Creative T30 Wireless Review: Good Mid-range Response Marred by High Price

Singapore-based Creative is popularly known for making competent audio products. Some of its recent desktop speakers have eschewed the separate subwoofer in favour of a 2.0 setup with each speaker sporting two drivers. Creative also makes Bluetooth speakers for portable devices. In an effort to merge the best of both worlds, Creative has tweaked the design of the popular Gigaworks T20 series II speakers and come up with the T30 Wireless. The T30 Wireless doesn't have the Gigaworks branding but it promises support for NFC and Bluetooth. This unique blend should make things interesting.

Design and Features

The Creative T30 Wireless looks almost identical to the Gigaworks T20 series II. There are two trapezoidal speakers made of plastic, which both measure 230x87x175mm. The mostly black colour of the speakers is offset by the yellow woven glass fibre cone drivers. Oddly, the 'silk dome' tweeters sit below the woofers, which might affect the quality of sound. We'll come to that later.

Despite the 'Wireless' suffix in the T30's name, the tangle of wires required to set up the speakers is daunting. There are three cables; one to connect to an analog audio source, one for between the left and speakers, and one for power. The length of all these wires is a potential tangle threat. All the physical connections and controls for the set are on the right speaker. Below the tweeter on the front are the volume, bass and treble knobs. There's also a 3.5mm headphones jack, flanked by the power and Bluetooth buttons. Creative bundles a 3.5mm to RCA adapter for those who want to connect stereo equipment.

The USP of the T30 Wireless is that, while it is a wired speaker at heart, it can also connect wirelessly using the older Bluetooth 3.0 standard. Creative has also included NFC for easy pairing with NFC-capable devices. To make up for the lack of a dedicated sub-woofer, Creative trumpets its BasXPort technology, which can apparently create a bass-heavy effect. We'll confirm this in our testing. Surprisingly, we couldn't find technical details such as the sensitivity, impedance, frequency response range and power handling anywhere; not even in the manuals provided in the box. All we found was the company's marketing spiel.

Sound Quality

We waded through the mess of wires and plugged the T30 into a desktop PC. Our immediate first impression upon firing up our test playlist was underwhelming. To check the bass capabilities of the speakers we played Jai Paul's underrated gem Jasmine. The bass was muddy and had absolutely no texture. Tweaking the bass control to below 40 per cent made it slightly better but achieving the sweet spot is going to be difficult. On the other hand, the song revealed that sound separation on the Creative T30 wireless is really good.

We then fired up George Ezra's Budapest and the vocals had a great texture to them. However, the enhanced mids actually undermine rest of the frequencies. The bass guitar riffs in the Artic Monkeys' Do I Wanna Know are hidden behind the enhanced mids. True to Creative's marketing spiel, the woven glass fibre cone driver is great for mid frequencies but the tweeters are slightly underpowered, thus affecting the highs. Moreover, the lack of a dedicated subwoofer works against the T30 Wireless.

Connecting a Bluetooth device was a cinch, but despite being louder, there is a perceptible reduction in the clarity of songs. The Creative T30 Wireless is great for movies laden with dialogue but is not a whole lot of fun when the action kicks in.

Overall

Priced a shade below Rs. 14,000, the Creative T30 Wireless is an expensive proposition. A Creative Gigaworks set and the Airwave HD can be purchased for less than that. It makes more sense to pick up two specialised devices considering that apart from the T30 Wireless's robust mid-range response, the sound quality is not that great. Unfortunately, the Creative T30 Wireless loses the value proposition battle.

Price: Rs. 13,999

Pros