Creative Sound Blaster GS3 review: a fantastic value speaker for gamers

The Creative Sound Blaster GS3 is trying to be both one of the best computer speakers and one of the best soundbars on the market at the same time – and it's also trying to do this while coming in at a seriously appealing low price.

It's also clearly a speaker aimed at gamers. Get this set up as one part of your gaming hardware collection, and you can expect a level of sound quality that's a level or two higher than what you get from the speakers that are built into your monitor or laptop.

Speaking of which, we've also got guides to the best gaming monitors and the best gaming laptops for you to check out when you've finished reading this Creative Sound Blaster GS3 review, which will tell you everything you need to know about whether it's the small soundbar audio upgrade for you!

Creative Sound Blaster GS3: price and availability

The Creative Sound Blaster GS3 is out and available to buy now for a recommended retail price of £49.99 / $49.99. 

The widget embedded above on this page will direct you straight to the best deals for this soundbar-speaker currently available online. If you're in the UK, you can pick it up from Amazon or directly from Creative.

Creative Sound Blaster GS3 review: design and setup

The Creative Sound Blaster GS3 certainly doesn't take long to set up – find something to plug the supplied USB-C-to-USB-A cable into (like a laptop or a charger) and away you go. The USB-C port on the back of the unit can be used to supply audio and to supply power, so there's no other power connection required – which is great.

On the right-hand side of the speaker (facing), there's a dial for controlling volume – and we're very much in favour of physical controls – as well as buttons for switching between the three audio input options (USB-C, Bluetooth, AUX), putting the speaker into Bluetooth pairing mode, and enabling the Super Wide audio mode.

The volume dial doubles up as a power button and brightness control, and the final button on the right lets you cycle through various lighting modes, varying from the subtle to the spectacular. You don't get a whole lot of control over them, however, but there are at least quite a few to choose from, which adds to the visual appeal of this speaker.

Overall, it's a speaker design that's tidy and well done – though it does tend to attract fingerprints. It measures 410 x 92.7 x 73.7mm (16.1 x 3.6 x 2.9in), so is well suited to putting under a monitor. The final design detail we should mention is the 3.5mm headphone jack, if your listening needs to be more private.

Creative Sound Blaster GS3 review: performance and features

With 24W of peak power from the two speakers embedded in this soundbar, its maximum volume is easily enough to fill a decent-sized space – and you'll hear it all around the house at full blast, to varying degrees. For a gaming room, it's certainly powerful enough, though you can occasionally hear the limitations of its form factor when it gets louder.

Overall, the sound quality is superb, and certainly better than you would expect from this price. The screeching tyres of GTA V, the pounding hooves of Red Dead Redemption 2, a variety of music and other audio – whatever we tested the Creative Sound Blaster GS3 with, it sounded really good. The bass response is rich and full, and quieter sounds are handled delicately too.

That said, this is still a budget speaker: it doesn't have the richness of, say, a Sonos soundbar (which is far bigger and pricier), and clarity is occasionally lost with busier soundscapes. Nothing sounds bad when it's coming through the Creative Sound Blaster GS3, but you can sometimes tell it's a device that's positioned towards the lower-end of the market.

We're not convinced by the Super Wide audio mode either. It's apparently a "more immersive" way of experiencing movie and game audio – but it didn't seem to make a massive difference to our ears. Generally speaking, though, we had no real complaints about the quality of the audio (and it was significantly better than the speakers built into our monitor).

Creative Sound Blaster GS3 review: verdict

The Creative Sound Blaster GS3 is a great little speaker for the price – in fact with a glance at the cost and the visual design of this device, you're probably going to know right away whether or not it's the speaker for you. Do you want a soundbar-style speaker with colourful lighting effects? By all means put this on your shortlist.

Creative is a veteran when it comes to making speakers, and the build quality and the sound quality on show here are a testament to that. Fair enough, the audio coming from the Sound Blaster GS3 can't match up with speakers that cost 10 times the amount, but it's still a fine-sounding speaker that will enhance your gaming experience – and work great for music and movies too. 

Also consider

There aren't a huge number of speakers we can directly compare the Creative Sound Blaster GS3 to at the moment – it's a fairly niche product. The Razer Leviathan V2 Pro is a good alternative in terms of its looks and its functionality: it offers superior sound and more features, though it is a lot more expensive than the Creative.

If you want to substantially upgrade your sound, then the Sonos Era 300 is one of the best speakers we've heard audio pumped through in recent times. It's not specifically a gaming speaker, of course, but it's still going to hook up to all of your gaming gear, and it's hard to beat in terms of the quality of the sound it can produce. The Era 100 will do a decent job if you want something smaller too.