There aren’t many good sound cards available for laptops. Worse, generic integrated audio chipsare used as sound is quite low down the list of priorities in the eyes of notebook manufacturers.

Professional multitrack interfaces aside, Creative has been the only real contender for aftermarket consumer soundcards. The last offering from Creative was the X-Mod, which disappointed, as it used a generic Texas Instruments DSP with performance similar to an Audigy, but with two filters from the X-Fi feature set tacked on. Its most recent attempt delivers a card powered by a true X-Fi chip.

The Express Card socket is far too small to accommodate all the available analogue outputs, so in addition to fixed 3.5mm analogue and digital in and outputs, a breakout box his provided to connect analogue surround speakers. It’s not the only unavoidable inconvenience that its form factor is to blame. Because there is no retainer clip in the notebook, the only connecting force the X-Fi notebook is provided by the interlocking data and power pins between it and the notebook.

This becomes a problem when you try to unplug a headphone or microphone, because unless you hold the card in as you remove your headphones you’ll end up yanking the whole card out of your laptop. Should this happen, your PC will have a minor heart attack and you won’t be able to use the card again until you restart your machine. In this case our Vista test machine simply reverted to its onboard sound card.

The Creative software will let you adjust the wetness of the X-Fi’s Crystalizer and CMSS-3D filters, which attempt to add detail to compressed music through interpolation and create a surround soundscape through headphones respectively. The software can also hook into your onboard soundcard and route the X-Fi’s output through the headphone jack in your laptop chassis.

Most people don’t need X-Fi performance from their laptop; however gamers who use high-end desktop replacement machines will appreciate the extra level of clarity it provides. If you want better sound without hauling around external gear and can live with a protruding card in your laptop, it’s worth considering. Anybody who owns high end headphones will be impressed, as will laptop-toting gamers who want better positional audio through headphones. Its $165 price tag is reasonable, too.