Manufacturer: Creative | Product: Speakers | Price: £149.23 Inc VAT

Creative has been serving out their 5.1 surround sound systems for quite some time now. Their Cambridge SoundWorks® systems have proven particularly popular with enthusiast buyers who require extreme performance from their PC system. However, their Cambridge SoundWorks® range do have a tendency to be a bit on the pricy side, so Creative has introduced their Inspire range, aimed at providing acceptable sound quality at good value for money. The Inspire range has been noted for its good value for money by many online and paper based publications. After Creative’s “PlayWorks™ PS2000 Digital” speakers the Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D speakers are only the second addition that Creative has made into the console industry. The Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D is available for both Playstation 2 and Xbox consoles. The speakers will also work with Creative’s Jukebox family and with any compatible DVD player. Creative say that the Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D speakers will provide consumers with the ultimate in Dolby® Digital gaming and movie experience. I very much doubt that at a price tag of just £149.23 you will get the “ultimate” in surround sound entertainment but you will get a “decent” experience for your cash.

First Impressions

From first impressions the Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D speakers appear to be a stylish set of speakers. The 4 surround and 1 centre speaker appoint the style that Creative has implemented in most of their speaker products. I am not personally a big fan of the style that Creative has used in their speaker systems and I feel that it could perhaps do with a bit of a style upgrade to fit the needs of the more demanding user. The main box, which houses the decoder and a majority of the controls, is at least aphetically pleasing to look at but at a closer inspection the user will find that the materials used are quite tacky and cheap to feel. For example, the volume knobs feel light and hollow to touch and are clearly made out of cheap material. The front panel of the decoder box looks nice enough but when touched you will find that the glass metallic effect is simply achieved by a strip of plastic embedded upon a thin layer of paper. The subwoofer again follows a similar style to the smaller speakers and doesn’t really have anything visually exciting to say anything about it. It is however not ugly and it does fit nicely beside your PC. Finally we come to the remote control which is a nice little touch but again it doesn’t really stand up to our style requirements. Although the remote does its job well enough it’s somewhat on the ugly side and a bit deep for our liking. What ever happened to those nice little remotes with the smaller AAA batteries (unlike the AA’s used in this product)? Overall we were not satisfied with the materials used and felt that Creative could have perhaps done a better job in that area instead of trying to save costs and using less quality substances.

Fixing together the system proved to be somewhat of a difficult task, which is unusual for me, I personally found it easier to randomly fix the cables together rather than reading the confusing instruction set which is designed to instruct both Xbox and PS2 users. Perhaps Creative could have split the instructions for each system into two separate instruction manuals to make it less confusing for the user?

Now this is where I come to talk about silly petty things like the wires. Do we really need to have all these wires for a surround sound system? The length of the wires certainly cater for the user wanting to put this system in their living room or a larger bedroom but if you don’t have a large room there is a lot of unwanted wire to deal with. It’s a shame that more manufacturers can’t implement things like infer-red or radio technology into their speaker systems to reduce wires and ultimately clutter.

Performance and Quality

The Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D system provides 48-Watts RMS equally over its 5 channel speakers and 1 sub woofer. The four satellite speakers and 1 centre speaker each provide 6 Watts (RMS) with the subwoofer providing 18 Watts (RMS). For a majority of casual gamers the performance output provided by these speakers will be sufficient enough for any gaming experience but for an extremist gamer like myself I just didn’t get the power that I wanted. My current speaker system is only 80Watts and that’s generally enough for me but with a 48-Watt system that’s too much of a downgrade for my liking. Considering that Creative provide 500 Watts Total Dynamic Power with their Cambridge SoundWorks® MegaWorks® THX® 5.1 550 the Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D system doesn’t even come close! The Console 5500D’s are clearly not for the performance user but many budget consumers may be able to turn a blind eye at the power output of this system. The Console 5500D’s provides a Frequency Response of 45Hz to 20 kHz which basically means it can handle reasonably low notes while being able to handle relatively high notes. More amusingly Creative’s Muvo MP3 player which is about 100th of the size can handle much lower notes at 20Hz and match up to the Console 5500D’s 20kHz whilst just being a fraction of the size. Having said that the Muvo 128MB’s near enough matches the retail cost of the Console 5500D’s. When testing the Console 5500D’s we were able to get a reasonable sound output but alike with other Creative surround products in this range the sound output from the rare speakers were somewhat underpowered to that of the front speakers, therefore providing an unbalanced effect which prohibited the overall quality. We did, however try to compensate for this effect but was so far unsuccessful. From our overall judgement of the surround quality I would have to say that it was not as good as it could have been and somewhat underperformed to my previous expectations. It was so forth a decent experience but perhaps not good enough for the more demanding user.

Not only can the Console 5500D’s be used for Xbox and PS2 games but also for a DVD experience. The Line-in, digital coaxial and optical inputs provide compatibility with almost any DVD player so you can hook up your system and watch films in full surround sound on your TV set. However with PS2 and Xbox being able to provide DVD playback consumers would not necessarily have to have a separate DVD player.

Conclusion

The Inspire™ 5.1 Console 5500D system is essentially a cheap and cheerful system for your console system. Realistically you wouldn’t really require this system in a larger living room which already has a surround sound system and to be completely honest there are more advanced and higher performing systems out their on the market. The most common user would ideally want to use this system in a medium sized bedroom and performance wise it may satisfy a majority of users. I wouldn’t really recommend this system for the more demanding user or extremist gamer but rather for someone who would prefer not to break the bank account and still get a decent performing system. Overall I thought this product was just ok so no awards this time but a rather healthy score of 84%.

Final Score: 84%