Creative Stage 2.1 PC & TV Soundbar and Subwoofer Review

Peter Donnell / 5 years ago

A Closer Look

The speaker is pretty sizeable, clocking in at 55cm wide, it’s more than big enough to fill the space under a 32″ monitor and now feel like it’s too narrow. It should at least provide good stereo separation within close proximity.

One thing I do love is that they’ve kept the design extremely clean and minimal. There’s just a simple Creative logo on the front left, although now that I think about it, why didn’t they put this in the middle?

The grill on the front is rolled at the top and bottom by about 1cm, where it fits flush into the deeper main unit of the speaker. It’s actually quite chunky, which is promising for delivering a bigger sound than I expected.

On the right side, you’ll find three basic controls, as well as a USB port. They’re fairly straight forward, with a power button at the top, and two volume buttons. The USB port is for playing MP3 files from a flash drive, although that functionality is fairly limited, it’s nice that it’s included.

On the left side, it’s just blanked off.

The back of the Stage is flattened off a bit, this means you’ll be able to push it up against a monitor stand, or even against the wall if you really need to.

There’s a pair of these on the back, with two key-hole slots for wall-mounting the speaker. Plus, they’ve included the screws and rawlplugs in the box should you wish to do that. Ideally, that’ll be people who have a wall-mounted monitor or TV.

On one side, there’s a large recess for the main I/O. This is great, as it means that cables won’t choke up behind the unit when it’s against a wall.

There’s HDMI, Optical and AUX here, allowing for quick and easy setup.

The subwoofer is pretty simple too, albeit I think it looks rather decent. It’s got a front ported design with a side mounted speaker.

It’s a passive speaker, so don’t expect bone-shaking bass here, but it should be more than enough to fill our the deficit of the smaller speakers in the soundbar.