Gadgetory

hey welcome back to harbor unboxed on the menu for you today I have a product review the product in question is creative soundblaster X katana multi-channel gaming sound bar now full disclaimer this is not a budget offering creative have designed this to be the ultimate sound bar and they claim the katana is a league of its own delivering under monitor audio that's unmatched by other so-called gaming sound bars let me just say right off the bat that their claims would want to hold true as the katana cross a cool 310 dollars us and while it's yet to go on sale down under I expect it to retail for almost $500 Aussie that's more than Logitech's flagship z9o 65.1 thx surround system granted they are two different products but still how razor's Leviathan gaming sound bar costs just $200 u.s. or surprisingly 220 ozzie though admittedly it does look to be an inferior product at least on paper creative is certainly set the bar no pun intended very high with their pricing so what makes the katana worthy of such an asking price right away you get the impression this is an expensive product the design looks and feels great and I have to admit the sound bar itself is much more compact than I was expecting the bar measures just 600 millimeters long 79 millimeters wide and 60 millimeters tall it also weighs are relatively light 1.5 kilograms creative says that the bar is powered and enhanced by their award-winning multi-core audio DSP making it the world's first true under monitor audio system so what we have here are four speakers within the sound bar along with a standalone subwoofer which we will get to shortly situated on the top of the sound bar either ender two 2.5 inch upward firing mid bass drivers designed to pump out clean transparent mid-range dynamic mid bass creative believes by directing the audio upwards this provides a wider soundstage that doesn't require the listener to be situated in the audio sweet spot then we have to 1.3 inch high extrusion tweeters which face forwards and are found at each end of the sound bar I don't believe creative gives individual ratings per speaker but they do say that the total package delivers 75 watt RMS or 50 watt peak power thanks to their try amplified design with the tri amplified design the amplifiers are controlled by creatives multi called digital signal processor or DSP there are two dedicated driving the 2.5 inch mid speakers another 2 dedicated to deliver the high frequencies for those one point three inch speakers and one dedicated to turn out heart thumping bass for that stand-alone subwoofer speaking of the subwoofer this compact unit measures just 333 millimeters tall 299 millimeters deep and 130 millimeters wide it tips the scales that are reasonable heavy four kilos especially considering that it's not a self-powered unit inside you will find a long through five and a quarter inch driver featuring super stiff paper cone and a low loss surround finally driver is housed in an MDF box with a flared port tube moving on katana impressively also doubles as a sound card when connected to a PC using the micro USB interface in this mode it also supports virtual 7.1 channel audio to deliver a more realistic gaming experience speaking of connectivity around the back tucked away is another USB port a type-a port and this can be used to connect a USB flash drive containing your favorite songs to be played directly by the katana sound bar there is also an optical input along with an analogue mark in and auxilary inputs as well as a headset output jack of course the sound bar is also crucially bluetooth compliant and implements version 4.2 support up top we find five buttons two of which feature LED backlit activity lights the first of which is the power slash bluetooth pairing button then we have the volume down button volume up and source button finally last button which also features LED lighting is the SPX button therefore considerably more buttons are found on the supplied infrared remote control I won't go over all of them they are fairly self-explanatory so I'll just include some nice b-roll okay so at this point you might have noticed the Sound Blaster X katana employs a few RGB LED lights xlix effect these programmable LED lights lined the underside of the sound bar and provide a cool ambient lighting effect the lights can also be controlled via the remote or using crazy impressive sound blaster connect software now please note the software isn't required to use katana but I recommend PC users install the soundblaster Connect software to enable better customization of audio profiles LED lighting effects microphone noise and voice processing effects there is also an eight character LED display front and center on the unit and this can display useful information such as the volume level it can also be programmed to show the user's name or anything else as long as it's 8 characters or less finally the software allows users to optimize their equalizer settings as well as creative zone acoustic engine ok so sound quality is highly subjective but I would like to meet the person that hears the sound blaster ex katana and claims that this sound by anything but amazing particularly given its compact size my buddy Brian over at techy yes city hasn't stopped talking this thing up to me since he reviewed it and honestly given the price I wasn't really that interested however now having tested it for myself firsthand I've got to say even at $300 it's now very very tempting 75 watts RMS is a lot of power and the katana makes the most of it max volume is very loud and the speaker still sounds crisp and clear the bass is also surprisingly punchy from that five and a quarter inch long throw driver something that really surprised me was how wide the sound stage seems for a 600 millimeter long speaker the katana gives the impression of being a much wider speaker the Virtual Surround channel effect was pretty amazing as well there was also a very distinct difference between the front and rear channels still as impressed with katana as I was I'm not trying to suggest that it offers a better or even as good sound experience as a dedicated 5.1 speaker setup such as Logitech said 906 however for such a compact system I've never heard anything as good as creative soundblaster ex katana even though someone always asks I'm not going to try and show you guys what the speaker sounds like recording the speaker using my mic then compressing that audio uploading it to youtube and then having you play it back through whatever speakers or audio device you have it doesn't seem particularly useful or accurate so let's just skip that step right so now that I'm nearing the end of my review I've been trying to work out what if anything I don't like about creative soundblaster excute onna I guess given the price NFC support would have been nice and our HDMI pass-through would have opened up a few more options as well perhaps even a USB 3 hub would have been cool since its directly under your monitor the ability to connect flash drives here or a charger phone would have been a really nice option short of that I couldn't really come up with anything else of course there is that steep asking price but given the quality and what is on offer here it's hard to fault creative that said I feel around 250 us might be a more appropriate price given the competition in this market segment and the good news here given how these things usually go expect over the next few months like Oh China will eventually hit that price on sale anyway phone now I think the soundblaster exit on ax is going to replace my main desktop system I just love how compact this thing is and of course that audio quality what do you guys think is it something you have to hear first hand I mean it's a speaker so yeah it kind of goes that saying Brian didn't have me fully convinced that was worth the asking price but having now tested it I take it back Brian you all right anyway guys I'm your host Steve let me know you think in the comments below and I hope to catch on the next one you