Creative Pebble Nova Review: Stylish Speakers That Don't Fully Justify The Price

Although they might look like their predecessors in some ways, the Pebble Nova speakers are much larger, spherical units, just a bit bigger than a typical grapefruit—roughly 5.9 inches in any dimension and weighing about 4.2 pounds apiece. This gives Creative room to craftily house a pair of coaxial drivers in each speaker. A 1-inch tweeter sits out front with a stylish grille over it. That floats inside another grille covering a 3-inch woofer. The rear has a passive radiator built in to boost bass. The speakers can each put out an average of 25W, and the system can peak at 100W.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

A colorful light show is on display at the bottom of each speaker. The unique look helps distract from some of the design’s less appealing aspects, such as the plastic body or the visible seam wrapping around the sphere’s circumference.

The Pebble Nova is built with its drivers pointing upward at 45 degrees to direct the audio toward your ears in a desktop setup. The kit comes with weighty stands to keep the otherwise top-heavy setup stable. You can also mount the speakers on a small pole to raise them, or on a small nub to keep them low toward the surface of the desk you set them on. The base and neck of the stand connect with a screw that, unfortunately, is not tool-less. But the neck of the stand and the speakers connect via a keyed slot that uses only pressure and a little latch to hold them in place, which is fairly secure but not perfectly so.

Creative Pebble Nova

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

Whichever way you set them up, get ready for a bit of a cable mess. There’s a whole lot of USB-C going on: The power to the speakers comes via USB-C, the connection between the speakers runs through USB-C, and there’s a USB-C audio input. Although it’s somewhat nice to see this standard in use, the connection between the two speakers is dubious. For one thing, the connection is hardwired on the right speaker, so if anything happens to that connector, you’re out of luck. Where the cable connects to the left speaker, Creative uses a USB-C plug with a proprietary keyed housing. All of the cables are thick and stiff, making it tough to get a tidy-looking arrangement.

The speakers don’t integrate their power supply, so Creative includes a USB-C Power Deliver (PD) charging brick capable of delivering up to 65W (and no, none of it passes through to a connected phone or laptop). This brick uses a North American charging connector, though the company also includes adapters for various regions.

Creative Pebble Nova

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

On the back of the right speaker, you’ll find a 3.5mm auxiliary input port alongside the USB-C connections. Unfortunately, there’s no subwoofer output. A small rubber cover on the right speaker covers the microphone and headset jacks, though Creative says these won’t be active until a later firmware update. At the time of testing, they did nothing.

In addition to the wired connections, the Pebble Nova supports Bluetooth. But even after several generations of disappointment with Creative’s Pebble speaker family on this front, the company continues to rely solely on the lackluster SBC codec.

Creative Pebble Nova

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

All of the controls are on the top right. They consist entirely of capacitive touch buttons, which makes it inconvenient to feel out the right one for making quick adjustments.