Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro

Creative X-Fi Go! Pro review

Although it's barely larger than a USB memory stick, Creative's latest external sound card, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro, is packed full of the kind of audio acronyms and certifications you might normally associate with more imposing gear. There's a coveted THX badge, for example, as well as support for Creative's own EAX 5.0 in-game environmental effects and a clever noise-cancelling software feature for chatting on the phone.What it lacks is complexity. There's a switch on the side of the X-Fi Go! Pro that converts the headphone socket to a line-out, but essentially this is a two-port sound card without digital or surround outputs. In its simplicity, the question you'll be asking is: what does it really add to on-board sound?It's a well-established fact that even those who demand high performance from their PCs are abandoning the desktop in favour of the current generation of powerful dual- and quad-core laptops, even gamers and HD movie buffs and editors. The problem is that most laptop sound is very basic, hence the need for a USB soundcard.The X-Fi Go! Pro, though, is particularly useful for laptop gamers: credit where credit is due to Creative, the quality of in-game effects and positional audio is almost always better via a soundcard that supports EAX than it is through the rival system from Dolby.