The Creative Pebble Nova resembles its predecessors with orb-like speaker cabinets, if you can even call the little Death Star bodies of these speakers cabinets. At $279.99, it largely diverges from the simple $24.99 pair of Pebble speakers that started the line and goes far beyond what the Pebble Pro ($69.99) and Pebble X Plus ($99.99) offer. The price puts the system in a much higher class, where it squares off against some of our favorite computer speakers like the Fluance Ai41 ($249.99). It's even priced strikingly close to the excellent Edifier MR5 ($349.99). Against impressive contenders like those, the Pebble Nova simply doesn't have what it takes to compete beyond a unique design.

Design: Eye-Catching, But Flawed

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.

(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.

(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.

(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.

App Experience: Uneven Across Platforms

Creative supports the Pebble Nova with both a PC and a mobile app. On mobile, the app requests an account, but one isn’t required. Unfortunately, the mobile app doesn’t provide many features, simply allowing you to adjust the lighting effects or apply a custom or preset EQ curve. The PC app provides more customization and extra features. Here, you’ll find the same 10-band equalizer and lighting options as the mobile app, but you’ll also get the ability to swap which speaker handles which stereo channel and get access to Creative’s Acoustic Engine.

(Credit: Creative/PCMag)

The Acoustic Engine provides some tweakable sound enhancements. It has a Surround tool that seems to boost volume for left- and right-panned sound effects. The Crystalizer boosts the high end, while the Bass enhancement increases the low end. The Dialog+ tool aims to enhance vocal clarity. And the Smart Volume feature can prevent sudden loud noises in its Night mode. Toying around with these tools for a little while, they hardly impressed me as anything more than quick EQ tweaks, aside from Smart Volume.

(Credit: Creative/PCMag)

I found getting Creative’s PC app up and running with the speakers a little tricky. After installation, it required a system restart, and it refused to recognize the speakers via the USB-C Thunderbolt ports on my laptop (despite audio being routed to them). It only connected after I added a USB dock to the chain. Once the speakers were recognized, the program required an update and another system restart before the Acoustic Engine became available.

Sound: Stereo Separation Shines, But Bass Can Muddle

The Pebble Nova makes a strong first impression. Even with just a modest gap of about two feet between them, the speakers create clear stereo separation and provide a simply holographic phantom center channel.

The speakers also deliver robust bass even without any app enhancements. In The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” they happily beat along to the bass triplets and sub-bass quarter notes that lay the foundation of the track. That bass is impactful but can be a bit muddy. Both vocal harmonies come through clearly, and the speakers even present some of their subtleties to give them more presence. The synth melody has plenty of bite, and the cymbals enjoy decent brilliance, though they’re not as crisp as from a speaker like the Fluance Ri71.  

The punchy bass carries on into Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty,” where the speakers provide impactful drums. You’ll miss out on the deepest sub-bass, though, as these speakers can’t hit most of the sub-bass line introduced about 35 seconds into the track. A few of the notes sound out, but they’re subtle, and half of them are effectively absent. Kendrick and Rihanna’s vocals are clear in that center channel and exhibit just a tinge of harshness.

Bill Callahan’s “Drover” continues to exhibit this tendency to push a little harder in the high mids and less in the low mids, making Callahan’s baritone vocals a hair thin from time to time. The distinct stereo separation plays nicely with the panned fiddle and electric guitar, and the speakers present subtle elements clearly, even amid the heavier sections of the song. The drums grow overly thunderous toward the end, losing clarity in the process. 

While most of our test tracks exhibit some minor cracks in the Pebble Nova’s capabilities, orchestral music like John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary can better highlight them. In the opening track, the main vocals ring out clearly with plenty of detail, but the deeper bass content lacks the precision necessary to really tune into. The strings sound decent, but the horns lack the brilliance they call for to really have bite and stand out in the mix.

While the speakers can put out plenty of volume, cranking them up to their highest levels exacerbates their midrange harshness, shifting the low end down in the mix to let the upper-mids become even sharper.