Creative is on a bit of a roll with pairing up their earbuds at the moment. Not long ago I checked out the Zen Air Plus and Pros, two earbuds that were pretty much identical apart from a couple of things, card in the corner, and now the Aurvana Ace range, consisting of the Ace and Ace 2. In this video, I’m going to be talking about both sets of earbuds similar to last time top take you through whether the extra £20 between these two headphones is going to make a difference to you and your use. Let’s crack on.
Taking a look at the charging cases, there’s a clear difference between the two. Both of them are exactly the same size, but the Ace is covered in a soft-to-touch black plastic which isn’t particularly grippy, but it does still look good. And the Ace 2 is more of a translucent grey, where you can slightly see the inner workings of the charging case. It’s cool, albeit a bit gimmicky, and it also extends to the earbuds too as the Ace 2 earbuds are a bit translucent compared to the Ace. Though the size is the same, the open back, the stems and the earbuds themselves are all the same.
But one area that I am not keen on at all with the Ace 2 is the inner lining of the charging case which is this metallic bronze type colour. Now I know it’s to match the outside of the case giving off the hints of orange, but here it just feels a little too blingy. The inside of the standard Ace earbuds is much nicer and to be honest with you between the two designs, I do prefer that of the opaque black style of the Ace, though realistically there’s not a huge difference between the two, and to be honest I don’t really think the gold/bronze inner housing and see-through translucent grey casing makes it look the more premium offering that it is.
When it comes to differences though, there’s a couple of key things your extra £20 is going towards. The xMems driver technology is present on both sets of earbuds, but the Ace 2 gets access to lossless Bluetooth audio, some better processing, and adaptive noise cancellation technology, rather than the standard Ace having non-adaptive noise cancellation. The Ace 2 does also have access to lossless AptX audio which the Ace does not, but you are going to have to have access to a device that can give you lossless audio, otherwise that extra £20 is pretty much a waste at this point.
Both cases though do come with the same battery lives being pegged at 18 hours as well as six hours of playback on the buds themselves, making them a decent set for those listening to music for long periods at a time when at work or similar. On the bottom of each case, you can find a USB Type-C input in which a small cable is supplied if you’re going to be charging them through a laptop or desktop, and there’s also a status light which either shows red, yellow or green based on how much battery is left. The cases on both models are also compatible with Qi-charging so if you’ve already got one of those charging pads, these will charge from that, giving you a choice of charging styles depending on your current setup. Though I guarantee you modern iPhone users out there are going to have some kind of charging pad because you’ve definitely got some Airpods which you should be looking to replace asap for a set of these Aurvana Ace 2s because WOW, the sound quality you’re getting here, even with lower bitrate music from the likes of Spotify? I’m telling you, you Airpod users, well actually most of you earbud users, you’re missing out.
The sound quality, if you haven’t gathered already, is absolutely fantastic here, and some of the best audio I’ve heard at the cheaper end of the earbud scale and this is really thanks to the xMems technology which integrates a two-driver system, one xMems driver for the treble frequencies, affecting the clarity of music and the 10mm dynamic driver for the detail in the mids and also the thumping bass that these Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds can produce. Oh, the xMems driver is a solid-state semiconductor speaker. It stands for Micro-Electromechanical System and works with both non-moving and moving parts This is different from the other 10mm driver which is a more traditional piston-style driver that relies on air movement to carry audio.
But paired together, these small Creative Aurvana Ace 2 headphones sound incredible. Their frequency response sits at a crazy 5 to 40,000 Hz which is huge for an earbud and enables that top-end detail as well as that super rumbly sub-bass to be present within your music or media. This paired with Qualcomm’s adaptive ANC makes the Ace 2 a force to be reckoned with in terms of the quality that can be achieved at the £99 price tag right now. But I will say here that the ANC isn’t the best I’ve heard, and the higher-end entries from the likes of Bose and Sony tip the scales here. The ANC isn’t going to deaden your surroundings, but it does a good job of muffing drone-like sounds from a car on a road or a train on your commute.
Call quality is also very good here, again thanks to the cVc background noise removal technology from Qualcomm. It makes your voice sound so much clearer when speaking to people on the other end of the phone, and the feedback I’ve had has been very positive with this. There are also six microphones in total which are positioned on the stem of the earbuds so they’re facing your mouth, similar to that of the Airpods. It just means that vocal sound can cut through a little easier. And finally, both sets of earbuds, the Ace and Ace 2 are both IPX5 rated which means you can wear them in the gym, sweat and get them wet in the rain and it shouldn’t affect the performance.
I think it’s safe to say by this point that I think these earbuds are awesome. More so the Aurvana Ace 2s thanks to that extra bit of quality when it comes to your music and if it’s your cup of tea, the movies you consume through your phone too, which again sound fantastic thanks to that extended frequency range. You could even go for the standard Ace earbuds to save yourself £20, but at this point as the price is so close, why not just go for the top-spec? I’m kind of confused about why Creative thought that pricing these models so closely, and for the extra cost, not getting anything major to warrant it. Why not just release the Ace 2s and be done with it? Retail real estate probably. It always is these days. Anyway, at £99 right now at the time of making this video, these Ace 2s are an amazing steal.
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