The Creative Pebble X Plus consists of two compact satellite speakers and a larger subwoofer.
The advent of WFH because of the pandemic meant PC speakers took a back seat in favour of headphones, given the need to take calls during working hours and that there are often other people working or studying at home. As a result, we have personally not seen a need to consider upgrading our home PC speakers for some time now, and the situation has stayed much the same even as the return to the office became the new norm.
The TL;DR version:
An excellent option for anyone whose desktop is starved of space but still wants a decent desktop speaker system.
When the offer to review the new Creative Pebble X Plus speakers came in, we'll admit to feeling a little incredulous. Our existing Creative T100 speakers have continued to work well for our needs over the past couple of years. Just how good could these dinky little speakers be, and would they potentially find a reason to stay on the work desk at home? To be fair, Creative’s Pebble series of desktop speakers have garnered rave reviews; they just have not had the opportunity to land on my desk.
A closer look at the Pebble X Plus
Priced at S$189, the Pebble X Plus is Creative’s new 2.1-channel offering for the Pebble lineup, with the .1 designation obviously referring to the fact that the set comes with a subwoofer. It’s also Creative’s current lead 2.1-channel offering. The pair of satellites feature 2.75-inch full-range drivers, and, just like all other Pebble speakers, are tilted at a 45-degree angle aimed at the users’ ears. Interestingly, the Pebble X Plus also comes with mounting holes underneath; this indicates that you could potentially mount them on stands. We didn't have any stands on hand, so could not test if this improve audio quality. If you do purchase a set and give it a go on stands, let us know, we’d love to find out how the experience was for you.
The RGB light is customisable.
RGB lighting envelops most of the speaker’s enclosure, which works a little more than accent lighting. You can also rely on its effects presets to accompany your music (or gaming sound effects) during your daily routines. Customise brightness and colours, either from the speaker controls or from the Creative app that you are asked to install when first setting up the speakers.
To be frank, before powering it up, we were concerned about it looking cheesy but to Creative’s credit, the RGB lighting’s overall effect does make the speaker pair look cool. We might be a little old to really appreciate RGB on our PCs, but our 14-year-old appeared very into the Pebble X Plus’s looks and was quite interested in how much time we had with the speakers before we had to return the review unit.
The subwoofer itself is compact and is sized a little larger than your typical square box of tissues. With dual passive radiators, the subwoofer does produce a good amount of bass, which we will also go over later in the review.
In terms of connectivity, you will find the Pebble X Plus comes with Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, USB-C, a 3.5mm AUX input port, as well as inputs for both headphones and microphone. The Bluetooth button also doubles up as a toggle between audio sources. One thing to note, however, is that SBC is the only wireless codec supported. Fussy listeners who are looking for higher quality codecs like AAC or aptX might be disappointed.
How they perform
The Creative App lets you configure the speakers and tweak the sound to your liking.
The setup was quite straightforward; after unpacking everything from the box, all we had to do was connect the right cables to the correct ports (which were nicely labelled). With the PC powered up, the Pebble X Plus was quickly detected. Installing the Creative app, we were also prompted to update the speaker firmware, all of which took a quick couple of minutes, including rebooting.
In terms of performance, we decided to compare it against the T100 2.0 desktop speakers. Full disclosure: My personal T100 speakers chose to kick the bucket before the Pebble X Plus review unit arrived, so Creative kindly also sent over another set of the T100 for us to compare against.
Now, remember my earlier lack of belief in the Pebble X Plus? I can see the Creative folks having a bit of a snigger at my expense because right out of the box, the Pebble X Plus speakers blew me away. Don’t get me wrong, they are not audiophile-grade by any means. But they did produce an expansive soundstage, with clear vocals and midrange, alongside the thumping bass pumped out by the tiny subwoofer. The T100 in comparison, came across as muddy, with audio sounding like they were coming up from underwater; having a proper standalone subwoofer makes all the difference in audio playback quality.
The speakers respond pretty well to EQ so don't be afraid to tweak the sound to your preference.
In our testing, the Pebble X Plus produced more than enough power to fill a reasonably sized room at perhaps about 78% output before we backed down to avoid annoying the neighbours. For sure, this is a seriously big sound in a small package. If there was any gadget that would embody the quote that looks can be deceiving, believe us that the Creative Pebble X Plus would rank high on that list.
All-in, the Pebble X Plus speakers are rated for up to 15W of RMS power with a peak power of 30W when plugged into your computer’s USB-C port. You can also power the speakers with an external USB-C power adapter, and if the one you choose is of the USB-PD variety of 30W or higher, the speakers can get up to 30W of RMS power, with a peak of 60W.
Plugging in the speakers to a 65W PD power adapter that we had handy, there was a noticeable increase in power, and more importantly, we noticed that the bass response was tighter and more controlled, while vocals became a little clearer. The difference isn’t immediately apparent if you’re not looking out for it, but there is a discernible positive difference if you decide to augment the Pebble X Plus’ power input. Perhaps test drive these at Creative’s Experience Store, if possible, side by side so that you can get to feel the full effect. As for the question should you spend on getting a USB-PD power adapter for this purpose? We’d suggest skipping unless you already have a spare lying around, since it is a sizeable added expense to consider.
The bottom line
The Pebble X Plus puts out sound that belies its small size.
Priced at S$189, the Pebble X Plus is amazing for its price and feature set; Bluetooth connectivity is particularly useful to get added functionality out of them if you get home and simply want to switch your phone music playback so you can keep the vibe going.
Even with RGB lighting, Creative manages to present an offering that still looks classy and, in our experience at least, appeals to both young and old; if at least from the functional perspective for the latter group. The Creative Pebble X Plus isn’t a premium product by any means, given the gratuitous use of plastic throughout. Still, they don’t look out of place on a desk (even though the fixed cabling design does limit how you can place them), don’t take up very much space, yet deliver good audio quality for the money.
It can only be a good thing that Creative continues to deliver on the pedigree of their Pebble lineup – especially today with increased costs of living to contend with against the growing set of wants list. If you are in the market for a new set of desktop speakers, whether for your teenager or just to give your home PC a refreshed set of horns without breaking the bank, you can hardly go wrong with the Creative Pebble X Plus. The fact that it doesn’t occupy much space and has powerful audio, RGB, and wireless connectivity also helps its value proposition.
Note: You can find the Creative Pebble X Plus 2.1 on the Creative Online Store.
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