Ever since Swedish audio model Urbanista first introduced out its mightily spectacular solar headphones that, sure, charged even whereas they have been getting used, WIRED has been hoping the corporate would take this tech and take a look at it in a bigger audio product. Now it has, and the result’s a brand new transportable wi-fi speaker, the Malibu.

The Urbanista Malibu, identical to the model’s Phoenix photo voltaic earbuds and Los Angeles headphones, makes use of Exeger’s Powerfoyle photo voltaic cells to recharge the Bluetooth speaker’s battery. This means the Malibu can recharge whereas unplugged utilizing each ambient indoor lighting and out of doors sunshine. The speaker additionally has an IP67 score, which means it’s totally waterproof and guarded in opposition to sand, mud, and dust—excellent for the seaside.

The $149 (£149 or €169) speaker may be linked to a different Malibu to kind a stereo pair, and it comes within the compulsory black and a brand new Desert Gray. A chat with Mårten Sahlén, product director at Urbanista, reveals that the rugged design homes a 3,600-mA battery, which powers twin 10-watt amplifiers inside. That battery may be totally charged by the photo voltaic cells, however there’s USB-C charging too.

The accompanying app enables you to customise the sound profile and maintain observe of the speaker’s stay light-charging and historic information (do you have to be involved in how a lot free vitality you’ve harvested over the product’s lifetime).

Urbanista says the photo voltaic speaker comes with a full-day battery reserve, which it says equates to a play time of as much as 30 hours. But the query is how for much longer the Malibu can pump out the jams whereas sitting in daylight. We requested for this information, and the model performed some in-house checks for us. Urbanista used a curated playlist of songs and set its speaker on the quantity it believes different manufacturers are utilizing for testing.

Apparently, the Malibu can lengthen its 30-hour play time by as much as 15 hours with 50,000 Lux photo voltaic gentle charging, which is the extent of out of doors gentle you’d discover on a mean sunny day. Solar gentle ranges from roughly 20,000 to 100,000 Lux, so the technical crew at Urbanista determined to go for “half-sun strength” for testing. Still, a complete potential run time of 45 hours in full solar is engaging, if considerably troublesome to attain in actual life.

Lit Up

There are, in fact, solar-powered audio system available on the market from lesser recognized manufacturers, resembling Abfoce and Cyboris, however what makes Urbanista’s mannequin fascinating is the considerably superior effectivity of the Powerfoyle photo voltaic cells. As lengthy as you don’t utterly drain the battery in a single lengthy listening session, the speaker can high up when not in use and lengthen the play time significantly. Sahlén gives three examples of battery drain if the Malibu is used on this manner.

Scenario 1: If the speaker is used twice per week for a complete of seven hours and all that point stored in full darkness, the battery ought to final for as much as 30 days.