Creative Zen Hybrid

Now when I heard a friend was trying these and asked me what I thought.

I usually think, oh. Cheap BT headphones? Trash.

But overtime I have been proven wrong as I had been introduced to things like the JBL 710BT, 750NC,760, etc. So when I saw the graph which looked strangely decent, I got interested and bought one myself.

And now with The Zen Hybrid on my hands, oh boy was I surprised.

Let's go through all of the useless stuff first, so.

What do you get in the box?

The headphones
A 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable
A USB type-A to type-C cable(for charging)
Useless marketing stuff and a user manual.
A small carrying bag thats really soft.




And onto comfort,



So the Zen Hybrids are pretty comfy. They have a shallow pad design with cushiony inner padding, which is pretty comfy. Although for people with bigger ears I can see this being an issue as the outer pads already kindof rest on my ears, but I feel like thats a bit more common with wireless headphones to have compact sizes.

Also for some reason if I squish the right cup against my ear, the pad exhales and inhales. Left side doesn't do that.

Here is it ontop of my HD580 as reference.

With that out of the way, I will just tell you I won't be properly reviewing the ANC, as I've never really had much experience nor much care for ANC, as for my life, I find ANC quite useless. Anyways I was told by a friend that uses BT headphones daily, that these are quite good and the ANC is also really good for the price. I got this pair for 80 euros but in Germany I found them for 60.

In America and other places they go for around 50 euros.. but there's also the Zen Hybrid 2 and the other Zen's that Creative have made.. which I haven't tested.

Anyways, about the APP and the "feature" SXFI.

It is utterly useless and doesn't do crap, why? Because It's only active in music you've downloaded, and then open up in the SXFI app. You take pictures of your head AND FACE which you can't delete btw. And only to find out this "SXFI" is only usable in their app, so for listening on spotify, yt music, etc. It isn't active. Besides that the APP basically does nothing, as everything only works inside that app.

But that's okay given that you can use these perfectly fine without an app, because all of the buttons you need are on the headphones themselves.
You have volume up and down, ANC on or off, and a lady telling you the status of the headphone. On, off, anc on, anc off, connected, disconnected, battery low.

Now onto sound

I know this is a very poorly written review, and that's mainly because I want to get rid of this thing, not because it's bad, but because I have no use for it.

So in terms of sound, I would personally rate this higher than the Sennheiser HD560S & AKG K361 purely for enjoying music. In terms of technical performance, the Zens actually come close to the K361, which really surprised me. Besides that, the HD560s obviously has wider soundstage and better imaging compared to these.

Speaking of imaging, the imaging on these is actually not bad at all. It's very precise, so much so I spent an hour gaming with these and had no trouble finding where people were around me. Although that was me using them wired, and with a small EQ I did which is definetly not perfect.

But we'll get to that in a bit.

So using them wirelessly, It's a tuning signature that matches the graph pretty closely, although the upper mids are not as sibilant and harsh as it looks
Not nearly so even.

I main the HD580 as a Headphone, and my 4 IEM's, Moondrop S8, Thieaudio Oracle, Binary Chopin, and Letshuore Glialeo. And can say with confidence the upper mid range is actually more in line with the harman target than the graph suggests.

I listen to JPOP and JROCK etc mainly. The female vocals are lively and energetic, but as you do with Harman, I do find it a bit too much at times. They are presented very nicely and I think you will enjoy these alot if listen to similar things as I do.

I can't speak much for other genres, because I'm a selfish prick who only tested my own library. But I have some things in there and can also tell you these would be great for stuff like EDM, Phonk etc, the more energetic boomy things. The bass response you see on the graph is basically what you get.

For people who can't read graphs I'll tell you.

The subbass isn't too deep so for the subbass lovers, you'll need to find something else. But it's nice and compliments the midbass very well as it's a tasteful amount IMO.

The midbass punches nicely and feels well controlled, and makes this a very enjoyable headphone.

What about EQ?
Well, if you decide to use these wired, it will disable all the internal DSP(digital signal processing). Which means suddenly, the headphones sound alot worse. They sound like how I expected them to sound when I hear the words "Wireless headphone".

But using them wired, means you can properly EQ them, and they basically work as a regular set of headphones with my AMP.

Now I put together a little EQ, but the treble is unfortunately really grainy and vocals sound a tiny bit hollow. However I believe it's a strong starting point for the eq as besides treble, the rest of the tonality improves by quite a bit, and anyone who is more into EQ, will probably be able to turn these headphones into some god tier stuff for the price.


To conclude this review,

The Zen Hybrids are a very capable, and nice sounding ANC wireless headphone, and for the prices theyre going for, they're a no brainer IMO.
And if you can manage to perfect the EQ while using them wired, please tell me if you do. You can get resolution and clarity on almost comparable to my HD580's, as I already have achieved with my little eq.'

Overall I'm very impressed with this headphone, and am excited for the future. Recently Creative have come out with the Zen Hybrid 2, which I would be willing to try when it comes to the European market.

If you have any questions, you can find me on the PC Help Hub discord server by the name of Pelperson. discord.gg/pchh