Creative Aurvana Ace Mimi review: Getting personal with sound

It’s not a new concept, but it bears repeating when a pair of wireless earbuds try to make it work: can adaptive and personalized listening change how you listen to music? Creative is taking a crack at it with the Aurvana Ace Mimi.

The earbuds are successors to the previous Aurvana Ace 2, so they share a lot of the same features and functions, but in partnering with Mimi, the focus lies more squarely on custom sound profiles. That makes things interesting in getting really personal, though you have to make compromises to fully accept what these buds are.

Keeping things familiar

Creative sticks with a familiar look by making the Ace Mimi essentially carbon copies of the previous Aurvana Ace 2. The color is different, though, with a midnight shade that isn’t as flashy as the Ace 2. Otherwise, they maintain a lot of continuity, including the super lightweight build and matte finish, and similar size case.

Creative wisely includes both extra-small and extra-large ear tips (something the Aurvana Ace 2 don’t have) with the Ace Mimi, significantly improving the odds you’ll find a fit that works for you. This is especially important for the sheer comfort and stability necessary to enjoy what these buds do best.

Because they are so lightweight and unobtrusive, I sometimes didn’t realize I even had them on. Their IPX5 rating is okay for warding off sweat, but be mindful of wiping them clean each time to avoid salt slipping through crevices and hitting internal components.

The right fit and right sound

From the outset, the Creative app offers plenty of options to customize them to your liking. The key one lies with the Mimi-powered Sound Personalization that takes you through an exercise where you hold down an onscreen button until you stop hearing a beep.

You go through this with each ear and ultimately come up with a custom-tuned sound profile based on your hearing ability. The results then let you tailor it further by choosing either the recommended profile or opting for a softer or richer sound. There’s also an option to kind of mix it up by, say, choosing “richer” yet reducing the tuning’s intensity.

If you’re unsure about the efficacy, simply tap the “Hear the difference” button to compare it with no tuning and hear it for yourself. For me, the difference was audible in just about every respect. Not only does audio come through with more verve, it also sounds more detailed at all volumes, which is good for your ear health when you keep it a moderate level.

My one gripe about it is you have to sign up for a Creative account to get the feature. It’s free, but you’re sharing data because of it.

Despite that, the custom choices don’t end there. The Equalizer section is one of the deepest you’ll ever find on any pair of earbuds. While the five-band EQ is perhaps less granular, there are 40+ presets to pick from, including several based on popular video game franchises. Create your own and save it to add to the list. The beauty of this is you can mix and match your personalized tuning with an EQ preset you like, vastly opening up the kind of sonic variety you get out of these buds.

There’s a good reason for the video game nod since the Low Latency Mode reduces lag to better sync audio and video, an important factor when gaming or watching video.

Bluetooth codec support is also superb, with support for SBC, AAC, LDAC, and LC3. Going with LDAC is interesting given the Aurvana Ace 2 support aptX Lossless, but that still gives you hi-res playback from devices and services supporting it anyway. With Bluetooth LE on board here as well, there’s support for Auracast, a feature most Android phones already natively include (and more are getting, like the Pixel 9 series).

As for controls, you have the ability to change those as you see fit. By default, a double tap on the left cycles between Ambient Control and ANC (active noise cancelation) while doing it on the right plays/pauses. Triple-tap the left to wake the phone’s voice assistant or the right to skip to the next track. Long tap left to lower volume, right to raise it.

Notably missing, however, are wear sensors to automatically pause playback when taking either earbud off — a glaring omission for this price range.

Hearing a little too much

Regardless of where you choose to wear the Ace Mimi, there’s a balancing act at work here. ANC performance is largely mediocre, with a consistent inability to drown out most noises you don’t want while wearing them. You can expect them to dampen, so it’s not like these earbuds are totally inept, it’s just that you get what you can out of a $130 pair.

That’s why finding the right ear tips is so critical for better passive isolation to help the cause. The Ace Mimi work best in quieter environments where background noise isn’t very loud, even when you push the ANC’s potency to the max on the app.

Ambient works similarly in letting you adjust how much of the background you want to hear around you. Quickly switching to this mode to hear an announcement or engage in a quick verbal interaction feels pretty seamless, though again, you’ll get clearer results from more expensive earbuds.

Superb sound that can surprise

Creative cites the xMEMS drivers inside as the main, well, driver of the strong sound signature in the Ace Mimi, and I’m inclined to believe the claim. The Aurvana Ace 2 have the same drivers, which are capable of pumping out a healthy dose of bass to go with balanced mids and highs.

At this price, there’s going to be an unsurprising emphasis on bass response, but it’s nicely complemented by the surprising effectiveness of the rest of the spectrum. Warm and punchy highs, ever-present mids, and thick bass make these a pair worth looking at if you’re into music genres that skew toward the latter.

Again, you discover its extent when going through the personalized sound process. If you suffer from hearing loss or are sensitive to certain frequencies, the test can amplify or mitigate those details in impressive ways. Earbuds at this price range often give you an EQ to work with but not necessarily a hearing test that goes this far in producing a lasting result.

It extends to watching content as well. The depth of an explosion or the crispness of dialogue, for instance, are welcome strides. Spatial audio only works if you have the ability to listen to something via Creative’s SXFI app, though that only applies to media files you have saved on the device, not when streaming.

Phone calls prove excellent in most conditions. The onboard mics won’t completely muffle louder sounds around you, but they can muffle them enough to keep a conversation going. In quiet confines, they’re as solid as it gets at this price.

Not so long battery life

Creative rates battery life at up to seven hours per charge with ANC off. Leave it on, and you’re looking at five hours or less, depending on how high the volume is. Even with three additional charges in the case, these numbers aren’t all that impressive. The case supports wireless charging, so it’s easy to appreciate the convenience. I didn’t find a fast charging feature here but it doesn’t take too long to fully recharge both the case and earbuds.

Getting more for less

While it’s not hard to find similar features and designs from others in the same price range, you’d be hard-pressed to find the level of sound customization available with the Creative Aurvana Ace Mimi. Indeed, on that alone, they’re competitive relative to the best wireless earbuds.

They sound better than some earbuds costing significantly more, and despite their limited ANC and battery prowess, they feel like a real bang-for-your-buck option. Good sound is worth paying a value price, especially when these sound so much better than the AirPods.