Creative STAGE Air Desktop Soundbar Review

Setup & Performance

One thing I love about this speaker is that it is utterly simple to configure and use. If you’re using it on your PC or MAC you only need a single USB cable, which provides all the power and audio connectivity. Of course, the cables are included, but you could use any micro-USB cable if you desire to use your own. On Windows, it was plug and play. A side bonus is that the USB mode also charges the built-in battery too; more on that in a moment.

I must admit, it seems quite comical that I have my 2.0 desktop Creative speakers surrounding the Creative soundbar. I’ll admit, they’re not getting replaced by this soundbar, but honestly, the soundbar does sound pretty decent. Studio quality party speaker? Not really, but for a straight-up audio quality boost over the speakers in my monitor? It’s fantastic.

There’s no dedicated subwoofer, so the bass isn’t particularly meaty, it’s just a nice sound overall though. For watching YouTube, playing some Overwatch, and listening to Planet Rock while I work, it’s been absolutely fine. I know, small praise saying it’s “fine” but well, it is. It’s not “OMG THAT WALL OF SOUND” as if I wanted that, I’d get the Creative iRoar Go, but that’s more than twice the price.

It looks great on my desktop too, it doesn’t get in the way, and I can still easily reach those master volume and power controls on the side.

About the only thing you can really see it doing is that tiny power light, which they’ve neatly hidden behind the mesh.

The speaker doesn’t have a huge range of features, but it’s still doing everything you need. Of course, it does have one party trick. It’s not just USB/3.5mm, it’s also wireless. It was a nice day of COVID-19 isolation, so we took it out in the garden for a few hours, ran it off the internal battery and played some music over Bluetooth from my phone. It sounded just as good on the battery as it did wired, which is great!