You know they say first impressions really matter, right? Well, I got my eyes wide open a bit because I was wrong. When I first took the Creative Stage SE out of the box, I didn’t expect much, mainly due to the size of the soundbar. I was expecting low sound, no power, no bass, and worked fine. And coming from the last Creative soundbar I reviewed, which was the Katana V2, which, by the way, tags up to the top if you want to check it out, I was expecting the worst. But how wrong I was. This is the Creative Stage SE, and I have to say it’s a good soundbar.
As mentioned in the introduction, the Creative Stage SE is small in size. It stands on my desk at 41cm wide, about 7cm high and 11cm deep, and it’s low enough to fit most monitors. It’s pretty much covered in glossy black plastic, which is an absolute magnet for dust and fingerprints, by the way, and it has a metal mesh panel around the front to hide the speaker. It has a status light on the right-hand side, a large button for changing the source on the right-hand side, and a large volume wheel that’s actually pretty intuitive, especially if you’re using it at your desk. It’s very easy to tone down your sound and feels very solid. The left side is a hole for your bass that I’ll talk about in a moment, but with this said, the Stage SE can punch a punch when needed.
Around the back are two gates. One USB Type-C to connect it to your PC, one power supply port and one USB Type-A service port. However, it lacks one thing and one thing that may be unique to me is the fact that it lacks the 3.5mm auxiliary input. I’m currently running a Creative AE-5 sound card on my desktop, another is in the corner, and I’d love to plug this soundbar into it so I can have a little more control over the kind of sound that I’m listening to. I give the device. It also has Bluetooth, so if your desktop or laptop has Bluetooth, you can connect. It also means it will work with cell phones too, so if you’re not using it as a PC speaker, it makes a pretty decent speaker for your phone.
Stage SE is powered by Creative’s Soundblaster technology, so even though I couldn’t use it with my AE-5 soundcard, there are a few options available that you can access with the small remote. included with the bar. The two main options are Surround Sound and Clear Dialogue, where Surround Sound will try to expand your spatial sound and give you a wider soundstage. It works, not particularly well since your sound is still coming from a small speaker in front of you, but it has distinct tones. Clear Dialogue ensures that dialogue detected in audio is isolated from other audio. Again, it works well, but it has to sacrifice some of that limited bass to do so. I didn’t enable any of these options for most of my testing, I found the sound to be more likely than in standard mode. There’s also the option to enhance the treble or bass, and this option is Creatively called Bright or Warm sound. Again, I found a happy medium in the middle and dropped it.
And to be honest with you, if you’re not looking for a device with explosive sound, the Creative Stage SE is a pretty good space-saving option. I have to say that I like it better than the Creative T20 speaker that I usually keep on my desk. I’ve just started playing Jedi: Survivor and the powerful lightsaber hits sound great when combined with gunfire. I wouldn’t necessarily use this if you’re a more competitive gamer, as footwork and bullet placement can slightly hit or miss, though for RPG, action/adventure titles your one player, it’s a solid choice. What’s nice about the soundbar that sits on top of my desk, is the fact that it makes my desk rumble and I get a strong feel that way, which is great. For music and movies, again a solid choice. If you don’t get a squeaky sound and it’s just a bit of background noise at medium volume when you’re working, then I can’t complain.
Overall, the Creative Stage SE, despite my disturbing first impressions, is actually a very nice soundbar, and it’s also great if you’re someone who needs to save space on the desk. I wouldn’t buy it if you’re in need of something for the living room TV. There are much better options out there and personally, in that case I would go for a subwoofer, but for your desk and the fact that it only costs around £70 online at the moment, I’m not sure there’s much better unless of course, you want to separate your audio with the left and right speakers, but that’s a whole other story. However, to be neat, Creative Stage SE is one. For more information, go to Creative website.
