Let’s face it, sometimes there’s nothing more annoying than trying to listen to your music, only to have ambient sound — people talking, cars driving by, to name a couple — creep in and ruin your immersive experience. Our Creative Aurvana ANC review takes a look at a pair of wired on-ear headphones with active noise cancellation that lasts up to 40 hours.
Specifications
The Creative Aurvana ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) on-ear wired headphones have the follow features and specifications:
- Active Noise Cancellation
- 40mm (1.57 inches) Neodymium magnet drivers
- Frequency Response: 20Hz ~ 20kHz
- Cable Length: 1.5m / 4.9ft
- 40 Hours of playback with a single AAA battery
- Dual mic active noise cancellation up to 87%; inline mic with remote for music and calls
- High performance audio for excellent movie and music experience
- Designed for long hour listening comfort
- Foldable slim profile for easy storage and hard travel case included for better protection
- 1 year limited hardware warranty
What’s in the box
- 1x pair of Aurvana ANC Headphones
- 1x AAA Alkaline Battery
- 1x Hard-covered Travel Case
- 1x Detachable Audio Cable with Inline Microphone
- 1x Airplane Travel Adaptor
Design
The first thing you’ll notice about the Creative Aurvana ANC wired on-ear headphones is just how light they are. This is primarily due to the construction, as they are constructed of lightweight plastic, steel, and leatherette materials. That’s not to indicate that they look cheap though, and they look quite sharp. The headband is flat on the inside, with a rounded look on the outside. The top portion of the headband is wrapped in a soft, padded material, and is most definitely comfortable. Just below the padded area is where you can adjust the headband to make it bigger or smaller as required.
The headband wraps down to the ear cups which are attached by an inverted U handle which allow the ear cups to angle towards or away from your head. Each ear cup features a shiny silver surface with the word AURVANA across the middle, and 3 small cutouts below that with a mesh undercover. The left ear cup also houses the 3.5mm jack at the bottom and the on/off switch for the active noise cancelling with an indicator light just above the switch. The silver surface on the right ear cup swivels back to expose the AAA battery slot. The silver ovals are set into a navy blue piece which then is attached to the main black ear cup.
As for the battery powered active noise cancelling, after about 30 hours of use, the ANC is still running strong. However, given the design, I’d like to have seen a rechargeable USB option for the active noise cancelling to avoid having to replace the AAA battery once it runs out.
The inside of the ear cups are lined with premium leatherette padded ear cushions, and a large L and R are imprinted on the very inside of the ear cup to let you know which way the headphones go.
Finally, the included braided 3.5mm audio cable is straight on the end that goes to your headphones, and angled on the end that goes into your device. About 5″ down from the top is the one-button microphone which controls music and answering phone calls. One press will play or pause the current track as well as answer an incoming call. Pressing twice will skip to the next track, three times will go back to the previous track, and pressing it for longer than 2 seconds during a call will hang up. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get the hang of pressing three times to go back to the previous track at all, but the rest of the functionality worked just fine.
The ear cups also twist completely forward so they lay flat, which allows them to fit into the included hard case. One side of the case is lined with a velvet-like material and formed for headphone placement, while the other contains a mesh pouch for storing the 3.5mm audio cable and included two-prong airplane travel adapter. The back of the mesh pouch is velcro, so you can adjust the placement of it in the case. The outside of the case is your typical black canvas type material, with a zipper that goes around three-quarters of the outside. The AURVANA logo is displayed prominently on the front of the case.
Sound
Being wired headphones, you don’t have to be concerned with loss of quality from wireless streaming as can be the case with some wireless headphones. The Creative Aurvana headphones sound pretty decent and are quite loud when you turn up the volume. Everything from highs and mids to bass is pretty evenly balanced, and every type of music that I tested on these sounded great. Without the active noise cancellation active, I could hear a little bit of ambient noise, with it active, the 87% ANC that Creative claims felt more like 100% as I couldn’t even hear the vacuum cleaner when vacuuming while I was testing these out.
If you’re looking for a decent sounding pair of headphones that drown out the outside world while you are enjoying your music, the active noise cancelling in the Creative Aurvana definitely has you covered.
Call Quality
As I’ve mentioned numerous times, I generally ignore incoming phone calls when listening to music, but hey, not everyone does. During testing, it was easy to answer and hang up a call, and the call itself seemed fine with the other party having little difficulty hearing me due to the placement of the inline microphone on the cable.
Price/Value
Priced at $129.99, these lightweight, active noise cancelling wired on-ear headphones are a decent value for the price.
Wrap-up
If you’re a frequent commuter or traveler and are looking for an affordable, decent sounding pair of active noise cancelling headphones, you should definitely check out the Creative Aurvana ANC headphones.
[rwp-review id=”0″]*We were sent a review sample of the Creative Aurvana ANC headphones for the purposes of this review.
Last Updated on June 23, 2021.
