Creative Pebble Plus

amazon Creative Pebble Plus reviews

A year ago, we reviewed the Creative Pebble and marveled at the company’s ability to sell quality stereo speakers for as little as $25. Not content with its laurels, the new Creative Pebble Plus speaker is a bit more expensive at $39.99 but includes an actual subwoofer for an extra $15. The subwoofer is more like a woofer to manage your expectations, and the wires spilling out to the back are almost like a practical joke in the Bluetooth age. But for $40, these speakers sound pretty great. That is the best inexpensive 2.1 system we’ve tested.

Design

The Pebble Plus system is black, like an eggshell. The left and right speakers, measuring 4.5 x 4.8 x 4.5 inches (HWD), are spheres with sections cut out to accommodate the drivers and create a flat panel. The right speaker is powered, powering both the left and sub speakers. It also has a power/volume button.

Creative got something right here where a lot of other expensive PC speakers go wrong — the drivers are tilted 45 degrees to meet the listener’s ears instead of shooting straight ahead into your ribcage. That makes a huge difference in the clarity of the 2-inch midrange drivers housed in each cabinet. Each speaker delivers 2 watts of audio, and the frequency range for the entire system is 50Hz to 20kHz. The left speaker also has a low/high gain switch on its bottom panel.

The 4-watt subwoofer, which rests on four rubber feet to elevate its shot-down 4-inch driver, measures 8.0 x 5.9 x 7.7 inches. The bottom panel is designed for better airflow. Creative kept the design here amazingly minimalist — no logo on the sub; it’s simply a sharp, black cube that creates a prominent adjoining position for the left spherical satellites and right. It’s nice to see a bass-level knob here, but the price keeps me from seeing this as a real shortcoming.

A tangle of cables connects these beautiful shapes. Even if they’re not tangled, they appear to be because they all tightly wound to the right speaker’s back and run in multiple directions. I can tell that I’m probably used to looking at wireless speakers, but even if you see it, it’s still not pretty. Depending on how your desk is set up, you may be able to hide some of these cables but can’t seem to hide them all.

From the back of the right speaker protruding, you have a cable to connect to the subwoofer, a cable to connect the left and right speakers, a USB cable for power, and a 3.5mm input cable. That leads to the next problem — the USB cable is for power only. You cannot stream computer audio from it. The only input is a 3.5mm hard jack.

Performance

On tracks with intense bass content, such as The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the speaker delivers commendable lows for $40, but the bass is punchy, deeply deformed at moderate to high volumes. No surprises there — this track distorts much more expensive speakers. However, the bass is not distorted at medium volume, and the whole sound system is well balanced. When it’s a track with deep bass that’s less intense but still has noticeably low frequencies, like Radiohead’s “Staircase,” the speaker delivers solid, rich, crisp sound that can be quite loud.

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Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with even less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the overall tonal character. The drums here have a solid presence, nothing thunderous like you’d hear through a real loud subwoofer, but the track feels anything but thin or crisp. Callahan’s voice has strong mids and highs, and the highs are quite skillful. It almost seems like the mids have been missing if you’re not in the sweet spot, but when your ears and the drivers match up perfectly, this is a sign of full and balanced sound. There’s nothing here for lovers of deep bass — don’t be fooled by the subwoofer — but there’s a powerful output that’s particularly good with baritone, power bass, and sustained frequency clarity high number on any mix.

In Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum ring gets plenty of high-midrange presence to accentuate its powerful attack, while the sub-composite hits. The staccato bass means more than delivery — we mostly hear their raucous early notes. The drum loop ends up picking up more bass than it should, but nothing here screams deep bass. The sound is crisp, clear, and rich once again — vocals are delivered with a strong clarity and perhaps a bit of bass.

Orchestral tracks sound most natural through Pebble Plus, such as the opening scene in John Adams’ Gospel According to Others. The higher registers, strings, and vocals are on the stage, while the lower register instrument is rich, full, and never pushed too far forward in the mix.

Conclude

For anyone looking for a crisp, clear sound with rich bass and good balance, the Pebble Plus is an exceptionally affordable, reliable speaker system. A little bright? Sure. Wired connection? Correct. But again, $40, that’s a steal if the shortcomings above don’t bother you. In this price range, most of the speakers we tested were portable Bluetooth models and couldn’t match the power — or stereo separation — offered here. We like the wired Ikea Eneby, Sony SRS-XB10, and Edifier Exclaim e10, but all of these models are significantly more expensive.

where can you get a Creative Pebble Plus online

Creative Pebble Plus 2.1 USB-Powered Desktop Speakers with Powerful Down-Firing Subwoofer and Far-Field Drivers, Up to 8W RMS Total Power for Computer PCs and Laptops (Black): Buy it now