At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Excellent clear, vibrant sound
- Great amplitude
- Suitable for multimedia
Cons
- They’re quite big — bowling-ball size
- A fair bit of setup required
- RGB lighting could have been more prominent
Our Verdict
The Creative Pebble Nova is a large, versatile speaker with a clear and vibrant sound.
Price When Reviewed
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Creative’s speaker lineup consists of speakers with very fine sound quality that represent good value for money. We’ve reviewed options like the Pebble and Pebble Pro in the past and had positive things to say about them.
At $279.99 the Creative Pebble Nova is a substantially more expensive speaker than its stablemates, but its sound is by far the most superb of the models we’ve tried. It’s also the largest and requires a fair amount of setup, but these are trifles worth putting up with for such superior sound.
Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best budget computer speakers for comparison.
Creative Pebble Nova: Design and build
The Creative Pebble Nova comes in a 2.0-speaker configuration. Each speaker has a very round design compared to other Creative speakers like the Pebble Pro. The speakers have a very Sci-Fi look to them, and kind of resemble lawn bowls in size and shape but with a DeathStar feel.
Each speaker contains a dual driver array at the front consisting of a 1-inch tweeter and a 3-inch full range driver in coaxial arrangement. They angle upwards at 45 degrees to deliver the sound towards your ears. At the back of the speaker, you’ll find a bass driver that isn’t as angled as the two front drivers.
At 5.5-inches in diameter, I found each speaker takes up a lot of space, so you’ll need a fair amount of room around you on your desk to place them. The speakers come elevated on metal stands, so you’ll not want to bump them, or you may have to deal with them crashing down. On the plus side, the stands don’t require any screws and simply lodge into holes in the base of each satellite.
Dominic Bayley / Foundry
The fact that the speakers are elevated is undoubtedly a good thing. It means I didn’t get desk vibrations, which can hamper the clarity of the sound. The construction is very solid too, the speakers are comprised of hard plastic, and the stands are metal, so you don’t have to worry about breakage.
The Pebble Nova has a ring of RGB lighting on the underside, but this is not as prominent as in some bookshelf-style speakers. I would have liked to see another ring of RGB higher up on the speaker body.
Creative Pebble Nova: Connectivity and controls
The Pebble Nova, being a premium option, comes with three ways to connect to your chosen device. One is via a 3.5mm Aux input, although this option doesn’t let you customize the music via the Creative App like the other two methods: a Bluetooth 5.3 connection, or via USB-C to USB-C.
Creative provides you with two 5-foot USB-C cables (one for power and the other for sound) and a 4-foot 3.5mm audio cable for making these connections.
The top of the master speaker houses the controls. They consist of power, volume, source, and lighting mode buttons. These are very straightforward to use. However, I would have also liked to see a remote control as another option for controlling, considering the price of the speakers.
Dominic Bayley / Foundry
Beneath the master speaker is a separate USB-C port for the 65W PD charger. Unlike other Pebble speakers, you can’t power the Pebble Nova via your laptop’s USB-C port, so you’ll need to be close to an AC outlet when setting up.
On the side of the main satellite is an inlet with a removable plug that houses two additional 3.5mm audio jacks for you to plug in a headset or a microphone.
Creative Pebble Nova: Sound
The Nova produces a warm well-balanced sound with no obvious flaws.
To test the speakers, I played Pharrell William’s “Happy” followed by “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, and “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor. I then played the film score from Lord of the Rings to see how well the speakers could play multimedia.
To summarize my thoughts, I found the treble and mids flew over the bass well in “Happy,” so that the instruments sounded clear and defined and not jumbled like I hear in cheaper units. The speakers had very good amplitude, I only needed to turn them up very slightly to get a strong volume.
In “Good Vibrations,” there was ample room for the vocals to shine over the guitar. The mids had tremendous range in the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, really dominating the soundscape with warm velvety overtones with plenty of depth.
Dominic Bayley / Foundry
Playing “All About That Bass” proved there was plenty of bass to be heard too. It was delivered with an authority that was very impressive. It never sounded muddy. I could crank the volume very high and couldn’t hear any kind of distortion, which means I could fill up the room with sound without affecting the audio.
All in all, I was very impressed with the very clear, vibrant sound of these speakers and with their versatility. Surely these are speakers that apply themselves just as well to desktop computing as they do to watching a movie on TV or gaming on your PS4 or Xbox consoles.
Creative Pebble Nova: Software
Two separate apps handle the audio for the Pebble Nova. The iOS and Android app is fairly limited in the kind of options available. You can only swap channels, adjust the lighting, and adjust the EQ.
The Creative App handles things from your PC. It lets you adjust the EQ as well as RGB lighting, but you can also access Acoustic Engine, Surround, and Crystal Voice+ to enhance the audio clarity and tonal range and adjust the sound for an immersive surround sound experience.
One interesting thing you can do in the Pebble Nova is swap the direction of the left and right audio channels. It means you can place the master speaker on any side, without the audio being affected. That’s very useful if you have cabling issues or like to create a cleaner desk environment.
Conclusion
In summary, the Pebble Nova, excels as a PC speaker system but also as a speaker for multimedia. It consistently produces a clear, vibrant sound, especially in the mid tones.
It’s also quite big and costs a fair amount more than other options in Creative’s lineup. But for those wanting the versatility of a bookshelf speaker that can do it all, that’s par for the course.
