The Creative Sound Blaster X4 is a direct successor to the excellent Sound Blaster X3. While it isn't wildly different, it does bring a couple of meaningful upgrades that make this excellent USB sound card an interesting proposition not only for gamers but also everyone facing daily videoconferencing struggles caused by noisy environments and the poor microphone input quality of their integrated sound cards. Catering to those users is the brand-new SmartComm Kit feature, which is a combination of three different technologies: VoiceDetect, NoiseClean-out, and NoiseClean-in. The purpose of VoiceDetect is to automatically mute and unmute your microphone depending on whether you're talking or not, which makes you dead silent when just listening to what others are saying. As their names imply, the NoiseClean-out and NoiseClean-in features serve as noise-canceling filters for outgoing and incoming comms. The great thing about SmartComm Kit is that it doesn't feel like a marketing gimmick. The aforementioned technologies do their jobs admirably, and I can see them being used for online calls and Discord communication alike.

On the sound quality front, the Sound Blaster X4 is completely in line with the more expensive Sound Blaster GC7, as well as Creative's other popular external sound cards, such as the now-legendary Sound BlasterX G6. Even though it lost the ability to reproduce 32-bit PCM files, which the Sound Blaster X3 had, I find it hard to get upset about as nobody owning a massive 32-bit audio library would even consider buying a $140 gaming sound card. There's also the question of the actual point of 32-bit audio playback, but let's not touch that subject… ever. Aside from being clean, detailed, and lively in character in stereo mode, the Sound Blaster X4 offers an advanced Super X-Fi surround sound solution, Super X-Fi Battle Mode tailored for multiplayer shooters, a 10-band system-wide equalizer, ton of audio profiles, and host of other useful features. The Sound Blaster X4 can be connected to a Windows or macOS PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, as well as Nintendo Switch. Combining it with a console doesn't mean you're giving up on its many features; almost everything this sound card has to offer is available through the Creative mobile app, too.

In terms of the design and user experience, Creative almost changed nothing from the Sound Blaster X3. The layout of the multipurpose knob and accompanying buttons is identical and still very intuitive. They continue to give us easy access to many of the sound card's functions, such as Direct Mode, volume mixing between two sources, audio profiles, and so on. The sound card now has a hybrid 3.5-millimeter audio input/output, and a dedicated input on the front instead of just using separate input and output. Creative also added a hybrid 3.5-millimeter linear/optical input, which can be used to connect external sound sources, such as smartphones and digital audio players, but also the PlayStation 4 or 5 via an HDMI-to-optical converter, or other devices that can output audio through their optical port.

If Creative is granting wishes, I'd love to have an option to create custom microphone equalizer presets and a way to assign the NoiseClean-out/NoiseClean-in features to physical buttons on the Sound Blaster X4. I'd also love to see a bump in build quality—an all-aluminium case would go a long way in making this excellent sound card interesting to users without gaming aspirations.

With that being said, while I don't consider the Sound Blaster X4 a worthwhile upgrade for anyone who already owns its predecessor, this is a great option for everyone else. If you have any issues with your existing integrated sound card or just want to take your audio game to the next level, you can't go wrong with the Creative Sound Blaster X4.