Ultra-compact and barking good!

Creative’s new range of speakers has been delivering surprising performances over the last couple of years. Many have become milestones for tracking the company’s maturity in the portable audio products segment. While design has been Creative’s forte over the last decade, performance that nips at the heels of the big boys in the business has been a hallmark of its recent spate of new audio devices.

The latest to join the list is the Woof 3. Like its numeric appendage indicates, this is the third in the micro speaker series. It is meant to be a tiny, fit-in-the-palm sized Bluetooth speaker companion for your smartphone or tablet. It is actually just a bit larger than a shot glass.

Shaped like an inverted bell, and with a perforated dome at the top, the Woof 3 feels solid and heavy when one picks it up. Construction quality is really good and the polished metal alloy finish for the body comes in four colours to reflect the moods of the four seasons (according to Creative).

The surprising bit about the Woof 3 is that despite its diminutive size, it offers the entire complement of features that the average Bluetooth speaker comes with. In addition to supporting Bluetooth audio playback, it also features a built-in MP3 player that can support MicroSD card playback of MP3 and WMA files. If your card has loss-less format files like FLAC, WAV and APE, the Woof 3 can pump out those too since a DAP (digital audio player) is part of the package. Other connectivity and playback options include USB audio and a 3.5mm Aux-in to connect other devices including your PC.

The button at the centre of the perforated dome at the top acts as the Bluetooth pairing control and the phone call accept/ reject key. The power on-off switch is at the bottom of the Woof 3. To the right of the body panel are the controls for play/ pause, skip and rewind. Smartly, Creative engineers have integrated the volume controls also into the skip and rewind buttons; with a three-second press of the same buttons you can raise or lower the volume.

Housed inside the metal alloy body is a 45mm full-range driver and an over-sized bass radiator just below it.

The driver size is about 12 per cent larger than the predecessors in the Woof series. Some of the materials used in the construction of the driver also seem to be different.

The Woof 3’s output completely defies the limitations imposed by its ultra-compact size. The 45mm driver comes through as a gem, at least in terms of its ability to be loud and fairly precise with its reproduction quality. Place the speaker in an average-sized room and the output seems a bit flat, though it is still loud.

Place it in a wall corner in a small room and the Woof 3 comes into its own. The bass delivered by the radiator is weak by the average brick-sized Bluetooth speaker, but it is still remarkable for a speaker as tiny as the Woof 3.

At full volume and while playing back bass heavy numbers, the speaker’s output is distorted a bit. But most other occasions the Woof 3 manages to surprise. Thanks to its megaphone-like delivery of audio and the mid-frequency bias, the speaker is great to listen to vocals-heavy tracks, wind and string instruments, and your phone calls. The built-in 500mAh battery is said to be capable of offering six hours of continuous playback. The Woof 3 is already available online for an even better bargain than its attractive sticker price. While it cannot possibly pull in a room full of guests to dance to its beats, it is perfect to entertain your small circle of friends.

Price: ₹3,999

Love: Ultra-compact yet sturdy design, full range of connectivity options

Hate: Poor bass performance