Part mini soundbar, part portable Bluetooth speaker, the Creative Stage Air is a somewhat unusual amalgamation of familiar features. At a budget price, you shouldn’t expect perfection by any means, but it’s easy to forgive a device that’s only going to set you back $40. Here’s how we got on with this cute looking soundbar.
Small Yet Mighty?
Designed to live under your monitor, the Creative Stage Air is really lightweight—it only weighs two pounds, and you can easily carry it around with one hand. The thinking behind it is that it’s a social device too. You can easily take it with you to a friend’s house for instance, or you could take it to a party thanks to its built-in battery.
The sound output isn’t quite significant enough for a big gathering, but if you just want a little extra oomph when watching or listening with friends, it’s quite appealing. And for it’s intended purpose—improving the speaker experience while using your laptop or desktop computer—it puts on a good show.
For the price, you don’t get much in the box. There’s the soundbar itself which measures a mere 16 x 3 x 2.75 inches, along with a micro-USB and 3.5mm cable. Both of these are only a little over half a foot long so expect to buy longer cables separately if you want to do anything more advanced than just slot it under your PC monitor, such as place it under your TV.
It’s predominantly plastic with a glossy finish and matte sides. It won’t set the world alight with its looks, but it’s subtle and easily blends in with your other devices. There’s a metal grill that covers two dynamic drivers, along with an oversized passive radiator. Predictably, the glossy finish loves to collect fingerprints but hey, what tech doesn’t?
On one side are four rubberized buttons. Expect to need to look closely at what each does as the descriptions are a little awkward to spot, plus it loves to attract dust. One is power, along with Bluetooth connectivity, and volume controls. It’d be nice if the buttons were a little easier to distinguish from each other, but when it came to volume control, I mostly stuck with using whichever device I had it hooked up to. It’s one of those things that would feel like a bigger issue if the Creative Stage Air costs more than it does.
Connectivity Options: Not Too Shabby
The Creative Stage Air has three physical inputs. There’s USB-A for plugging in a flash drive for instant playback. This is one of those things that seems useful but is fairly limited. When you plug in a USB drive it just starts playing all the files in the order in which they appear on the flash drive—there’s no ability to skip, go back, or control the music playback with a companion app or anything. While you can’t expect much from a device with no screen, some basic button-based functionality would be nice. Still, if you just want to dump a giant pile of music on a flash drive and leave it to play without worrying about somebody staying in Bluetooth range, it’s useful.
Additionally, there’s the 3.5mm input which comes with that very short cable but is useful for hooking up a multitude of things (even more so if you buy a longer cable). Then there’s the micro-USB socket that’s there to charge the battery. The battery capacity is 2200mAh, so you’re good to go for a while with Creative reckoning a maximum battery life of about 6 hours. Expect that to drop to about 4 hours if you turn up the volume.
As anything with the word Air in the title suggests, the Creative Stage Air also works via Bluetooth. It’s fairly standard and reassuringly straightforward. Hooking it up to my phone took seconds, and there’s always the option of connecting it to your computer this way too. The downside for some here is that it’s Bluetooth 4.2 and only works with the SBC audio codec which isn’t the best of codecs, but it’s not something that most users will notice. Basically, if you know what any of that means, you’re probably already intent on spending a lot more on your speakers than the price of this one.
Middling Sounds
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Source : Creative Stage Air Review: Cheap and Cheerful Computer Soundbar
