Creative Outlier Air Truly Wireless HEADPHONES REVIEW

The Outlier Air are pretty bulky truly wireless in-ears that protrude quite a bit out of the ears. The buds’ body is made out of slightly glossy plastic while the button is matte. There’s an LED light circle surrounding the buttons for information regarding battery level or during the pairing procedure.

The Creative Outlier Air are decently comfortable. Even if their design is rather bulky and quite similar to the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless, you can find a decent fit with the right tip options. However, they only come with one extra tip size, which is quite disappointing. On the upside, the tips don’t go very deep inside the ear, but their design might put pressure on your inner ear. Unfortunately, their control scheme buttons are hard to press, and you’ll need to push the buds into your ear to register a command, which gets annoying and can even hurt. If you think two tip options might not be enough for you, take a look at the truly wireless Sabbat E12.

Each bud has a single button and is fairly easy to use. You can play/pause with a single press on both buds, skip tracks with a double tap on the right earbud, or go back with the left earbud. You can also control the volume by pressing and holding the buttons; the left bud reduces volume and the right one raises it. However, you can only adjust the volume one notch at a time, since holding down the button for too long after the audio cue will make the headphones enter pairing mode, which is frustrating. Also, the buttons are fairly stiff and hard to press, which means you have to push the buds even further inside your ears, which can be painful, especially when controlling the volume.

Like most in-ear headphones, the Outlier Air don’t trap heat inside your ears, even if they are quite bulky. You shouldn’t notice a big temperature difference when wearing these when working out and won’t sweat more than usual. This makes them a decent option for physical activity and working out.

Since they are truly wireless headphones, the Outlier Air are very portable and don’t take much space, although they are a bit bulkier than some other models. It's easy to carry the buds in your pockets, and they come with a nice case that is also very portable.

The Outlier Air come with a nice hard charging case that protects them well against scratches, physical damage from falls, and light water exposure. The case has LED lights as battery indicators for the buds and the case, which is nice. The case has a nice sliding compartment like the JBL UA True Wireless Flash, which magnetically hold the buds in. The case can fit in most pockets, but isn’t the smallest we’ve measured.

The Creative Outlier Air are well-built truly wireless headphones, but their whole build is made out of plastic. The buds feel dense but don’t have the premium feel as the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless. They should still survive a few accidental drops without too much damage. These headphones are also rated IPX5 for water resistance, but we can't confirm this as we don't test this internally. However, while the case looks to be aluminum or metal, it's plastic with a metallic finish, which is slightly disappointing. On the upside, it still feels sturdy and protects the headphones well.

If you manage to get a good seal with these headphones, they are very stable. They don’t move at all when shaking the head and the seal doesn’t break either. They are great to run or work out with, and their wireless design gets rid of the risk of getting a cable stuck or hooked on something.

As expected, these headphones don’t have an audio cable. They come with a short micro-USB charging cable.

The bass performance of the Outlier Air is very good. Their LFE (low-frequency extension) is down to 21Hz, which is great. Their low-bass performance follows our target curve accurately and will result in an adequate thump and rumble common to bass-heavy music genres. However, there’s a small overemphasis in the mid and high bass, which results in the overall bass sounding slightly boomy and muddy.

The mid-range performance is very good, but there is an 8dB tilt favoring lower frequencies. This will result in slightly thick sounding and cluttered vocals and lead instruments. Additionally, the small dip in mid-mid will nudge the vocals and leads to the back of the mix, but this won't be too audible.

The Outlier Air have a great treble range, too. The response before 6kHz is very even, but there is a noticeable bump around 7kHz and 10kHz. These will make sibilants (S and Ts) sound piercing and sharp, especially on already bright tracks.

The frequency response consistency is excellent. If the user can achieve a proper fit and an air-tight seal using the assortment of tips that come with the headphones, then they should be able to get consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.

The stereo imaging is excellent. Their weighted group delay is at 0.17, which is very low. The group delay graph also shows that the entire response is well below the audibility threshold. This ensures a tight bass and a transparent treble reproduction. Also, the L/R drivers of our test unit were well-matched in frequency, amplitude, and phase response. This is important for the accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo image. Note that these results are only valid for our unit and yours may perform differently.

The soundstage is poor. This is because creating an out-of-head and speaker-like soundstage is largely dependent on activating the resonances of the pinna (outer ear). The design of in-ears and earbuds is in such a way that fully bypasses the pinna and doesn't interact with it. Also, because these headphones have a closed-back enclosure, their soundstage won't be perceived to be as open as that of open-back earbuds like the Apple AirPods 2 2019, Google Pixel Buds, or the Bose SoundSport Free.

The harmonic distortion of the Outlier Air is okay. The THD in the bass range is within good limits, but is fairly elevated afterwards, especially in the low-treble range. There are also a few spikes in THD which will make those frequencies a bit harsh and impure, which can get fatiguing after a while.

These headphones have a sub-par noise isolation performance. Their fit doesn’t block much ambient noise and practically doesn’t do anything against lower frequencies like the rumbling of a bus engine, which means they won’t be ideal for commuting. On the upside, they isolate by about 14dB in the mid-range, which is good to reduce ambient chatter. In the treble range, responsible for sharp S and Ts and A/C fan noise, they achieved an isolation of 32dB, which is also good.

The leakage performance is excellent. The Outlier Air basically don’t leak, so there's no need to worry about disturbing people around with your music, even if you listen at very loud volumes. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at 25dB SPL and peaks at 35dB SPL, which is roughly as loud as a very calm room and way below the noise floor of an average office.

The integrated microphone of the Outlier Air, like most Bluetooth headphones, is just okay. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 273Hz suggests that speech recorded/transmitted with this mic will sound rather thin. The HFE of 3.4kHz indicates that recorded speech will noticeably lack detail and presence. However, speech would still be decently intelligible in quiet environments.

The integrated microphone is poor at noise handling. In our SpNR test, it achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 3dB, indicating that they are best-suited for quiet environments. However, in moderate and loud environments, they will have difficulty separating speech from ambient noise.

We’ve measured just under 8 hours of battery life on a single charge, which is decent, but quite a lot for truly wireless in-ears. However, it's slightly under the advertised 10 hours, which is a bit disappointing. The case offers about 2 additional charges. Also, since the first bud that comes out of the case is the “master” bud, this means you can take out either of them and let the other one charge while listening to your music with one ear, which can be useful.

These headphones don’t have a dedicated companion app that allows customization options.

These truly wireless in-ears are Bluetooth compatible, and if your source supports Bluetooth 5.0, you might even get better results and a better overall performance than what we measured. However, these headphones don’t support NFC or multi-device pairing, which is unfortunate.

These headphones can’t be used with an audio cable.

The case that comes with the Creative Outlier Air acts as a charging dock that gives you about 2 additional charges for the headphones. The case can be recharged via a micro-USB cable, but unfortunately, that’s the only input it has.

These headphones have an excellent wireless range. You’ll be able to leave your Bluetooth source at one spot and move around in a small office or apartment without too many problems. These results may vary depending on your signal strength. Also, you may experience even better range than what we measured if your source is Bluetooth 5.0 compatible.

The Creative Outlier Air have latency issues. With 347ms of delay, you will more than likely notice a delay between your audio and what you’re watching, which can become quite annoying even on apps that have some sort of compensation to reduce that delay. While the headphones do support the aptX codec, their latency is still quite high.