Creative Woof3, the ultraportable speaker with multiple connections

Ergonomics

The Woof 3 comes in an almost cylindrical shape and is surrounded by a relatively solid chassis made up of both shiny aluminum and matt plastic. Its small size, lightness and design offer both good grip and a small footprint. The whole breathes manufacturing quality and solidity, even if the paint used to cover the aluminum flakes quite quickly. No carrying pouch is proposed to reduce this kind of risk as well as possible, so you have to be careful if you pack it in your bag. Apart from that, the enclosure itself can withstand a few drops and shocks, but does not offer resistance to water or sand.

With the little space available to the speaker to accommodate buttons and connectors, you would think that Creative has kept to the bare minimum. It is just the opposite, because the Woof3 has all the features expected on this portable speaker format, or even more. We find first of all the tensioning button, hidden under the enclosure between the two non-slip pads: its activation or deactivation triggers an audible indication, the musical choice of which is also quite surprising. Next is the Bluetooth pairing / call pickup button located on the grille, above the speaker. Again, the user is well guided using audio, voice and light indications.

Finally, there are three buttons on the side for navigating between tracks, stopping and starting playback. Unlike some ill-advised manufacturers, Creative has placed the volume control (- / +) on the navigation buttons between the tracks (previous / next). An audible indication is played when the min / max level is reached. The navigation functions are only activated when the buttons are kept pressed. The Woof3 is clearly easy to configure and use, even for novices.

In terms of connectivity, the usual wireless (Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, A2DP) and wired connections (3.5 mm mini-Jack for listening to music, Micro-USB for recharging) are part of the game. The speaker automatically switches to wired mode when a cable is connected. The Woof3 takes the concept a step further by offering a microSD card reader (32 GB maximum). The speaker recognizes relatively varied audio file formats (WAV, APE, Flac, MP3 and WMA).

The icing on the cake: when the speaker is connected to a computer via the supplied USB cable, it can be used as a broadcast source and also as a microSD card reader. It must be admitted that these are not essential features, but their presence is clearly welcome. In addition, note the presence of the hands-free kit function thanks to the small microphone located below the logo. The absence of a mini-Jack cable in the box and the far too short USB cable remain two small points of disappointment, however. Finally, the Woof3 promises an autonomy of 6 hours, which was verified several times during our test. It is possible to save an hour if the volume is not too high.

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Audio

The Woof3 offers a decent sound rendering, but a little too aggressive. As is often the case with this speaker format, you should not expect bass to vibrate the walls. Indeed, reproduction does not begin until around 200 Hz, where we only perceive the small boomy side of the bass, but without real definition. The mediums are relatively well controlled and balanced, which allows the voices to enjoy a very good intelligibility and clarity ... even a little too much. The high mids / trebles, between 2 kHz and 6 kHz, are indeed particularly boosted. The rendering is therefore more incisive, but also more aggressive, as long as you listen to a mix that is already so, like Raining Blood by Slayer, Seek and Destroy by Metallica or Sweet Georgia Brown by Roy Eldridge. The boost also applies to other musical styles such as hats or snare attacks. Fortunately, sibilance is not there.

The sound is monophonic, but the reproduction is precise enough to perceive the different elements of the sound scene. The direction of the loudspeaker allows a homogeneous omnidirectional diffusion, whatever the position of the listening point relative to the speaker.

The Woof3 is powerful despite its very small size, especially in Bluetooth. This is clearly less the case with wire, but it is more than enough for additional listening or proximity. Even if pushed to its limits, the distortion remains low and does not interfere with listening.

Bluetooth latency is particularly high on this speaker. With a delay of more than 370 ms, watching a movie is not really fun. There is a discrepancy between the sound and the image. If your player allows it, apply an advance on the sound or a delay on the image ... or connect the speaker by USB or wired.

As is often the case, the quality of the microphone for the hands-free function is unfortunately not there. You must approach very close to the enclosure, within 30 cm, so that our interlocutor can hear us. And again, this is not enough to be understood very clearly: we therefore prefer to play it "old-fashioned", directly with the phone.

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Conclusion

The Woof3 is a very capable indoor nomad speaker, especially with large connection possibilities, some of which are quite new in this format. Its sound performance remains correct, but the rendering is a little too aggressive and it focuses too much on the voices. If you are looking for a speaker in this size more resistance than versatile and especially with better sound claims, look on the side of the Philips BT2200 and BT2500B / 00.

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