The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional is the newest wi-fi headphone from Inventive. It is available in three variations:
- Zen Hybrid Professional (standalone): Options 40mm drivers, Bluetooth 5.3, and is LE Audio prepared. As much as 100 hours battery life.
- Zen Hybrid Professional Traditional: Provides Inventive BT-L3 transmitter to unlock LE Audio. Comes with removable growth mic.
- Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI: Bundles Inventive BT-L4 transmitter with Tremendous X-Fi UltraDSP chip and SXFI BATTLE Mode for gaming. Additionally contains growth mic.
The important thing specs are in any other case the identical throughout the fashions by way of driver dimension, battery life, Bluetooth connectivity and many others. The bundles add performance by the transmitters.
Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional vs Traditional vs SXFI Specification
Design
The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI incorporates a glossy and trendy design that’s each visually interesting and cozy to put on. The headphones are constructed with high-quality supplies, with the adjustable headband offering a safe match for customers of all head sizes. The earcups are designed to swivel and fold, making them simple to retailer and transport.
The earcups even have a customisable RGB ring with as much as
The Zen Hybrid Professional headphones are light-weight and sturdy, with a plastic building that ensures they will stand up to day by day use. The ear pads are manufactured from pleather, which gives a snug cushioning for prolonged listening periods.
The management buttons are conveniently situated on the ear cups. The left ear cup homes the ability button, mic mute button, and digital quantity wheel, whereas the correct ear cup options ANC, play, ahead, and backward buttons. Pairing the headphones is a breeze, merely press and maintain the ability button for 4 seconds, even when the ability is on. To energy off, press and launch after 2 seconds. The facility button additionally capabilities as a mode switcher, enabling customers to change to broadcast mode with a double-click.
There is no such thing as a 3.5mm headphone jack with these headphones they usually don’t appear to work in wired mode with USB-C. With them being Bluetooth 5.3, you don’t have to make use of the BT‑L4 SXFI audio transmitter, you may pair the headphones instantly with telephones.
BT‑L4 SXFI Audio Transmitter
The BT-L4 transmitter that comes with the Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI bundle permits the headphones to unlock the Tremendous X-Fi audio processing. This goals to create a extra immersive listening expertise by mapping the consumer’s ear profile and mimicking a multi-speaker system. The SXFI BATTLE Mode is tuned for gaming with positional audio cues to assist acquire a aggressive edge.
The BT‑L4 SXFI dongle additionally works with different gadgets, resembling cell phones. Nevertheless, if you happen to use the dongle, you may’t use the Inventive Android app, you might want to join on to the telephone with Bluetooth.
SXFI Audio & Head Mapping
The Tremendous X-Fi expertise requires mapping your head and ears utilizing Inventive’s app and digital camera to personalise the audio expertise. The personalized profile goals to make music sound extra spacious and three-dimensional. Nevertheless, the results are refined, and a few could discover it makes the audio extra diffuse. It additionally solely works when listening by way of the Inventive app.
LC3+ Codec
The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI makes use of the LC3+ codec, a sophisticated audio codec that provides greater high quality audio in a decrease bitrate. This codec, mixed with Bluetooth LE Audio expertise, delivers improved wi-fi audio efficiency at considerably decrease energy consumption. With LC3+, customers can take pleasure in high-quality audio with out compromising on battery life.
Advantages of Bluetooth Low Power (LE)
Bluetooth Low Power (LE) Audio, a brand new audio commonplace that brings a number of advantages to customers. LE Audio consumes decrease power, extending the battery lifetime of the headphones. It additionally helps extra environment friendly bitrate, permitting for improved audio high quality at decrease information charges. With LE Audio, customers can take pleasure in wi-fi audio streaming with ultra-low latency, offering a seamless and lag-free audio expertise.
One of many standout options of LE Audio is its potential to broadcast audio to a number of gadgets concurrently. This characteristic is especially helpful for conditions the place a number of individuals need to take heed to the identical audio content material with out disturbing others. Think about watching a film or listening to streaming music along with your partner with out disturbing your loved ones members or housemates. LE Audio allows this type of shared listening expertise, making it perfect for silent events, open-space listening occasions, and extra.
Inventive App & SXFI
This app, obtainable for Home windows, permits customers to entry a variety of options and settings to boost their audio expertise. With the Inventive App, customers can modify the Acoustic Engine, EQ, SXFI, and Mixer settings to go well with their preferences. The playback web page allows customers to pick their desired decision for audio playback, whereas the recording high quality could be adjusted for optimum outcomes.
The Inventive App additionally gives on-board DSP audio chip performance, permitting customers to use audio results resembling Encompass and Crystallizer. Tremendous X-Fi could be enabled to recreate an expert, multi-speaker system expertise in your headphones.
With the headphones paired, the app may have a toggle for headphones and audio system. The headphones work with each of those settings, however you want the headphones choice toggled on if you wish to use SXFI.
Inside the app, if you happen to go to Bluetooth gadgets, you may toggle between LE audio and ULL audio.
Sound High quality
On the subject of sound high quality, the Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI doesn’t disappoint. The headphones are geared up with custom-tuned 40 mm full-range, titanium-coated dynamic drivers that ship a strong and cinematic sound expertise. The bass is deep and impactful, whereas the treble gives readability and element. The sound staging is immersive, creating a way of house and depth within the audio.
The SXFI mode takes the audio you might have two choices, the usual SXFI and SXFI BATTLE Mode.
The SXFI BATTLE Mode goals to provide avid gamers extra spatial and positional audio cues for aggressive gaming. It really works fairly nicely for gaming, giving a way more expansive soundstage and a greater sense of course from sounds. For different audio, it sounds very echoey.
The default SXFI works nicely and, the sound is much less echoey, making it appropriate for issues like motion pictures, giving a extra immersive expertise. It really works OK with music, too, however I want to depart it off.
With SXFI on, you don’t have entry to a few of the different audio that’s throughout the acoustic engine.
Lively Noise Cancelling
For ANC, you may toggle the modes utilizing the button on the correct earcup with choices for having it off, ambient mode and ANC on. There aren’t any superior ANC controls permitting you to customize the ANC degree as you discover with competing manufacturers.
To check the ANC, I paired the headphones with my Pixel 8 Professional after which performed airplane cabin noise at 80% on my Edifier S3000 Professional audio system.
The ANC efficiency is OK, there’s a substantial discount in noise, however they do appear to depart fairly a little bit of noise throughout all frequencies. Compared, costlier headphones such because the Edifier WH950NB or the equally priced Anker Soundcore House Q45, each do a greater job at decreasing noise with them each eliminating a lot of the low finish hum however leaving a few of the excessive finish.
Latency / Gaming
The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI is ideal for avid gamers, due to its ultra-low latency audio expertise. With latency as little as ~20 ms in Extremely-Low Latency (ULL) mode, avid gamers can take pleasure in a seamless and lag-free gaming expertise. The headphones ship audio in sync with the on-screen motion, guaranteeing that you just don’t miss a beat throughout intense gaming periods.
Microphone
The removable growth mics included with the Traditional and SXFI bundles permit for clearer voice pickup and communication. Name high quality is respectable in quiet environments however struggles in noisier backgrounds. The noise cancellation tends to suppress the voice quantity when making an attempt to chop out ambient noise.
Not like a few of the different Inventive merchandise that use the Inventive App, this doesn’t have the CrystalVoice options, which I’ve discovered fairly helpful up to now.
Battery
Battery life is a spotlight, with as much as 100 hours of listening on a single cost with ANC off or 80 hours with it on. That is due to the improved effectivity of LE Audio.
I can’t say I’ve timed the battery life, however I might say I’ve gone at the very least 20 hours with out charging the headphones.
The headphones are then charged by way of the USB-C port, and you will get 5 hours of utilization from a 5-minute cost.
Value and Various Choices
The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI is priced at £134.99, making it a worthwhile funding for audiophiles, avid gamers, and anybody in search of an immersive audio expertise. With its spectacular options, together with LE Audio assist, SXFI expertise, Hybrid ANC, and Ambient Mode, the headphones supply distinctive worth for the value.
In the event you’re on the lookout for different choices, contemplate the Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional Traditional and Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional. The Traditional variant, priced at £119.99, contains the BT-L3 audio transmitter and a removable growth mic, offering an all-encompassing audio expertise. The usual Zen Hybrid Professional, priced at £89.99, is ideal for customers who need a standalone pair of headphones that assist LE Audio and supply RGB lighting customisation.
General
The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI are glorious versatile headphones that may transition simply between a low-latency gaming headset and ANC Bluetooth headphones for media consumption and use with cellular gadgets.
Maybe one minor criticism is that the SXFI mannequin incurs a £45 premium vs the usual professional mannequin, which provides the BT-L4 transmitter and microphone. Nevertheless, in case you are not fussed about SXFI, the traditional mannequin will work simply as nicely and prevent £15.
Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI Evaluate
Abstract
The Inventive Zen Hybrid Professional SXFI are glorious versatile headphones that may transition simply between a low-latency gaming headset and ANC Bluetooth headphones for media consumption and use with cellular gadgets.
I’m James, a UK-based tech fanatic and the inventive thoughts behind Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Obsessed with all issues expertise, my experience spans from computer systems and networking, to cellular, wearables, and sensible house gadgets.
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