Note: This article was first published on 28th November 2019.
Image source: Creative
So, what are these earbuds?
The Creative Outlier Gold wireless earbuds launched in May 2019 are Creative Technology’s second attempt at making wireless earbuds. What immediately distinguishes the Outlier Gold from its predecessor is its Champagne Gold colour - a departure from the previous Outlier Air’s black theme. There are a couple of noticeable similarities in both of their designs, and that’s probably intentional.
See, the Outlier Gold isn’t meant as a replacement to the Outlier Air, but a small follow-up instead with a couple of small improvements. If you already own a pair of Outlier Air wireless earbuds, I can tell you right now that these aren’t worth the purchase - as most of the Outlier Gold’s strongest points are shared with its cheaper counterpart.
For those who don’t own a pair of Outlier Air earbuds however, the battery life on these things should be very tempting. Other than that, unfortunately, these earbuds don’t stand out in any meaningful way from the massive crowd of wireless earbuds on the market - despite the rave reviews from many other media outlets. I'll explain why.
Setting up is a pain
Taking it out of the box is easy. Setting up the Super X-Fi software is not so easy.
Setting up these earbuds quickly becomes annoying. All you need to do is turn them on, connect to Bluetooth with your phone and voila! You can now listen to all the music you like. However, that is merely step one of the setup process.
After you have the earbuds charged and ready, you’re going to have to download Creative’s official SXFI app. This is to make use of their Super X-Fi software - which we’ll get into later. After that, you’ll have to perform head mapping by using the app to take pictures of your head and ears. This, and I’m quoting the app here, “lets Super X-Fi know about you.” After that, you select your headphone model from a list within the app, activate your SXFI account and voila (again)! You can now listen to all the music you like - with Super X-Fi, this time.
Head mapping is a bit of a nuisance.
Having to go through all these steps with the app can get pretty irritating - especially when you have to ask someone to help take pictures of your ears with it, and then explain why. Fortunately, it’s not very time-intensive, and you can just jump into using the earbuds straight away without bothering about Super X-Fi integration if you’d like.
Let’s talk about those controls
If only these earbuds had less frustrating controls.
Like I said earlier, the Creative Outlier Gold is a bit of an upgrade from the older Outlier Air, with a gold finish and Super X-Fi integration - but otherwise pretty similar cosmetically. Once you open the box, you’ll find both of the earbuds in a sleek golden case. The case feels great, and I love that all you need to do is push out a small sliding shelf to get the earbuds out. They snap into place securely whenever you’re done with them too, due to the case’s magnets.
The earbuds themselves have a comfortable teardrop design topped off with a flashy LED circle. This circle flashes red when the earbuds are disconnected, and blue when connected. Fortunately, they don’t light up at all when you put them on - otherwise, you’d look like a set of walking Christmas lights. The earbuds are incredibly comfy to wear as well, feeling light and snug when you have them in - and firm enough to stay in even if you’re running around or exercising. You won’t have to worry about them dropping off.
Unfortunately, we have now arrived at the most irritating aspect of these earbuds’ design. Each earbud comes with a button, which you can use to perform a variety of actions, such as jumping forward in a song by double-clicking the right earbud, or jumping backwards by double-clicking the left earbud. You can also hold down on the right button to turn the volume up, or the left to turn it down.
The buttons require a lot of pressure to operate, however. Whenever you want to do something so simple as skipping forward in a track, you end up having to press those earbuds all the way into your ear - which can be quite painful, to say the least. I never ended up using these buttons as a result, and instead using my phone to control the music I was listening to. It would’ve been nice to have more convenient controls, but alas, that's only a wishlist for the next iteration in the future.
What about performance?
These wireless earbuds' sound quality won't blow your mind.
Audiophiles certainly won’t be wowed by the Creative Outlier Gold’s sound quality, but it’s good enough to justify its price point. Pop tracks like Arcade Fire’s Wake Up fared just as well as rock tracks like Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name. These earbuds are pretty decent at making any genre sound fairly satisfying - but not as punchy as I’d like.
Tracks like the Doom soundtrack’s BFG Division rely on being loud and aggressive, but these earbuds make everything sound a little too soft and unexciting. That being said, the sound quality on display here wasn’t upsetting, by any means. It just didn’t blow me away as much as I hoped it would. They will do very well with soft vocal tracks - but if you’re into loud, roaring music, you might be a little let down.
Something else I want to highlight are the frequent audio dropouts. When used at home, I found that the Creative Outlier Gold worked pretty much flawlessly - but using it outside was an entirely different story. Every once in a while, the earbuds would repeatedly disconnect and reconnect, leading to a very irritating and janky listening experience. It wouldn’t just happen in crowded areas, but during long car rides as well.
One could argue that the only pair of wireless earbuds worth buying is the pair that actually maintains a stable connection at all times. The Creative Outlier Gold earbuds totally drop the ball on that front, because while latency was satisfyingly low, audio dropouts happened far too often for me to ignore them.
Look at that insane battery life
What WILL blow your mind is the battery life on these things.
Though these earbuds do come with some interesting audio tech (which we’ll get into in a bit), its real selling point is its outstanding battery life. The Creative Outlier Gold claims that it’s able to give 14 hours of continuous playback in just one charge. Its case also doubles as a wireless charger, which brings it to around 39 hours of playback before you have to plug it into something.
Those claims are well-founded. I used these earbuds for a very, very, very long time before even having to put them in the case. By the time I had to use them again, they were already fully charged. Battery life is something most wireless earbuds struggle with. Even Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless and Apple Airpods Pro, which outdo these earbuds in almost every other way (and are way more expensive), completely fail to match its impressive battery life stats.
Sennheiser's Momentum True Wireless merely offers four hours on a single charge, while the Airpods Pro will give you four and a half. Those numbers are dwarfed by these earbuds’ massive 14 hours of playback endurance. Even without the case, you could go days without having to charge them. Creative knocked it out of the park here.
What’s Super X-Fi?
Here's an explanation of what Super X-Fi is, right from the official app itself.
The Creative Outlier Gold also features Super X-Fi audio - which is built-in software that supposedly makes music sound more realistic, almost as if it’s happening all around you in real life. Take note that most other Creative Super X-Fi supported products actually have dedicated DSP hardware to enable this feature. The Outlier Gold is the first to support this feature via software.
Switching between normal audio and Super X-Fi audio, the difference is quite drastic - with music instantly sounding wider and more lifelike. Tracks like Amanda Palmer’s In My Mind immediately sounded a whole lot more intimate, like she was singing right next to me.
However, Super X-Fi audio gets old really fast. It’s an interesting change of pace, but I could only listen to a couple of songs before never using it again. It sounds incredibly artificial with most music tracks, and sound quality tanks hard when it’s turned on. It’s an interesting step forward for sure - but it seems a little half-baked to be advertised as a major feature for these earbuds.
More than for music listening, Super X-Fi has had better luck wowing audience for viewing movies and shows as they re-create your multi-channel speaker setup rather convincingly. Games too benefit from the expanded sound stage but they still seem to have a problem managing vocals in-game. However, movie watching and playing games are not the core target market for these wireless earbuds and so the Super X-Fi benefit is quite spotty. Don't take my word for it as you can check out the detailed poll and 322-page discussion thread in our forums.
The biggest downside of this feature is that it requires the use of the SXFI app, which only allows you to listen to music stored locally in your phone. Those of us who prefer music streaming services like Spotify might find it quite irritating to be locked into the SXFI app while using the feature - I certainly did.
Overall, Super X-Fi is a neat feature for these earbuds - but it’s certainly not necessary. You could just never install the SXFI app, and nothing of value would be lost here.
Verdict
These earbuds have one big strength - an impressive battery life - but a lot of weaknesses.
The Creative Outlier Gold is a fashionable pair of wireless earphones with fantastic battery life. You could use it for days on end without even thinking of charging it - depending on how often you need your tunes. Unfortunately, these earbuds are not without their problems. Controls are iffy, its Super X-Fi audio feature feels half-baked for its intended use/audience and it suffers from frequent audio dropouts.
For wireless earbuds under S$150 however, these are a solid enough pick. At just S$139, these are proof that you don’t need to fork out much for a good wireless listening experience on the go. Earbuds like Apple’s Airpods Pro (which launched at S$379) can’t even compare with the battery life on this product - so it clearly has a leg up on its competition where endurance matters. Of course, the Airpods Pro is better in other ways - so it's a matter of where your priorities are.
If you’re looking for other options around a similar price range, check out the 1More triple-driver in-ear headphones or the RHA MA390 Wireless. True wireless earbud options will set you back more, but they can easily make up for the Creative's shortcomings such as RHA TrueConnect.
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.