Creative Pebble Nova speakers review – A marriage of style and audio quality
Subwoofers are brilliant for bringing the bass, but what if you don’t have room for a bulky box, or don’t want to disrupt the symmetry of your already sleek desktop setup? That’s where the Creative Pebble Nova speakers come in, and having put them through their paces, I’m seriously impressed with this marriage of style and audio quality.
There’s nothing to stop you using the Creative Pebble Nova speakers with a TV, but you’ll need a good seven or so inches of clear space on either side. Without that, the speakers will obscure the picture, whether they’re sitting flat or on the provided stalk stands. You could put them on a shelf, but then you give the bass-enhancing rear radiators less room to operate.
Instead, you’ll get the best results by making these speakers part of your desktop gaming setup. Connecting via Bluetooth, audio in or USB, they offer 100W of room-filling audio but, trust me, close up you’ll never have to go higher than 50% volume. I tried, for science, and now I have Streets of Rage II’s Never Return Alive burned in to my brain. Barbon taunts me in my sleep.
Design-wise, the Creative’s Pebble Nova speakers are absolutely gorgeous, with their spherical black plastic housing and an RGB light sitting just beneath each speaker. By default, the lights act as a visualizer, but you can adjust them through the Creative app or by pressing the RGB button on the right speaker.
You can swap the left and right speakers using the mobile app though however they’re arranged, button placement is less than ideal. You can only see the buttons from the top and back of the speaker and, with no remote control, you’re left to grope for the right function. I ended up resorting to my keyboard volume controls and my TV’s remote control, largely leaving the built-in buttons alone.
One feature I did get use out of was the Pebble Nova’s headphone and microphone sockets. Normally concealed with a rubber flap, you can plug in a wired headset. It’s especially handy late at night, when you don’t want to disturb neighbours or housemates and it’s preferable to fumbling around with your PC’s headphone socket.
Without any fiddling, the Pebble Nova speakers offer an impressive degree of audio separation, to the point where you’ll be in no doubt as to where your next foe is lurking. The Creative Pebble Nova speakers seriously bring the bass, to the point where I could feel my desk vibrating, all without a hint of muddiness.
The mobile version of the Creative app boasts a raft of tweaks, including some game-specific ones, but it’s the PC program that really takes things to the next level. Enabling the Creative Acoustic Engine allows you to add in a range of audio enhancements from surround sound to dialogue enhancement.
The latter didn’t make a major difference for me, but enabling the former gave the speakers a major boost. Its surround features didn’t reach the lofty heights of the Soundblaster Katana V2X, but it was like night and day compared to having them disabled. However, you need your speakers connected to your PC via USB-C. If you switch to Bluetooth or audio in, the enhancements vanish.
The Creative Pebble Nova speakers handled everything I threw at them admirably, from music through to games and movies, delivering clear, room-filling sound, with and without the app. The trade-off is the Creative Pebble Nova’s asking price, a wallet-draining £239.99 (currently down to £209.99) from Creative’s site.
Ultimately, if you’re after a high-quality sound system that adds a touch of class to your gaming desk without dominating it (and you don’t mind the slightly fiddly button layout) the Creative Pebble Nova speakers are an excellent buy.
