The Creative Stage 360 carries forward the design language of the Creative Stage family of soundbars
If you are out in the market for an easy to setup soundbar for your home entertainment system, the Creative Stage 360 can be a decent buy
We found the audio to be bass heavy out of the box
Creative has, over the years, slowly established its presence in the Indian consumer audio market, and with their Creative Stage 360 2.1 soundbars, they attempt to make a fresh dent in the soundbar space. The Creative Stage 360, at the time of launch, had a lot of talks going around about it, so when it showed up here at the Digit Test Centre, we took it for a spin, playing our favourite soundtracks and hooking it up to the TV and PlayStation watching movies and playing games, all while keeping a keen eye on the sound that this soundbar produced. Here’s what we’d like to share.
Build and Design
The Creative Stage 360 carries forward the design language of the Creative Stage family of soundbars. It has a clean-looking black exterior, with subtle Creative branding both on the bar and the subwoofer. The soundbar itself sports a metallic grill at the front, shielding its 2 x 2.25″ x 3.85″ Racetrack Driver that is enclosed in a plastic enclosure. The front of the soundbar has a dot matrix display, which gives out information about the active connectivity option, and whether the bar is on or not. There are four basic buttons baked into the soundbar, with functionalities like play/pause, changing connectivity options, and switching the bar on or off.
Coming to the subwoofer, the first thing that caught our eye was the amount of output it generated for its size. We will come back to it later, but it was important to mention its performance, given its 115 x 250 x 422 mm housing, which holds the mesh-covered 5.25″ High Excursion Driver. It connects to the main soundbar using a 1.5m cable, which terminates into a barrel plug that goes into the main soundbar. The feet at the bottom of the subwoofer help it stay pegged in place even when playing bass-heavy tracks.
The soundbar also comes with a remote, which provides the users with ample control and versatility. The buttons on the remote are clicky and give adequate feedback when pressed. The general build quality of the remote is nothing to write home about. However, considering the price of the soundbar, it was acceptable.
As far as the connectivity is concerned, this soundbar comes packed with all the bells and whistles. There are two HDMI ports on the back of the soundbar, with support for ARC. Alongside the HDMI ports, there is also an optical audio port. For wireless connectivity, there’s Bluetooth. So, it practically has all the bases covered. However… We may sound archaic when saying this, but we missed our old friend, the AUX port. The absence of the jack was especially felt by one of our team members who tried hooking it up to his Bluetooth-less PC and was disappointed.
Performance
During our gaming sessions, which involved all sorts of titles like F1 2022, where the biggest challenge was reproducing a variety of engine sounds at varying distances, to games like Fortnite, the overall experience was enjoyable. However, it is just for casual gaming. If you are looking to play anywhere close to a competitive game where positional awareness matters, then this soundbar will not be enough. Even in F1, sometimes we were left searching for the cars that were around us.
When it came to movies and music, the performance saw a relative boost. When listening to songs, the positioning of the instruments is important, and when it came to this soundbar, the imaging was sub-par. While all the instruments in the song stood their ground, their positioning always remained something that we were disappointed by. It was not like there was an absolute lack of any separation that came out of the bar. It was the amount of separation and the positional awareness that bummed us out.
The same was the case with movies. Despite being Dolby Atmos certified, this sound bar, given its price tag of ₹16,999, failed to meet the expectations. It might sound like we are being really cynical, but we expected better performance for the price, especially when it is carrying the Dolby badge.
As for the sound signature, we found the audio to be bass heavy out of the box. The remote allows for changing the bass levels in the audio that is being produced by the soundbar, which makes a world of difference. After tuning the bass, the soundbar’s performance was elevated to another level. The sound was well balanced overall, and during our binging sessions, we could easily make out even the softest of dialogues being spoken by the characters on the screen. While the staging, in general, remained a sore spot, the overall frequency reproduction was something that would suit its use in entertainment and casual gaming setups.
Verdict
If you are out in the market for an easy to setup soundbar for your home entertainment system, the Creative Stage 360 can be a decent buy. There are better options out there, especially when considering the generally discounted price of some excellent offerings from LG and Samsung. If you are willing to wait, then it would be worth it. However, if you are looking for a soundbar that you could buy right away with your eyes shut, then Creative Stage 360 should be in the top 3 of your list of considerations. It performs well for the most part. The only place it lacks, for the price you are paying, is the staging of the sound and the resultant spatial awareness. With that aside, this makes for a decent purchase.
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Satvik Pandey
Satvik Pandey, is a self-professed Steve Jobs (not Apple) fanboy, a science & tech writer, and a sports addict. At Digit, he works as a Deputy Features Editor, and manages the daily functioning of the magazine. He also reviews audio-products (speakers, headphones, soundbars, etc.), smartwatches, projectors, and everything else that he can get his hands on. A media and communications graduate, Satvik is also an avid shutterbug, and when he's not working or gaming, he can be found fiddling with any camera he can get his hands on and helping produce videos – which means he spends an awful amount of time in our studio. His game of choice is Counter-Strike, and he's still attempting to turn pro. He can talk your ear off about the game, and we'd strongly advise you to steer clear of the topic unless you too are a CS junkie. View Full Profile
