing it up or down adjusts volume.
This control scheme works simply, intuitively, and leaves out nothing.
The left earcup houses a 3.5mm connection to share audio with a friend, (or to be used for wired, passive listening), but Urbanears inexplicably opts not to include a cable.
And for $150, this is the sole extra feature.
The only included accessory is a long, clothbound USB-C charging cable.
Urbanears estimates the Pampas' battery life to be roughly 30-plus hours, which is solid, but your results will very with your volume levels.
Performance
Internally, each earcup houses a 40mm dynamic driver delivering a frequency range of 20Hz-20kHz with a 32-ohm impedance.
On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the headphones deliver powerful low-frequency response.
At top volumes, the bass doesn't distort, and at more moderate levels it is still quite powerful.
This is a bass-forward sound signature, but Urbanears does a good job of keep the highs defined enough so that the balance doesn't seem wildly off.
Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the general sound signature.
The drums on this track sound thunderous, and it's certainly not accurate, but plenty of listeners will enjoy the additional rumble.
There's extra bass depth to Callahan's baritone vocals, too, yet somehow this is all pleasantly balanced out with crisp high-mids and highs, allowing the vocals to have some treble edge and the acoustic guitar strums to have a bright, prominent place in the mix.
Make no mistake—there's way more bass depth here than necessary, but Urbanears at least makes sure that it's not a ridiculous sound signature by keeping the highs clear and boosted in the mix as well.
On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives plenty of high-mid presence so that its attack still packs some punch, but it's the added bass depth that we notice most—the drum loop gets some serious extra heft.
The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with gusto, but it's perhaps the drum loop that sounds most powerful in the lows, which isn't always the case.
This tells us that there's plenty of sub-bass presence, but the bulk of the bass boosting is a bit higher, in the lows and low-mids.
The vocals on this track are delivered crisply and clearly with no obviously added sibilance.
Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, get perhaps a bit too much added bass depth, pushing the lower register instrumentation far forward in the mix.
Luckily, the brass, strings, and vocals still retain their bright, prominent status, but the bass plays more than just a supporting role on this track through the Pampas.
The built-in mic offers mediocre intelligibility.
Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we could understand every word recorded, but the audio suffered from typical Bluetooth artifacts that made things sound fuzzy or distant at times.
This is pretty much par for the course for most Bluetooth headphone mics, so it's not a deal breaker, and the audio is clear enough that others should understand you on a solid mobile connection.
Conclusions
The Urbanears Pampas are stylish, and their bass-forward sound signature offers a solid listening experience.
They're also comfortable, and the on-ear controls are exceptionally easy to use.
The lack of accessories is disappointing at this price, but not a deal breaker if you're a fan of the style and bass-forward sound.
In this price range, we also like the noise-canceling Marshall Mid ANC and the Plantronics BackBeat Go 810, as well as the Sennheiser HD 4.40 BT and the sport-focused JBL Under Armour Sport Wireless Train.
But none look quite as cool as the Pampas.
Pros
The Bottom Line
The wireless Urbanears Pampas headphones deliver some thunderous bass depth in a stylish over-ear design.
