Creative Pebble Nova review: More rock than pebble

Creative’s Pebble range offers good sound quality and even better value for money, making it a mainstay of the PC speaker market. Over the years we’ve said some very nice things about the likes of the Pebble X Plus and Pebble V3.

The arrival of the Pebble Nova heralds a change in Creative’s ambitions; these are by far the most expensive speakers ever to carry the Pebble name and over £100 pricier than the Pebble X Plus.

If you’re coughing up almost £250 for loudspeakers, having them perform well as general purpose desktop PC speakers isn’t enough. Rather, they need to deliver across the board and produce excellent sound no matter what the context as well as offer good connectivity, convenience, design and build quality.

Creative Pebble Nova review: What do you get for the money?

This 2.0 speaker system costs £240, with the circular speakers weighing 1.9kg apiece and measuring 140mm in diameter. Each has a flat area onto which you mount the stand with or without the bundled 80mm pillar. The option to mount the speakers at different heights means you can put them below or alongside a monitor.

Each sphere contains a dual-driver array at the front that points upwards at 45 degrees. The array contains a 1in tweeter set in front of the 3in full range driver in a coaxial arrangement, which in theory benefits from the fact that they both produce soundwaves from the same precise point of origin. The rear of each sphere contains a passive bass driver that is less acutely angled than the driver array at the front.

On paper, the Pebble Nova delivers 2 x 25W RMS with a peak power of 100W. The speaker’s passive radiator goes a long way towards mitigating the absence of a separate subwoofer.

The top of the master speaker houses controls in the form of dimpled touch-sensitive power, volume, source and lighting mode buttons. Below the bass radiator on the master speaker you’ll find a 3.5mm port and two USB-C ports, one for the 65W mains PD charger that Creative supplies and one to connect to a USB audio source. Unlike previous Pebble systems, the Nova cannot be powered via a PC USB port.

The USB-C cable that connects the two spheres is fixed to the master unit but free at the other end. I had hoped this meant it could be extended if the 1.5m length proves too limiting, but it can’t: there’s a notch in the free end of the cable and a ridge above the receptacle on the slave speaker which means standard cables won’t fit. Creative bundles two 1.5m USB-C cables, one for audio and one for power, and a 1.2m 3.5mm audio cable.

On the side of the main module, there is a removable rubber plug that covers two more 3.5mm jacks for a microphone and headset. I like the fact that when not in use, they are hidden away. If you want to connect the Nova wirelessly, you’re in luck as the system also supports Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, though you have to make do with the SBC codec.

At the base of each sphere surrounding the stand mount you’ll find a circular RGB LED. The light show can be adjusted between various preset patterns or to work as a peak meter. The lighting system is not particularly bright, which, combined with the position, makes it hard to see unless used in a very dark room. Once I’d fiddled with the lights for the sake of this review, I turned them off.

Creative Pebble Nova review: What does it do well?

I was sceptical of Creative’s ability to get bookshelf hi-fi speaker sound quality from what looks like a pair of desktop PC speakers on steroids, but there was no need to be. The Nova produces a warm, detailed and nicely balanced soundscape with no obvious failings.

To get a handle on the Pebble Nova’s musical competency, I started with Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack to the film Thief, then switched to In Lieu of Flowers by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties and finished with Herbert von Karajan’s take on Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 with the Berlin PO.

Starting with Thief, the sense of transparency and clarity in the main beach scene segment was most impressive, allowing the music to soar freely over the synth bass line.

Turning to the latest work from The Wonder Years frontman Dan Campbell’s alter ego, this is a loud and rambunctious album with a lot going on, but the Pebble Nova generated ample space for the music to breathe, with the brass section and thunderous drums having all the impact one could ask for.

A good pair of speakers should be able to genuinely scare the listener when playing the 2nd movement, Allegro, of Shostakovich’s 10th, with its ominous brass and swirling strings, but without sacrificing any of the finer detail and the Nova managed just that.

Passive drivers are often as much a matter of style as substance, but the radiators on the back of the Nova enclosures do a real job: you can easily see them vibrate as well as hear them when the bass kicks in. For a compact 2.0 system, the Pebble Nova produces a lot of bass.

In summary, the Pebble Nova more than cuts the mustard as a bookshelf hi-fi speaker system: it’s not just a PC speaker rig with ideas above its station. That said, a speaker system like this is surely most likely destined to be used for mixed multimedia. With that in mind, I hooked it up to my TV and watched Dune Part 2.

The Pebble Nova did excellent work bringing the voices of the cast to the fore, something that had particular impact in the scene when Paul Atriedes proclaims himself in front of the Fremen council, a scene wonderfully underpinned by Hans Zimmer’s brooding score.

There’s no debating the raw volume of the Nova either. Measuring the volume against a pink noise source at a 1m distance, the system pumped out a tumescent 90dBA, though when turned up to the maximum, the sound does get a little confused and muddy.

An unusual feature of the Nova system is the option to swap the left and right audio channels, which means you can put the master sphere with all the connectors on either side of the slave sphere without messing up the stereo balance.

Creative supports two apps that you can use to manage the Nova system. The mobile app for iOS and Android is rather limited and only lets you manage the equalizer, swap channels and adjust the lighting system.

The Windows desktop app is more fleshed out and brings Creative’s surround sound system and Acoustic Engine features to the party, both of which have major effects on the soundscape. The former makes for a supernatural level of stereo separation, the latter enables a monumental increase in bass at the expense of some cohesion.

The Nova system is aesthetically far removed from the traditional wood veneer bookshelf speaker design, but if you like the look of Kef’s superb but pricey LSX bookshelf active monitors you’ll appreciate what Creative has delivered here. It’s hit a home run when it comes to build quality and design with something both modernistic and functional.

Creative Pebble Nova review: What could be improved?

While I like the option to set the speakers at base height or on the 80mm poles, some sort of hinge mechanism wouldn’t have gone amiss so you could redirect the angle at which the spheres face the room. As it is, no matter what height you place them, they are always firing upward.

Secondly, if you are going to fit a speaker enclosure with an LED lighting system, it needs to be bright enough to have an impact. The rather insipid glow of the Nova’s RGB lights makes it too close to a box-ticking feature for my taste.

Lastly, a small remote control to manage the volume from my armchair wouldn’t have gone amiss. Again this is hardly a deal breaker but given the price I don’t think it’s too much to ask. To a lesser extent, the same could be said about the absence of optical or RCA inputs.

Creative Pebble Nova review: Should you buy it?

The Pebble Nova is a great performer but pricey for a 2.0 system. It’s £100 more than the impressive SteelSeries Arena 3 and for similar money you can pick up the highly-regarded and evergreen Audioengine A2+.

That said, the Pebble Nova is in a different league to the Arena 3 when it comes to playing music and listening to movie soundtracks, and smaller and funkier than the Audioengine system and easily its equal sonically.

So, has Creative’s sortie into grown-up speakerdom been a success? I’d say so. Across the board, the system delivers a very impressive sonic performance while still being small and stylish. The Pebble Nova system may be expensive, but no cheaper option does quite so much quite so well.