Creative Outlier bluetooth headphones
A Lightweight, powerful and highly versatile set of creative bluetooth headphones with multiple connectivity options.
Contents
- Creative Outlier headphones
- 6 sets of coloured acoustic rings
- 1.2m long 3.5mm AUX cable
- 1.5m long USB cable
Features
- 4.1 bluetooth with interference protection
- NFC ‘tap to pair’ with smartphones
- 10 hours battery life, 8 hours talk time
- MicroSD slot for up to 32gb cards
- HD voice calls and text-to-speech buddy app
- USB audio via a PC or laptop
1Creative Outlier Headphones – Design and Build Quality.
Designed to be extremely light, the Creative Outlier headphones weigh in at just 100 grams on my digital scales. Despite being impressively lightweight they appear to be very durable. I’ve twisted and stretched the arms far further than most people would ever need to.
The ear cups are relatively compact and designed to fit on the ear as opposed to over them. This allows a little more external sound in, helping you stay aware of your surroundings when wearing them out and about.
I generally prefer on-ear headphones for this reason, just as long as the pressure is good and the padding is sufficient to prevent fatigue over time. As the cups are almost the same size as my ears, I’m also able to comfortably wear my glasses without the padding pinching them.
I’m happy to report that I’ve been wearing these for almost 6 hours today and my ears feel perfectly fine.
Behind the padding there are colourful elasticated rings – I have a white set fitted on the above photo. Creative have named these “Acoustic rings” due to them having an effect on balancing the audio. Without the rings the Creative Outlier headphones will be more bass rich, which may suit those that prefer the ‘Beats’ audio style.
The rings are easily interchangeable, which is a really nice feature, especially for the younger generation. My personal preference is either the white or the black bands.
Generally speaking, I like the design. They are very comfortable and most definitely one of the lightest set of headphones I’ve worn. I’m not overly keen on the large “OUTLIER” branding. I think it would have looked better, had it been far smaller and tucked neatly under the Creative logo.
If bright colours are not your thing, it’s worth mentioning that the Creative Outlier headphones are available in both white and black. While the black set also shares equally large “OUTLIER” branding on each arm, it’s a light grey tone as opposed to the bright orange found on the white ones.
2Creative Outlier Headphones – Features
With the exception of the AUX input socket on the left ear, all the features and functions are located on the right hand side. There’s a round button on the front that powers up headphones, activates the bluetooth pairing and is also used to for numerous hands free call functions. These include answering / ending a call, muting / unmuting, rejecting and transferring to your smartphone.
Track selection buttons are positioned at the top behind the arm allowing you to skip tracks, or scroll through multiple tracks by holding the button down. The volume up / down buttons are located on the underneath, separated by the microSD slot. At the very bottom there’s a micro USB port for recharging, playing USB audio or access to the MicroSD card.
The various playback modes offered on Creative Outlier headphones can be selected with a three way switch on the front edge.
When connected to a PC or laptop, Windows will automatically install the required drivers. The Creative Outlier will then appear in your playback devices list.
For those who wish to add even further control over their audio settings, Creative offer free driver software for Outlier headphones for both PC’s and Mac’s on their support website. This software will give you access to the Sound Blaster control panel.
As well as free PC and Mac software, Creative have also released a free app for Android based Smartphones. The app integrates Google’s Text-to-Speech engine to read messages from your phone directly to the Outlier.
Finally there is also a built-in lap timer which is designed to provide voice prompts about your laps and the total time of your activity. I haven’t actually used this feature as I’m unsure how it works, it doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the manual.
3Creative Outlier Headphones – Audio Quality and Specs
Audio Quality
Audio quality is in my opinion an extremely difficult thing to accurately gauge without bias. It’s often influenced by brand, design and the cost of a product. I can say that prior to listening to the audio, I had a reasonable expectation of quality, knowing that Creative have a good history when it comes to audio. That being said, the lightweight plastic design, compact size and the relatively affordable price, had me thinking the audio would be average at best. After spending the last few days using the Creative Outlier in both bluetooth and USB audio modes, I’ve been highly impressed with the clarity and balance of sound at all levels of volume.
The Creative Outlier headphones also feature pin sharp vocal quality when using the microphone for hands free calls. This is thanks to their ClearSpeech Engine which suppresses external noises and enhances clarity.
Specifications
Full specifications can be found inside the detailed user guide that comes with the Creative Outlier headphones, or by following this link to their support page.
- Drivers – 32mm Neodymium
- Frequency Response –20Hz ~ 22kHz
- Impedance – 24ohms
- Bluetooth Profiles – A2DP, AVRCP, HSP, HFP
- HD Voice ready
- Audio Codecs – mSBC, SBC, FastStream
- Operating Range -10m / 33ft
4Verdict
Although I typically tend to favour a more subtle headphone design, I can see the lightweight, compact style and bright acoustic rings appealing massively to younger generation. They’re comfortable, offer an impressive battery life, great audio quality and a ton of features. The Creative Outlier’s are the most versatile set of headphones I’ve used and I highly recommend you guys check them out.
I hope you found this review useful, if so please share it socially or leave a comment below. For more information on the Outlier headphones please visit Creative’s product page.
To make use of the Outlier’s bluetooth connectivity with your PC, Mac or on a PlayStation 4, check the Creative’s BT-W2 USB Bluetooth transceiver – Here’s our full review
These sound really good, I bought some for my 12 year old daughter, the green rings were instantly replaced with the pink. I was really impressed with how good they sound, especially the bluetooth.
Hi Mark, Thanks for commenting, I have 2 boys (10 and 6) they both seem to favour the green rings
Hiya, Can you access the MicroSD card while it’s still inserted in the headphones?
Hi Steff,
Yes, when the Outlier headphones are connected to the PC and switched to MicroSD it acts like a mass storage device. You can drop and drag or copy and paste music files in. Hope that helps