Creative SXFI Air
A unique approach to sound processing breathes fresh life into tracks, even if there is little else to shout about
“It sounded exactly as if Carlos Santana were playing in front of me. It’s a mind-blowing effect unlike anything I’ve heard before”
SCORE ★★★★☆ PRICE £125 (£150 inc VAT) from uk.creative.com
Creative’s latest wireless headphones introduce a new technology, dubbed “Super X-Fi”, which aims to change the way you enjoy music and other media. The idea is both straightforward and compelling: instead of settling for a regular two-channel stereo signal, the tech uses acoustic modelling to simulate multi-speaker surround-sound, using only two 50mm neodymium drivers.
It’s quite a claim, but thanks to a piece of technical wizardry that Creative dubs Super X-Fi, it works astonishingly well. You can also buy this in the form of a thumb-sized amplifier that works with Android phones and tablets. Indeed, if you read the PC Pro feature from this year’s CES ( see issue 294, p28), you may recall Jon Honeyball’s largely positive take on the technology.
Integrating Super X-Fi into headphones has one obvious disadvantage: portability. The SXFI Air headphones weigh 338g and their bulky all-plastic design is clunky, with no option to fold or swivel the sizeable earcups. Still, the large ear pads are breathable and have plenty of padding, so they’re pleasant to wear.
The headphones come in either black or white, with a circular RGB light strip housing that can be customised via the SXFI Air Control app. This is simple, but it would have been neater to integrate this into the main SXFI app, which you need to set up the Super X-Fi technology.
Built-in touch controls on the left earcup let you control media and answer calls; I found the touchpad unresponsive, and had to forcefully move one or two fingers across the plastic pane to activate a command. A “NanoBoom” microphone protrudes from the left edge, but it’s easy
enough to remove this and replace it with a plastic cover. There’s also a Bluetooth pairing button and a dedicated Super X-Fi toggle.
The USB-C charging port can also be connected to a PC, Mac, PS4 or Nintendo Switch, while a 3.5mm jack socket lets you listen to analogue sources. There’s even a microSD slot, with support for cards up to 32GB, for playing back MP3, WMA, WAV and FLAC files. Needless to say, there’s also Bluetooth for wireless streaming, but it’s disappointing that this is limited to the lowest-quality SBC codec – especially since Creative offers cheaper headphones that support both AAC and aptX. When using Bluetooth, you can expect around ten hours of playback on a single battery charge. Creative’s Super X-Fi holographic technology is the key selling point of these headphones, but it’s not exactly plug-and-play. Once you have downloaded the SXFI app, created an account and paired the headphones, you’ll need to take three photos of your head, so the headphones can process and model the sound. If you wish to share your headphones with another person, you’ll need to set them up with a separate profile and their own head map. Having completed this process, I fired up one of my favourite Carlos Santana songs, Africa Bamba – and was shocked. I’m used to hearing Santana’s guitar at the centre of a virtual soundstage but, through the SXFI Air, it sounded exactly as if he were playing in front of me. It’s a mind-blowing effect, unlike anything I’ve heard before. Indeed, the song as a whole became far more spacious than I’ve experienced with any regular stereo headphones – and that includes electrostatic and audiophile-grade open-back models. To understand what I mean, imagine 7.1 or Dolby surround sound on a gaming headset, but without any perceptible loss of quality or frequency response. Somehow, Creative pulls this off. The effect doesn’t work in all scenarios. When I tuned into The WAN Show podcast, the odd reverb and echo didn’t match the presenters’ voices, and there were also lip–sync issues, where the audio wasn’t perfectly in time with the video. If you come across such a problem, you can switch back to a standard stereo presentation at the press of a button. But, in this mode, the SXFI Air aren’t particularly impressive. All the space is instantly sucked out of Santana’s lively song, with recessed vocals and a bloated low end. 21 Savage’s vocal track A Lot suffers a similar dip in the upper mids. For regular stereo listening, the Audio-Technica ATHM50XBT – by no stretch of the imagination a flawless pair of headphones – does a far better job. But there’s no doubt about it: Creative’s Super X-Fi processing is special. Whether these headphones are worth £150 is a different question. If you’re looking for general-purpose stereo performance, there are far better options out there. But if you want to experience music in a whole new way, the Creative SXFI Air provide a unique, sometimes jawdropping experience that you won’t get from any other headphones.
SPECIFICATIONS 50mm neodymium drivers SBC audio codec Bluetooth 4.2 USB-C 3.5mm audio jack microSD card (up to 32GB) detachable NanoBoom mic lithium-ion battery 338g 2yr warranty