Thank you Creative Labs for sending us this Creative Pebble SE to review!

Not so long ago, Creative sent us their Pebble X to review, and in many ways was better than I expected, but at $89.99 it's also not best for those on a steep budget. While that model is second from flagship, this Creative Pebble SE is the entry-level model. While in many ways it's barebones, at the same time what you get for $25 is quite decent, and really all you can ask for.

Creative's original Pebble design was released sometime around late 2017. It made quite a splash, and has since become a top seller for them. By pure luck and chance, a good friend of mine happens to have a set of the originals, and he brought them over; I was very impressed. There isn't a lot of bass, but the sound is remarkably clear and reasonably balanced, especially for the insanely low price of $25. They also happen to look really nice, and get unexpectedly loud.

This Pebble SE is basically a reissue of the original Pebble, with an RGB lighting ring along the buttom, and a USB-C cable replacing the USB-A. That's literally it. The sound is almost the same, though with slightly less treble between these two samples, but the difference is so slight most people wouldn't notice without a direct A/B. The drivers are likely slightly different, as, I suspect, are some of the internals, as one would expect from 6+ years design updates. Cosmetically, outside of the new RGB button, LED ring, and different feet, they look almost identical. The Creative logo has not changed, nor has the wire placement or the looks of the drivers or passive radiators. If you've seen the original Pebble, you've seen the SE.

The Pebble line became popular for a reason. They are sharp looking, and decently built too, with a sturdy plastic shell. Each is a spherical speaker made entirely of plastic, with three flat slices of sorts cut out of the sphere. The front is of course the 2" speaker driver, angled up and towards the listener. On the rear opposite that is the flat passive radiator, used to help extend the bass response. The base of the sphere is flat, and has a nice rubber grip to keep them in place on your table.

By intention or coincidence, circles or spheres happen to have some advantages when it comes to speaker shape, because it helps minimize baffle step diffraction, reflections, and resonances. By pointing the drivers up towards a typical desktop listener with a 45 degree angle, the drivers point right to your ears. You almost always get the most fidelity out of speakers pointing them at your ears, which is one reason why sound bars tend to sound muffled in comparison to separate speakers most of the time.

The sound signature in general of this Pebble SE is slightly upper midrange focused in my opinion, with decent treble detail. There is some bass, which the rear passive radiators help the small 2" drivers on this Pebble SE bring out, but it drops off quickly. It's really not all that bad, but there isn't deep bass to speak of, which is what it is - you can't defy the laws of physics.

The cables out of the right speaker are all built-in, and one connects to the left speaker. The other two are the USB-C port, and the 3.5mm input cable. Not much to it, but since all of the cables are hard-wired, you can't keep the speakers more than four feet away from any source of audio or power without extension cables. The worst of it is you can't separate the left from the right speaker by more than five feet. Ironically, five feet is longer than the four feet offered by the Pebble X, the much more expensive cousin.