Creative SoundBlaster GS3 review

Those little speakers built into your monitor have a problem: they're just too small. The laws of physics have a tight grip on audio reproduction, and the sad fact is that large, expensive speakers will always be better than smaller ones, as well as looking cooler and making you more attractive to the kind of people you want to be found attractive by. These are facts.

Another fact is that, luckily, it's quite easy to upgrade from monitor speakers, which are only getting smaller and therefore worse as displays (and indeed laptops, which suffer from the same audio blight) get thinner to actual PC speakers. This soundbar from Creative, the Sound Blaster GS3, isn't exactly huge either, and doesn't cost a lot of money. It's an entry-level audio solution for desktop PC gaming, and while it's always going to be better than using the speakers built into your screen—or indeed having no speakers at all—let me be clear, you shouldn't expect miracles.

That said, there's a lot to like here. It's a stubby little bar perfectly sized to sit on the flat part of your monitor stand's foot, with two little rubber feet to stop it sliding around. Connectivity comes via USB-C, which also powers the bar, and a 3.5 mm aux socket. There's Bluetooth as well, though as it only supports the SBC codec—that's the default, lossy, fallback codec that other speakers use when one of the more complex alternatives such as AptX isn't available.

This means that while technically this is a wireless speaker, and you can power it from a battery pack if you really need to make it portable, you're much better off connecting it via one of the wired options and just leaving it on your desk.

Image credit: Future

Image credit: Future

All you have to do is plug the included USB cable into a spare port on your PC, and it will be picked up as an audio device. There's a large multipurpose dial on the right-hand end which can be clicked in to turn the unit on and off and feels great to use. In a horseshoe around it are three buttons that do not feel great to use, but are necessary to switch inputs and put the bar into Bluetooth pairing mode, as well as cycling through its lighting modes.

The third is marked SUPER WIDE, but instead of physically extending the bar so that it takes up more space on your desk and increasing stereo separation it instead attempts to bring extra width to the soundstage with results that don't seem to make a lot of difference (it's definitely not activating extra speakers in the ends of the bar) and make you wonder why it would be necessary to ever turn this mode off.

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The buttons' position means you'll need to pick the bar up to tell which one you're pressing unless you take the time to memorise their positions, and as they're at the same end as the cable connection you'll probably pull the 1.5m wire out from behind your desk too, necessitating a few minutes putting it all back once you're finished. There's an RGB lighting strip under the front of the bar that will spread a rainbow or a moving, colour-changing light across your desktop. If you're sensible you'll turn it off, it's pointless and adds nothing to the experience.

The important thing about a soundbar isn't the way it looks but the way it sounds, and for a speaker that costs so little the GS3 is surprisingly good. It doesn't come with an external subwoofer like that on the Creative Stage 2.1 system (which costs almost twice as much) but it does have a bass duct that exits at the back of the casing and brings a little more presence to low-frequency sounds.

Unload a few rounds from a super shotgun and you'll certainly hear its boom, but it can get lost in the whirling cloud of guitars and demonic screams going on while you do it. The GS3 has a wider frequency response than Creative's Pebble Pro speakers, with an extended low end, and this is noticeable if you place them side-by-side.

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Higher up the frequency range the pair of front-facing racetrack speakers prove to be a good choice for the slim bar. They're not particularly far apart, so the sound from your game or movie is always being fired directly at you, even with SUPER WIDE mode on, but there's a decent amount of volume and clarity on offer and voices in particular cut through. This seems to be something of a Creative speciality, making the GS3 ideal for games and streaming but less ideal for music—if it's a room-filling sound you're after, look out for a fully wireless Bluetooth speaker you can place somewhere other than under your monitor.

As a step up over the dinky little speakers in your monitor, or those crammed alongside a laptop keyboard, the Creative Soundblaster GS3 works well. It's never going to hit the heights of the best PC speakers, but you're paying so little for it that barely matters. What this offers is an improvement over the bare minimum, and in that context it does its job admirably.

Best PC speaker 2025

1. Best overall: Mackie CR3.5BT + CR8SBT

2. Best budget: Creative Pebble Plus

3. Best midrange: Logitech Z407

4. Best gaming soundbar: Creative Sound Blaster Katana V2

5. Best wireless gaming soundbar: BlueAnt Soundblade

6. Best bookshelf speakers: FiiO SP3 BT

7. Best reference speakers: Kanto Ora

👉Check out our full best PC speakers guide👈