Redragon’s speaker line has always been the plastic end of the catalog. The Anvil GS520 and the Kaidas GS590 did the job for the price and looked like it. The Impactsphere GS818 is a different animal. Bamboo front panels, fabric-wrapped cabinets, a 60W amplifier, and $79.99 on the tag. It’s the first Redragon product I’ve had on my desk that I wouldn’t move before guests came over.
The pitch is a two-way active system. Each cabinet holds a 1 inch silk dome tweeter and a 3 inch aluminum cone for the mid-bass, crossed over actively instead of run full range. Inputs are Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C with a built-in sound card, and a 3.5mm aux jack, plus a sub output for anyone who wants to add a powered sub later. There’s no app, no driver, and no software to download.
What Comes In The Box
- Two speakers, one active and one passive
- Audio cables
- AC power cord
- User manual
The right cabinet does all the work. It carries the amplifier, every input, the power switch, and the AC socket, and it’s marked with a big R on the back so you can’t mix them up. The left cabinet is passive and connects to it over a single SPK OUT cable. That means one cable run decides your layout: wherever the right speaker goes, the left one has to reach, so plan around the wall outlet and the port you’re plugging USB-C into.
Put the active right cabinet within reach of the outlet and your USB-C port, then aim both cabinets at your ears with the tweeters close to head height. On a desk this small, a few inches of toe-in changes the imaging more than any setting does.
Bamboo, Fabric, And One Red Logo
The cabinets measure 3.94 inches wide, 6.85 tall, and 6.17 deep, so the footprint on the desk is roughly a phone’s width each. The front panel is real bamboo with rounded corners and visible grain, and the sides and back are wrapped in a charcoal fabric that reads more like a bookshelf speaker than a gaming peripheral. There are no grilles over the drivers, which looks great and means dusting is now part of your month.
The one tell is the red REDRAGON wordmark across the top of each bamboo panel. It’s small, it’s printed on the wood rather than lit up, and it’s the only piece of this design that belongs to a gaming catalog. A company that spent this much effort on materials could have put it on the back instead. That’s the whole list of complaints about how these look, and it’s a short list because they look genuinely good.
Silk On Top, Aluminum Below
Most desktop speakers in this price range run a single full-range driver and hope for the best. The GS818 splits the job. A 1 inch silk dome handles everything up top, and a 3 inch aluminum cone covers the mid-bass, with an active crossover deciding where one hands off to the other. Redragon quotes a frequency response of 45Hz to 20kHz and splits the power at 10W plus 10W for the tweeters and 20W plus 20W for the mid-bass, which is 60W total peak across the pair.
That power split tells you what these are built for. Sixty watts of peak power in a cabinet this size is a nearfield figure, not a party trick. You get plenty of volume for a desk, a small room, or a call on speaker, and the drivers stay composed at the levels you’d actually use while sitting in front of them. Push them into a big room and you’ll hear the limit before you hear distortion.
Three Ways In, One Way Out
Connectivity is the part that makes these easy to live with. USB-C is a digital input with a sound card built in, so a laptop sees a USB audio device and plays through it with no driver install. Bluetooth 5.3 handles a phone or tablet, and the 3.5mm jack takes anything analog, including a turntable preamp or a handheld recorder. The fourth connection is an output: SUB OUT, for a powered subwoofer. That’s the upgrade path Redragon left open, and it’s the right one, because the low end is the one place these can’t fake it.
Switching between them is done on the right cabinet’s top panel, where the volume down, power, and volume up controls sit as touch targets under the fabric. A small LED shows the current state. There’s no remote and no app, which keeps the setup simple and means input switching is a reach rather than a menu dive.
No software means no EQ, no presets, and no firmware updates. What you hear on day one is what you hear in year three. If you want to shape the sound, do it at the source or add a sub through SUB OUT, because there’s nothing on the speaker to adjust.
How They Sound At A Desk
On a desk, the separation is the first thing you notice. Two cabinets a few feet apart give you a stereo image that a single soundbar under a monitor can’t produce, and voice and acoustic material land in the middle of the desk instead of somewhere behind the screen. The silk dome does the detail work: cymbals, string texture, and the small mouth noises in a podcast all come through without sounding bright or fatiguing after two hours.
The aluminum cone handles the middle cleanly, which is the range that matters for calls, YouTube, and most music. Drums have body. Male vocals sit forward without getting chesty. What these don’t do is deep bass, and the 45Hz figure on the spec sheet is optimistic for a 3 inch driver in a cabinet this size. It’s honest enough for music at a desk, and it’s the reason SUB OUT exists.
As for volume, 60W of peak power is plenty for a desk and a small room. I’d rather have these at half volume than a louder speaker that sounds strained at the same level. If you’re filling an open floor plan or hosting, this is the wrong product, and Redragon would probably tell you the same thing.
The GS818 makes a desk sound like a room. It doesn’t make a desk sound like a club, and at $79.99 that’s the right trade.Cliff
Pros And Cons
Pros
Materials That Don't Look Budget: Real bamboo front panels and a fabric wrap that reads as furniture, not gaming gear, at $79.99 for the pair.
Genuine Two-Way Design: A 1 inch silk dome tweeter and a 3 inch aluminum cone per cabinet, with an active crossover instead of a single full-range driver.
Three Inputs And An Output: USB-C with a built-in sound card, Bluetooth 5.3, and 3.5mm aux in, plus a sub out that leaves room to grow.
No Software To Fight: Plug in USB-C and it works. Bluetooth pairs without an app, and nothing runs in the background.
Small Footprint: Under four inches of desk per cabinet, with stereo separation a soundbar can't match.
Cons
No Deep Bass: A 3 inch driver can only move so much air. The 45Hz claim is a spec sheet number, and you'll want the sub out if low end matters.
No EQ At All: No app, no presets, no tone controls on the cabinet. What you hear is what you get.
Red Logo On The Bamboo: Small, but it's the one element on the front that belongs to a gaming catalog instead of a living room.
Controls On The Right Speaker's Top: Reaching for input switching means reaching over the cabinet, and there's no remote.
One Cabinet Runs The Show: Every input and the amp live in the right speaker, so layout follows one cable run.
Who Should Buy It
If your desk has a monitor and no speakers, or a single soundbar that never quite filled the space, the GS818 solves that for less than most 2.1 systems cost before you add the sub. The USB-C input is the detail that makes it work for a laptop setup, and the bamboo means you don’t have to hide it when the work day ends.
If you want bass you can feel, buy something with a subwoofer in the box or plan to add one through SUB OUT. If you want to tune the sound to your room with an app, this isn’t that product. The GS818 is a good pair of desktop speakers with a nice cabinet, not a small hi-fi system.
At $79.99, the story is the cabinet and the inputs: bamboo and fabric that look like furniture, USB-C audio that works without a driver, and a sub out for later. The bass is the compromise, and it’s a fair one at this price.
Discount Code
Again, thanks to the awesome folks over at Redragon for allowing me to review this product and others they have sent over in the past. They have also given me a code that anyone can use to save a total of 10% off your entire purchase across their site. So if you’re interested in purchasing the Redragon Impactsphere GS818, or any of their products, you can use the code DECRYPTED during checkout.
Final Thoughts
The Impactsphere GS818 is the first Redragon speaker that feels designed for a desk instead of a dorm. Bamboo and fabric, a real two-way driver arrangement, three inputs that cover every source I own, and a sub output for the one thing the cabinets can’t do. Redragon announced these in September and priced them at $79.99, which puts them against soundbars and 2.1 kits that don’t look half this good.
What you give up is bass extension, EQ, and any kind of app. If that’s acceptable, this is an easy recommendation for a desk that needs a pair of speakers and a little less plastic. I’ve reviewed enough of Redragon’s speaker line to say it plainly: this is the one I’d buy.
Product photos courtesy of Redragon.
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I write about AI tools, automation, and the stuff I actually use. If this article helped, there is more where it came from.