A visit to Creative’s meeting room this morning in CES 2019 was interesting, after having my ears spoilt once again by the company’s Super X-Fi, I was introduced to some interesting products they’ll be releasing this year.
Outlier Air Wireless Earbuds
Creative is expanding its sports headphones portfolio with the Outlier Air Wireless Earbuds, it is a pair of Bluetooth 5.0 earbuds that offers up to 10 hours of listening time on a single charge.
The charging case included with the Outlier Case is made of a high quality aluminium material and it can fully charge the earbuds up to three times. The earbuds will support Qualcomm’s aptX and AAC streaming codec, since it uses the latest version of Bluetooth, it can stay connected with two devices concurrently and answer voice calls from either one without disconnecting.
Like other Outlier siblings, the Air is IPX5 sweat proof so that you can workout without worrying about damaging it with your sweat.
Creative Pebble gets an extra subwoofer
The Pebble is a great sounding pair of 2.0 speakers for under RM80 and this year, the company is introducing a new model that comes with a subwoofer, so that you get to have more oomph out of your music.
Connectivity of the improved Pebble remains unchanged from its predecessor as it offers both USB sound and 3.5mm input.
Creative Nova – Creative’s first Alexa-enabled speaker
The most interesting showcase of all is the Creative Nova, a diffuser inspired design Bluetooth speaker that aims to sit next to your bed or on your living room table.
The Nova is the company’s first Alexa enabled speaker that has already gone on sale in the US for US$150 (RM614), and for that price it has a couple of tricks to impress as a smart speaker – RGB mood lighting, a built-in spa music feature, IP55 splash proof, a 7-hour battery life and supports multi-room connection.
Sound is driven by two 8W far-field speakers and a 15W woofer, which gives it an impressive 30W power to fill the room. The Nova will support WiFi music streaming from popular services such as Spotify and TuneIn Radio, users can pair with their smartphones over Bluetooth or plug in an audio source using the 3.5mm AUX in jack.
While its most likely Creative will not bring the Nova to the Malaysian market, we can expect the Outlier Air and the updated Pebble speaker to arrive in this quarter. Furthermore, Creative has also shared its interest on introducing the new Super-XFi headphones and products shortly after launching in the US and European markets.
