Creative is an audio manufacturer that has never disappointed me. I’ve tested a lot of speakers and I love every single product from this brand. They are not perfect but they’re always among the best choices in their price ranges.
The Creative Halo was introduced a few months ago and it has some unique offerings, let’s check it out.
Unboxing Video
Design & Features
Creative has made a lot of changes in recent speakers and there is no longer ugly products as seen a few years ago. The Creative Halo is a great example of the improvement. It comes in a transparent plastic case that show offs the whole speaker. Creative is so confident with the product and they even place a button on top of the box to help you experience its beautiful RGB lightshow.
After taking the Halo out of the box, it feels great to hold as the exterior is covered in soft fabric. All the buttons are located on a rubber piece on top of the speaker.
On the back, we just have an AUX-in port and a microUSB charging port.
The most stunning feature of the Halo is the LED lightshow. I’ve tried many speakers with LED lights but none of them has such a beautiful implementation as seen on the Halo. Creative uses a mirror-finish reflective front panel, then they place LED lights and another reflective mirror underneath. This creates an optical illusion of an infinite tunnel fading into darkness. This extraordinary effect is combined with 16.8 million colors of the LED lights, so it’s difficult to keep your eyes away.
Besides, you can install the Creative Xpectra Lightshow app to change the lighting effects. The app is just optional as you can also change among some lighting patterns with the button on top of the speaker.
The battery life of the Halo could reach 8 hours but I turn on the LED light all the time, so it could last just about 4 hours. This is not really impressive but that’s what you have to compromise for the beautiful effect.
Audio Quality
The design of the Creative Halo is truly amazing and I hoped it could produce a good sound like other Creative speakers. The Creative Muvo 2 is a lot cheaper and it sounds awesome. Unfortunately, the sound from the Halo is kind of disappointing. You can check out a sound test in the video below.
I played this speaker to my colleagues and all of them agreed that the sound is just acceptable. The only advantage is that the mids are pretty clear and still sound smooth when I crank up the volume, this is quite good when watching Youtube or some movies. However, I didn’t enjoy listening to music on this speaker. It seriously lacks depth in the low responses and sometime you can’t hear the bass at all. The lows are almost non-existent and we just have some kicks in the lower mids. The flat sound is not enjoyable for most music listeners. Besides, the soundstage is not wide even when comparing to smaller speakers, it sounds boxy although there are 2 full-range drivers inside the Halo.
Conclusion
Pros
- Gorgeous LED lighting
- Portable design
Cons
- Battery life is disappointing
- Sound is just acceptable
The Creative Halo is not a good-sounding Bluetooth speaker but it is absolutely the most beautiful one. The best use case of the speaker is in a dark and small room, then you will see the lighting effect at its best and the sound doesn’t show its limitations.
Buy Creative Halo Bluetooth Speaker on Amazon
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Jan says
Strange. I have Yamaha amp with big sound as my daytime audio. I bought this Craetive and play mp3 trough line in, by bluetooth ( similar music ragtimes, Knopfler, Metroland album) and i found great sound. Very powerfull, with bass.