Not much time has passed since we reviewed the tiny Creative Woof wireless speaker in July and we already have the successor, Creative Woof 2, with us. This time around, Creative has tweaked the (previously flawed) design a bit. We find out if going back to the drawing board was a good idea.
Design and specifications
The Woof 2 has a stainless steel structure like its predecessor did, but it is now shaped differently. One of the major gripes we had with the design of the original was that sound fired upwards. Creative seems to have listened to this concern and the Woof 2 looks like a mushroom. The Woof 2 is available in gunmetal, blue and silver variants. It weighs around 276g and it feels rather heavy for a small speaker.
The stem houses playback controls, including buttons for play/pause, previous, and next. There are no separate volume control buttons; the volume up and down functions are mapped to the next and previous buttons respectively. This is an annoyance since one has to long-press these buttons to change the volume. We found it a bit difficult to reach these buttons when the Woof 2 was placed on any surface.
The speaker has a sticky material on the bottom which helps it stay put on any surface. The bottom also has a power on/off switch. The Creative Woof 2 goes into standby mode after 10 minutes of inactivity, which is great. The Bluetooth button is on the top and cannot be missed.
Performance
The Creative Woof 2 has a really simple process to pair with devices, and after initial setup, re-connecting is a cinch. The lack of NFC pairing might be a bit of a letdown for some people.
We played Ingrid Michaelson's You and I, which is mostly filled with her raspy, melancholic vocals. We loved how the Woof 2 handled her voice and the mids in general. However, when the percussion kicked in at the end of the song, it immediately lost all punch thanks to the thin sounding mid-bass frequencies. This thin mid-bass response presented huge problems when we played rock and EDM songs. On the other hand, the sub-bass (really low thumps) sounded decent when we heard Jai Paul's Jasmine, and the sound staging was surprisingly good. The design, meant to emit unidirectional sound, doesn't really work as advertised because the grills face different directions.
All said and done, the great mids ensured that watching movies laden with dialogue was a fun experience on the Woof 2. It has a rated battery life of 6 hours and our experience was somewhere close, which just about average.
Verdict
While the Creative Woof 2 improves on the design and sound of its predecessor, we still think that the sound quality of both the Logitech X100 and the JBL Clip is much better better. Also, the asking price of Rs. 3,999 for the Woof 2 is a bit much. That said, the Woof 2 could be a great companion if you only watch movies with much more emphasis on dialogue than action.
Price: Rs. 3,999
Pros
Cons
Ratings (Out of 5)
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