Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI review: Nailing the basics at a good price

If you’re unfamiliar with SXFI, it is a headphone technology that aims to let you enjoy a far wider soundstage on in-ear monitors and headphones. Essentially, it seeks to replicate the experience of listening to a multi-speaker setup through your headphones using the principles of head-related transfer function. It might sound incredulous, but it works.

This new generation of SXFI-enabled devices allows users to enable SXFI with any content. This means you could use it with services like Netflix, Disney+, AppleTV+, and more. This was something older SXFI-enabled devices couldn’t do – they could only apply SXFI effects to locally-saved content. Here are my thoughts after using these headphones for a couple of weeks.