The Creative T60 speakers are a fairly good looking set of speakers, albeit a little plain. They really fall in line with Creative’s styling, with a plain black fascia and a contrasting colour for the cone. The front plate is shiny while the sides and rear are matte black, and there is a volume knob and three buttons at the bottom. The buttons are for power, which doubles as a source button, a button for SURROUND which widens the soundstage of the speakers and Clear Dialogue, which can detect spoken dialogue in the speakers and enhance it to always keep it front and centre over background audio. The left speaker sits at 14.7×9.2×19.9-centimeters while the right sits at 15.7×9.2×19.9-centimetres.
The T60s are powered by two 2.75-inch drivers that can achieve a frequency response rate of 50, 20,000Hz. And for audio performance, you can’t expect too much from these speakers. While I’m writing this review, I’m streaming Formula 1 through Sky Sports, and I am completely happy with the quality. I can hear Crofty, Paul di Resta and Karun’s commentary clearly over the roar of the engines, but for music, yes at medium volumes as background noise while you’re working fine. But push these speakers too much and you’ll notice that there is a severe lack of punch. Bass is almost non-existent, which is expected, as there’s no dedicated woofer, and the drivers are small in size. For your rock music which has much more of a level playing field between high and low frequencies, they sounded great, but if you’re into your hip-hop or electronic music where punchy bass lines a little more prominent, you’ll probably be left wanting more.
The rear IO consists of a few ports for various functionalities. From top to bottom you have a dedicated separate headset and microphone inputs to plug in a headset which I’ll cover in a bit more detail further down. Below that you’ve got a USB Type-C input to plug the speakers into a desktop or laptop, of which a Type-C to Type-C input is included, as well as a Type-C to Type-A adapter if your computer doesn’t have a Type-C. You’ve then got an aux cable to connect to a PC as well as power and a hardwired cable to the second left speaker. They are also compatible with Bluetooth 5.0 which lets users stream music from their mobile, if you’re thinking of using these as a separates system without a PC.
Okay, so let’s talk about the reason the speakers use a USB connection to a desktop. There’s a partner app that can be installed called the Creative SmartComms Kit. This kicks in when you’ve got a headset attached to the mic input on the rear of the speaker. And it’s designed to cut out background noise while you are speaking on your chosen comms software, be it Teams or Zoom or similar. It works pretty well in cutting out background noise, especially droney sounds like your PC fans, but of course bangs and things do still cut through. Though it does almost muffle your voice somewhat, and gives it that underwater-esque sound. The VoiceDetect feature works by muting the microphone automatically when it doesn’t detect voices, and unmutes when voices are heard. There’s an Audio Engine too which adds a crystaliser, a bass adjustment though I didn’t use this and also Smart Volume which adjusts volumes on the fly to cut out loud sudden noises. Finally, you have an EQ that has multiband adjustment so you can tune the speakers to your liking.
The Creative T60 speakers are a fair offering for those wanting a little more than your laptop speaker setup, and those on a desktop wanting some quality of life changes to Windows fiddly audio settings, or if you’re wanting something for background noise when working. High volume levels cause a little too much mud for my liking and isn’t too well controlled, but for a unit with tiny drivers, this is to be expected. For a £70 asking price, you can’t really go wrong with the Creative T60 speakers. They look too and will suit an all black desk setup for sure.
