Conclusion

Looking first at the build quality of the Creative Aurvana In-Ear3 we have a set of earphones which impress. The dark chrome finish on the main body looks great, the body is lightweight but sturdy and the joins between this and the cables feel strong. In addition to this we have a high quality oxygen free copper cable and some nice touches such as the metal cable splitter and gold connector.

Design wise the In-Ear3 are also hard to fault. The main body of the earpieces offer a comfortable shape to rest in the ear, the angled sound tube sits perfectly in the ear canal and the over the ear cable design offers extra stability when on the move. Internally the decision to separate the audio signals appears to work well and the noise isolation offered works well with our preference being the foam eartips. If we are being particularly picky we should note that some people will be disappointed that Creative have not used cables which can be replaced.

So that brings us to sound quality and in this area the Aurvana excel. They offer that great level of quality where it sounds like the instruments and vocals we are listening to are in our head, not only because of the tips being in our ear canal but because the quality produced when given a high quality source is exceptional. A lovely tone, great volume level, good power from the bass and overall high level of clarity... it was all present in the sound created by the In-Ear3.

Additionally, despite these being compact earpieces they rival our full size headphones with 50mm drivers with ease. In fact we were surprised, given the fact our headset is a quality item itself, that there were aspects in some tracks that the In-Ear3 were picking up that the headset wasn't.

For value, as with any high performance product there comes a cost but at £130/$149 the In-Ear3 feel like they are priced very well. They certainly outperform products such as Future Sonics Atrio m5 range which are $199 and there is also the fact that we get a nice display case, travel container, airplane adapter, cleaning tool and wide selection of eartips.

Summary
The Creative Aurvana In-Ear3 offer great performance from portable media devices and excel with higher quality audio sources. In addition they look great and feel comfortable while being priced very competitively.