Creative Outlier Air V2 Earbuds

My most enduring memory of Creative is the Soundblaster from last century. Since then I’ve not really thought of them very much even though they still do a range of soundcards, speakers, gaming headsets and more – but they just sent me their Outlier Air V2 Earbuds and I just had to give them a go. Below is a link to the earbuds which, at the time of writing, are, it seems, available at a promotional price in the EU, of €69.99 (that’s Euros) on Creative’s own site.

Of course, when they arrived via a company called jargon.pr, I immediately dropped everything, as you do – and opened the box. These are not cheap earbuds, either in price or quality. To look at they are not much different to other in-ear buds – but I have to say… the quality and build… very nice.

After ensuring both the container and the buds were fully charged as per the recommendations (they were almost fully charged on arrival) I ran the buds for a couple of hours – perfect, not a single issue. Now, I have to say I have some inexpensive buds for which the same could be said – but these really excelled.

The pairing process was utterly trivial – Creative recommend taking the left-ear bud out of the box first at which point it will automatically pair with your phone (it did) followed by the right which will do the same (it paired them with my Xiaomi Pocophone). I’ve since paired them with my new Chuwi Larkbox mini-PC and they seamlessly transfer from the phone to the Larkbox and vice-versa.

From there on they just work – and both sound quality and maximum volume are excellent, higher than my cheaper buds and definitely loud enough to work in a noisy environment. High frequencies are very clear – and that’s certainly not always the case with less expensive units.

In a word – lovely. The case inside sleeve has everything you need to get started. Also inside the box is a USB-C lead and a shed-load of paperwork including instructions in various languages (only one of which I can read), info on charging time (2-3 hours) and all about the free APP called SXFI – the Google Playstore didn’t rate it that highly but I read most of it – head and ear mapping.. whatever that means.

I didn’t see anything about noise-cancelling or audio input until I read the technical specs – therein you will find reference to “microphones” presumably for good reason.