A soundbar and subwoofer for $170? I couldn’t quite believe it either, but the Creative Stage Pro is surprisingly impressive

Sourcing one of the best soundbars can be tricky if you’re on a low budget. Many soundbars will run you back at least $500, and some can go for as much as $2k. So when I come across soundbars for less than $200, I really, really want them to be good.

However, that’s not always the case. The Creative Stage Pro is a tough one, because it’s better than most super-cheap soundbars I’ve tested. It’s certainly one of the best cheap soundbars out there. However, if you’re expecting cinema-quality sound, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The Stage Pro has a subwoofer and is remarkably adept at shaking the floors, but struggles with dialogue. It also looks cheap, and is prone to skipping half a second sometimes. But are all these issues par for the $169 course? Find out in this Creative Stage Pro review.

Creative Stage Pro review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A super-budget soundbar and subwoofer
• Who is it for? If you want to upgrade from TV speakers but you’re on a really tight budget
• What does it cost? $169 / £129
• What do we like? The price is great — and so is the bass
• What don’t we like? It looks cheap, and the dialogue is sometimes muffled

Creative Stage Pro review: Specs

Creative Stage Pro review: Price & availability

As I’ve already discussed, the Creative Stage Pro is so, so, so cheap. This is one of the most affordable soundbars I’ve ever laid eyes upon.

The Stage Pro is just $169 at Amazon U.S. and £129 at Amazon U.K.. Although the $169 MSRP makes the Stage Pro $10 pricier than my favorite budget soundbar, the Sony HT-S100F, the Sony doesn’t have a subwoofer.

The cheapest soundbar-and-subwoofer combo I’ve ever tested is the $130 Ultimea Nova S50, which suffered from tinniness and peaking during bass-heavy scenes. The Creative Stage Pro is better than the Ultimea model, so I’d recommend spending an extra $40 for the former.

Obviously, some corners will have been cut to keep the Stage Pro’s price down, so if you want a soundbar and subwoofer that can impress home cinema aficionados on a budget, I would recommend the $449 Polk Audio Signa S4 — which is obviously much more expensive. If you want a soundbar and subwoofer and you’re on an as-low-as-possible budget, the Creative Stage Pro would suit you better.

Creative Stage Pro review: Design & controls

• Cheap-looking design
• Easy to use soundbar despite cheap appearance
• Nice, user-friendly remote

If you couldn’t see the Creative Stage Pro, I’d probably be able to convince you that it retails for $300. Unfortunately, if you can see the Creative Stage Pro, you’ll immediately be able to guess how cheap it really is.

At just 21 inches long, this is a pretty compact soundbar. I tested it with a 55-inch Samsung TV, which looked quite silly. I’d recommend using this soundbar with a TV no bigger than about 43 inches.

The soundbar itself has a black grill casing, as opposed to the fabric mesh casing you’d find on a more premium soundbar like Polk Audio Signa S4 or the Denon Home 550 Sound Bar. The Creative Stage Pro looks more like a Majority Elias or Majority Naga 60, which I don’t think is a good thing.

If the soundbar was a touch longer and had a higher-quality plastic grill, it would immediately look much better, and you might be able to convince someone it cost you $300. As it currently looks, though, this is very obviously a cheap soundbar.

The issues don’t end with the soundbar, either. On top of being wired (with a cheap-looking cable), the subwoofer is also weirdly skinny: it’s just 4.5 inches wide, compared to its 16.5-inch height. I’m not going to lie, it does look, to quote the kids, “goofy”. I wish the subwoofer was a little shorter and wider, because it feels out of proportion, especially when considering the tiny size of the soundbar.

However, I love the Creative Stage Pro’s remote. It’s much weightier than you’d expect for a budget soundbar remote and has tactile buttons. There’s a range of controls on the remote: volume, Bluetooth, playback modes, bass and treble volume, mute, and more. As there’s no smart home control, don’t lose the remote!

I will mention that the Stage Pro doesn’t have an eARC input, so you won’t be able to control the TV with the soundbar remote — just the soundbar itself. This is a shame but you can’t expect the world from a $169 soundbar.

There are a few controls on the soundbar itself: on/off, input, wide mode, and volume, so if you lose the remote, it’s not the end of the world. It would be annoying though.

Creative Stage Pro review: Features

• Playback modes include movie and vocal
• Expansiveness adjustment for fake Atmos
• As many features as you’d expect for $169

As you might expect from a $169 soundbar, the Creative Stage Pro doesn’t actually have many features.

There are a few playback modes — ‘Movie’, ‘Music’, ‘Game’, and ‘Vocal’, but I genuinely didn’t hear a difference in any of these when I tested them. I just manually adjusted bass and treble based on what sounded the best at any given time.

There are also two expansiveness modes — the aptly named ‘Near’ and ‘Far’. ‘Far’ does a semi-decent job of “faking” Dolby Atmos, but obviously it’s nowhere near true Atmos. The soundbar achieves this by sending soundwaves up and out rather than in front.

‘Near’ is the opposite: it makes the sound feel as if it comes from closer to you, and would be better for TV. I only used ‘Far’ when watching movies as I found this gave the best overall performance.

As for other features, well, you’re out of luck. This is standard for soundbars at this price point, though, so I won’t hold it against the Creative Stage Pro. As far as performance-versus-price goes, the Creative Stage Pro is par for the course.

Creative Stage Pro review: Sound quality

• Strong bass
• Good fake Atmos
• Dialogue is quite poor

I test every soundbar with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ on 4K UHD Blu-ray, TV shows on Netflix, and music on Qobuz.

Movies

To begin with, I watched ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ on 4K UHD Blu-ray. Even though I’ve discussed this already, I’ll start by managing your expectations. This is a $169/£129 soundbar. It has 2.1 channels. Most “good” soundbars start at a minimum of $400. Some will run you back upwards of $2k.

I do not expect a $169 soundbar to have Dolby Atmos (this doesn’t), or cinematic sound separation. Even so, the Creative Stage Pro genuinely impressed me during testing. The opening scene was surprisingly great, with luxurious, rich bass from the soundtrack. I upped the bass to +5, set the soundbar on ‘Movie’ mode, and leaned back and enjoyed the show.

True, the diegetic sound effects of metal clinking and ropes whooshing weren’t as clear as they were on the Bose Smart Soundbar 2024 ($549) or the Polk Audio Signa S4 ($449), but it sounded much, much better than Majority Elias ($99) and the Majority Naga 60, which is the cheapest soundbar I’ve ever tested.

There was a little muffling during the bar scene — ‘Get it On’ by T Rex was a touch fuzzy, and not in a cool-grunge kind of way — but I was still able to hear all the dialogue. However, I couldn’t hear all of the dialogue during the dogfighting scenes.

If you’ve never seen ‘Top Gun’, there’s a scene where Maverick dogfights with the other pilots. There’s a lot of radioed dialogue with shooting jet engines and a bassy soundtrack, so a ton going on in the scene. I struggled to hear the dialogue, and had to turn down the bass. This scene was a bit chaotic to watch.

Even so, in most scenes, I could hear most of the dialogue. The Stage Pro only struggled in scenes with both radioed speech and jet engines. There were also a few instances of the audio cutting out or skipping for half a second, but these were very minor. If you only want to spend $169 on a soundbar and subwoofer, I’m afraid these are imperfections you might have to learn to live with.

After ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, I watched ‘The Wild Robot’. This is an animated movie with great Dolby Atmos and a lot of water scenes that sound fantastic with premium soundbars. ‘The Wild Robot’ has everything from crabs squawking, robot whirring sounds, and nature sounds. It’s a veritable feast for audio nerds like you and me.

I watched this movie on ‘Movie’ mode and on the ‘Far’ immersion mode. Although obviously there was no true Dolby Atmos, the water scenes sounded surprisingly excellent. When the gosling character was swimming, I could almost feel the water droplets on my skin.

The scenes from inside Ros’s head were particular standouts, too: the robotic whirring of her systems laid over the nature soundscapes were impactful and effective.

It wasn’t all perfect, though. The soundtrack fell a little flat when compared to the immersive water-related scenes (swimming and rainstorms), so I upped the bass in the hope this would give the OST more oomph. This did just overpower some of the dialogue, which is a poor trade-off.

I also cycled through the playback modes, and honestly? They all sounded kind of the same. I would manually adjust bass and treble based on your tastes.

Although the soundtrack was a little flat, there was no tinniness whatsoever in this movie. I particularly liked how the possums sounded, and the Stage Pro did an admirable job of faking Dolby Atmos when one of the possum babies got eaten by a fox. And when the beaver (voiced by none other than Matt Berry) scolded Ros. And when the gosling was being bullied by other geese. ‘The Wild Robot’ is a great movie, I promise.

Last, I switched movie genre to ‘Nosferatu’. As I’d watched an action and an animated movie, I wanted to see how the soundbar would fare with a creepier soundscape. I watched this movie with the ‘Movie’ mode and ‘Far’ mode.

In the quieter scenes, the string-heavy soundtrack felt like visceral tendrils of unease creeping across my skin. However, there were a few instances where the audio skipped for half a second — I discussed this in the ‘Top Gun’ section above. I feel like this happened in more immersive, busy scenes, when the soundbar couldn’t keep up. There was one scene with rain, music, and dialogue wherein it skipped twice.

There was one scene that sounded particularly good: when Nicholas Hoult’s character is signing a paper, I could hear the Count’s voice as if it was trickling into my brain from behind me. This was majorly impressive for a 2.1 channel, $169 soundbar.

I think the Creative Stage Pro sounded best during Nosferatu. Whether that’s due to the more sparse soundscape or lack of jet engines, I’m not sure, but the fact of the matter is that Nosferatu had more intelligible dialogue, more affecting music, and closer, creepier sound effects. I’d recommend this soundbar for movies like Nosferatu rather than blockbuster action epics.

TV

To test the soundbar in a more low-stakes setting, I also watched non-4K UHD TV on Netflix. As most people don’t have a bunch of Blu-rays at their fingertips, it’s also fair to evaluate soundbars against standard 5.1 audio.

I watched ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Stranger Things’ on Netflix. ‘Wednesday’ was quite tricky to hear a lot of the dialogue. It felt like the dialogue had been pushed to the back of the sound profile, and the bass had been pulled to the front.

The music sounded great, but at the expense of dialogue intelligibility. Scenes with music were quite tricky to hear, but some quieter scenes were better than I expected. I wish the performance was more consistent, but this is a malady of most cheap soundbars I’ve tested.

‘Stranger Things’ suffered from the same issues, unfortunately. I found myself straining to hear dialogue in action-heavy scenes. However, in the “Eleven does mind-reading” scenes, I found the blank expanse of darkness really effective and immersive. The soundbar handled the absence-versus-presence of sound really well, and didn’t crackle at sudden high volumes.

Even so, the bass-heavy soundtrack was the standout of the show. More action-heavy dialogue-heavy scenes were tricky to understand, so if you struggle with dialogue as-is, I wouldn’t recommend this soundbar.

The skipping issue I mentioned while watching Blu-rays never happened during my Netflix testing, so I’d say this issue only occurs when watching hi-res formats. I presume the soundbar just can’t handle everything being thrown at it, but there’s less being thrown at it on basic Netflix.

Music

To test music performance, I listened to hi-res tracks in a variety of genres on Qobuz, our best streaming service for audiophiles.

I played ‘Dracula’ by Tame Impala, which has a deep synth bass and jazzy piano notes underneath layered vocals. This sounded pretty disappointing, with tinniness prevalent in the midrange. The vocals felt pushed back in the same way dialogue suffered during movies. However, the bass sounded great thanks to the subwoofer.

Next, I played a really bassy track: ‘flight fm’ by Joy Orbison. This sounded great. ‘Flight fm’ is almost 100% bass, so I knew I’d be impressed with it. Obviously there was still a touch of tinniness in the hi-hats and there was no instrument separation whatsoever, but no one serious about music listens on a soundbar anyway (except me when I’m cleaning, but don’t tell anyone).

Last, I played a more delicate track to really put the Creative Stage Pro through its paces. ‘Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You’ by Julia Jacklin has muted percussion and a close, immersive guitar section. You can literally feel the guitar strings vibrate. I think the absence of bass helped this track; the guitar felt closer than ever, and Jacklin’s marshmallowy voice was soft and sweet.

As far as music on a soundbar goes, the Creative Stage Pro wasn’t half bad. I’d always, always recommend getting one of the best speakers, though.

Overall, the Creative Stage Pro sounds like a $200 soundbar, and is a worthy upgrade from TV speakers. However, it obviously won’t perform like one of the best premium soundbars, because it’s simply impossible to get that kind of performance for this little money. The dialogue performance is poor at the expense of loud bass.

If you want a higher-quality soundbar, you’re simply going to have to spend more. I’d recommend the Polk Signa S4 or the Samsung Q600F, but these are much more expensive than the Creative Stage Pro. Also much better, though.

Creative Stage Pro review: Verdict

The Creative Stage Pro is a bit of a head scratcher. At just $169/£129, it’s one of the most affordable soundbar-and-subwoofer combos I’ve ever come across, let alone tested. It’s better than the $130 Ultimea Nova S50, which is great, and much better than the $99 Majority Elias.

However, I don’t think it’s $100 better than the Majority Naga 60 ($67). The Naga 60 has a subwoofer out, so if you come across a sub-$100 sub (say that 5 times fast), then the Majority setup could be a much better deal.

Personally, I think the Stage Pro is a great cheap soundbar and subwoofer option, but don’t think it’s going to provide a cinematic sound experience. It will not. You’d need the $400 Polk Audio Signa S4 or the $600 Samsung Q600F for that. But for $169? The Creative Stage Pro drives a hard bargain.