JBL Creature III

JBL has produced a new version of its unusually-styled speakers, so it's time for us to take another look at the JBL Creature III, a speaker kit that looks a little bit like a cross between Darth Vader and an octopus. 

Handling: strange looks but there's a lot missing

As you might have realised, the Creature speakers look very odd and, frankly, they make us laugh.  We've found that people either love them or hate them, but they rarely leave anybody who's seen them indifferent.  It's clear that the Harman group wasn't shy to adopt new designs a long time before Altec Lansing gave its whole range a makeover ...

But underneath this intriguing exterior, the Creatures are lacking a few essentials.  If you want to keep them under your desk, then you'll end up bending down to adjust the bass and treble--but also to turn them on and off.  JBL consistently doesn't include a remote, and it's particularly annoying.  It's even worse because the satellite speakers don't have an auxiliary input.  That means you've only got a single minijack connection to play with.  That's fine if you have a mobile or a laptop, but if you have a desktop PC, it's more complicated ...

And a trailing cable somewhere doesn't just look ugly, it also creates audible feedback in the speakers, which isn't too great.

Audio Quality: that's a very small woofer

Even before we listened to them, we weren't worried about waking the neighbours up with these speakers.  And our tests confirmed our suspicions: the satellites take care of the treble, while the woofer does the mid-range.  Bass, on the other hand ...

Turning the woofer over makes things clear: the 7.5 cm drivers are what we'd expect to find in much bigger speaker kits with other hardware to take care of lower sounds, so it's hard for the Creatures to reach extremes of the frequency range.

That said, given the size of these speakers--the satellites fit into a cube measuring 75 mm along each side and the woofer is no bigger than 230 mm in any direction--the sound produced is pretty reasonable.  You just can't take the volume too far, or spend your whole time listening to bass-heavy music like metal, hip-hop or electro.

Overall, the Creature III speakers are more fun to look at than they are to listen to.  We'd certainly plump for their design, and they'll be fine alongside a computer that you use for occasionally listening to music--but they aren't up to anything more advanced.