Creative Stage Air V2 HIFI Sound Bar – Slice Of Music
Creative Stage Air V2 is a $49 USD Soundbar made for computers, with a battery that gives it 6 hours of battery life, 20W of Peak Power, and USB, 3.5mm and even Bluetooth inputs. Today we will take a look at and review the Stage Air V2 and see where it fits for music lovers, gamers and everyone in between.
Introduction
I have reviewed the Creative Sound Blaster X5 and it has been a successful review that made everyone happy, so I thought it would be a great idea to review something on the more affordable side of things, and something the company made to satisfy those who can’t afford a pricy listening solution, so here we are with the Stage Air V2. As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases, and using the purchase links in my reviews helps me maintain this website and Youtube Channel. Creative has provided the sample for this review, in exchange for my honest opinion.
PROs – Spacious sound despite being a single unit, good battery life, excellent build quality, good bass extension for the bass driver, clear and clean sound without sounding harsh, high maximum SPL, low THD until 95 dB, good control. Excellent for the price. It will beat the speakers in my 2000 USD TV and in most monitors on the market, offering a tangible upgrade over them both for gaming and music listening.
Cons – Creative Stage Air V2 needs to be positioned about in front of you and 1 – 2 metres away from you, deviations from this classic soundbar setup will change the sound a lot.
Product Link
You can grab one here – https://amzn.to/3LiVbPt
Build Quality / Aesthetics
Creative Stage Air V2 is a soundbar, which has enough space beneath most monitors and TVs, and it is rather short, having 41 cm in length, 9.4 cm in depth and 7.5 cm in height. It is lightweight and it won’t clutter your setup, as it is a simple, yet effective product, with a plastic build, a metallic frontal mesh, and with very few buttons. The face of the soundbar has just one light on the right side which lets you know when it is turned on, while all controls are on the left side, as it has a Vol+ Vol-, Play/Pause/On/Off buttons, and a Bluetooth pairing button. The low weight of 1.23 kG works well for me, and the streamer is plenty portable (when you consider my camera setup is much heavier, this one’s fun to carry around).
To power the Stage Air v2, you have to use either a Type-C USB cable and it will work natively with a computer with no extra drivers or any other addons needed, or you can use a 3.5mm line cable, and connect it to any source that has a 3.5mm headphone output, including a smartphone or a smartphone with a dongle, like Aune Yuki. The Soundbar should work with PS4 and PS5 as well as MAC and PC just fine, and although I don’t have a Linux system, it should work very well.
I notice no USB DAC delay when it is connected to my computer via a Type-C cable, and that’s actually pretty important, as it is aimed at gamers, and it is able to play sound in real time, including watching videos or playing fast paced action games. On computer, the buttons on the side will control the volume of the Windows Volume. I could not find a lot of information about the drivers inside, but they are Full-Range Racetrack drivers, with 2x5W RMS configuration,
The Technical numbers won’t impress anyone, but that’s not the point with a Soundbar for gamers, and we have a SNR of higher than 75dB, along with a quoted battery life of around 6 hours. I was able to get around 5 hours of playback time with S23 Ultra streaming music, but I used higher volumes. The buttons on the side will control the speaker’s internal volume when it is powered from a Bluetooth source, and it has its own volume, while the Smartphone keeps its Bluetooth volume too. The Bluetooth protocol can use only the SBC protocol. There is a Creative Dongle adapter for Bluetooth available for purchase which will enable Bluetooth on systems that don’t have it.
Usage / Placement / Gaming Usage
As there are two drivers inside the Creative Stage Air V2, it has a stereo sound with an actually fair instrument definition and stereo imaging, but it sounds best if placed right in front of you, as you’d normally place a soundbar. You can offset this positioning by about 15 degrees before the sound starts being louder in one ear. I would keep the speaker between one and two metres away for the best sonic experience.
You don’t have to always have a Type-C Cable connected, but it wouldn’t hurt, as the speaker will consume its battery otherwise. If you pair it with a computer, it works well as a USB DAC and there is no real advantage to using the 3.5mm line input. In fact, sonically, the sound is best over the Type-C USB input, then the Bluetooth input, then the 3.5mm line in. The sound is much cleaner, and more natural than it is with my TV, the Samsung Neo QLED 65QN95C. The sound will be better than what most monitors have embedded on them, so a good way to upgrade your current gaming or music setup if you can’t afford a stereo setup, either out of space or budget constraints.
For the actual gaming part, the soundbar has a good amount of details, but also creates a wide soundstage and places each instrument rather well in the sound field, which helps a lot with hearing where something is coming from and placing yourself in space mentally. There is not a lot of low-end impact for explosions, but the clear midrange with very low THD will make dialogue easy to understand, and the lower midrange has warmth while upper midrange has sweetness, making atmospheric sounds magical and engaging.
Sound Quality
Overall Signature – The sound of the Stage Air V2 is generally clean, bright, with a fairly strong roll-off in the bass, as the 3.5″ drivers can reproduce low-end above 65 Hz – 70 Hz, so you can expect most of the sound to be played above that range. The midrange is clean, musical and fluid, and plenty detailed for a product at 50 USD, while the treble is airy, extends nicely until 11 kHz, and has a natural texture, being enough to make the sound engaging and bright, but not sounding metallic harsh or forced. This is not a party speaker, but it can fill a room for 4-5 people and offer a strong sound that will actually cover the voices of those people, going for about 90dB – 95dB at max, with no audible distortion. This is at 80% volume.
Bass – Although the bass extension is limited by the driver size, there’s a hint of warmth in the midrange, which seems to extend to the low-end that the speaker can produce. I can feel the sound resonating in my desk, and to some degree having it placed on a wooden surface will enhance the bass and give it a bit more low-end impact, while the bass speed is slow, sloppy and satisfying, creating a fairly pleasing feeling. The overall tonality is bright and clean, so you can expect no veiling and the bass to be controlled with extremely low distortion even if you bring the soundbar loud.
Midrange – The mids are the magic with Creative Stage Air V2, and it produces a musical mid, with a slow speed, a natural amount of texture, and what I am willing to call detailed and well separated for the money. Male voices carry weight and a warm, pleasing tonality to them, while female voices carry emotion, and sweetness to them. It actually sounds really beautiful, but this is when the soundbar is placed properly in front of you, and between 1 and 2 metres away. The overall tuning is bright, sharp and detail is well defined without sounding clinical or fatiguing. Guitar sounds in particular are really sweet, and soundtracks from games like Dota 2, Ghost of Tsushima and Frostpunk are really neat to hear.
Treble – Creative made sure that the sound will be interesting and not rolled-off, so we have a fairly good extension for the treble, up to about 11 kHz, after which the treble gently rolls off in energy and presence. The treble character is generally on the softer side, with very little metallic tinge and a non-harsh presentation, but a wealth of shimmer, sparkle and airy sounds. This also makes the staging larger, aiding the sound to be as wide, holographic and pleasing as possible.
Dynamics / PRaT / Textures – If you love textures as much as I do, you will know that quality texture in music isn’t always what has the most texture, but what can tackle a natural sounding texture for its price point, so Stage Air V2 does really well. While textures are not overly expressive, they are not dull or too smooth either, the soundbar basically offering a balance of actually having proper detail, but also sounding musical and pleasing, avoiding the pitfall of being too textured for its price point and sounding edgy.
Soundstage – The staging is natural, the soundbar extends the music in my room quite nicely, and if placed properly offers a good stereo imaging and instrument separation. While not perfect, while at the ideal height and distance from you, the two full range drivers create a clean stereo image, and the sound is projected for each ear naturally, which results in an open sound. While it won’t win any awards for soundstage width and depth, for 49 USD it actually offers spatiality and allows you to both enjoy music tracks, and also play some games.
Volume Control – The volume control is fair at best, as the sound is deeper, warmer and smoother at lower volumes, but the bass presence and depth increases at higher volumes, but so does the sound aggressiveness and sharpness, which makes the Stage Air V2 more detailed. Overall, there is no best volume to enjoy the Stage Air V2, this will depend on your needs, but it does sound different. Low volumes are smooth, warm, and musical, midrange is a good balance of sounding pleasing and having a good detail / impact / bass, while at high volumes the sound is the most engaging and most punchy, but also most fatiguing and sharpest, the treble becoming a bit edgy. I would use it below 80% volume, as above it, the THD grows quickly.
Value and Conclusion
With a price point of 49 USD, and even going on sales for lower than this rather often, Creative Stage Air V2 is not just well-priced, it is darn cheap, and makes adding a fuller, better sound to a TV and gaming setup pocket-friendly, being a reasonable way of actually having a clean and pleasing sound to your current system, great for gaming, enjoyable for long hours of listening and having a lot of fun.
At the end of the day, despite this being the first product so entry-level that I am so happy about, it actually deserves a bit of recognition, a soundbar at 49 USD that actually sounds considerably better than your TV is a worthy upgrade, and it will beat the embedded speakers in most monitors, offering a better soundstage, better resolution and clarity, plus a higher maximum loudness with lower THD, so for any gamer or music lover on a budget, Creative Stage Air V2 is a fully recommended purchase and a little soundbar that I like a lot.
Product Link
You can grab one here – https://amzn.to/3LiVbPt
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Full Playlist used for this review
We listened to more songs than those named in this playlist, but those are excellent for identifying a sonic signature. I recommend trying most of the songs from this playlist, especially if you’re searching for new music! The playlists are different for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube, and based on the songs I enjoy and are available on each!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_cjBXGmwSHSdGcwuc_bKbBDGHL4QvYBu
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5J3oloz8Riy9LxEGenOjQ0?si=979ba4f082414be7
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/330fd544-8e5b-4839-bd35-676b2edbb3d5
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