The BEST New Portable Speaker! Marshall Emberton II Review!

The Marshall Emberton 2 Portable Speaker: A Perfect Blend of Sound and Style

The Marshall Emberton 2 portable speaker is a marvel of modern technology, boasting an impressive range of features that make it perfect for music enthusiasts on-the-go. With its sleek design and compact size, this speaker can be easily stowed away in a backpack or purse, making it the ultimate companion for music lovers who want to take their tunes with them wherever they go.

One of the standout features of the Marshall Emberton 2 is its sound quality. The speaker produces an unmistakable Marshall style sound that is perfect for rock and instrumental tracks, but surprisingly versatile enough to handle a wide range of genres, including pop, rap, and R&B. While it may not be ideal for bass-heavy music, the speaker's emphasis on vocals and mids creates a warm and engaging soundstage that is simply delightful. For example, listening to The World's Smallest Violin, which features intricate instrumental breaks and shifting instrumentation, sounds almost magical with this speaker.

The speaker's design is equally impressive, with a retro aesthetic that is sure to appeal to fans of classic Marshall amps. Tactile controls and 360-degree sound make it easy to navigate the settings and enjoy your music in any room or environment. Moreover, with a battery life of 30 hours, you can take this speaker on extended trips without worrying about running out of juice.

Smart Functionality: A Seamless App Experience

One of the standout features of the Marshall Emberton 2 is its seamless integration with the Marshall Connect app, which allows for easy firmware updates, EQ adjustments, and other tweaks to customize your sound experience. The app is free to download from the App Store and offers a range of features that make it simple to manage your speaker's settings and performance.

The app also provides access to firmware updates, allowing you to stay up-to-date with the latest improvements and innovations in Marshall technology. Additionally, you can adjust the EQs to fine-tune your sound preferences, choosing from options like boosting bass or vocals, or sticking with a more neutral setting. This level of control and customization is impressive, especially considering that some bigger speakers offer absolute control over their treble and bass settings.

However, one feature that might have been nice to see in the Marshall app is full control over the EQ – specifically, dials that allow you to adjust the treble and bass levels precisely. While this speaker's default setting is perfectly fine, fans of tweaking their sound may find themselves wishing for more granular control.

A Verdict: Is the Marshall Emberton 2 Right for You?

For me, the Marshall Emberton 2 has been a revelation – a perfect balance of sound quality, design, and portability that makes it an indispensable companion for music lovers on-the-go. While it may not be suitable for everyone (specifically those who prioritize extreme bass levels), its versatility, style, and sheer sonic goodness make it a compelling choice.

That being said, I do think this speaker might appeal more to fans of rock and instrumental music – the Marshall sound is unmistakable and addictive, but the lack of extreme bass levels may not be ideal for genres like electronic or hip-hop. Nevertheless, the Emberton 2's 360-degree sound, tactile controls, and awesome retro design make it a must-have speaker that I wouldn't trade for anything.

If you're looking for more portability options from Marshall, their new Willen speaker is definitely worth considering – albeit with some caveats regarding size and bass levels. For now, however, the Emberton 2 has won me over, and I'm confident it will do the same for many of its listeners.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe need to talk about the marshall emberton 2 because i'm pretty sure i just found the best new portable speaker welcome everybody to apple insider it is andrew here and i've been using the new marshall emerson 2 for a few weeks let's go ahead and take a look at it so yeah this is it this is the updated marshall emberton 2 and in this video i'm going to give you a good review of this covering its sound design and other unique features i'm going to compare it directly to the previous generation marshall emberton and we'll wrap it up by talking about the smart controls using the marshall connect app so let's go ahead and dive into this with the design of the marshall emberton 2. the marshall emergen 2 has a rock solid design and i am not mad in the slightest that very little of the design changed from the first generation unit inside you'll find dual 2 inch full range drivers as well as two passive radiators that are usually used in smaller compact speakers where there's not room for a full vent system that can help out on the low range apple actually uses this in the homepod mini on the front you'll find this really nice all metal grille as well as that marshall word mark in script right there on the front so iconic of all of marshall's speakers on top you're going to have a few different controls on the far left is your bluetooth button you're going to use this for the new stack mode more on that in a minute as well as pairing to a new device in the center is this brass multi-purpose button so it's kind of like a joystick you can press it down to play or pause your music you can move it left or right to skip backwards or forward in your track list and move it up and down to adjust the volume this is a fantastic button they always use these gold brass controls on all of their speakers and i'm very glad they do because it's awesome it feels great it's tactile it's protected by being flush with the outside it's an amazing button and more speaker companies need to use these physical metal buttons like this because it's just so perfect then on the far right you have this battery indicator it looks kind of like a sound bar that's moving up and down with the music but it's actually representing the battery life so in my case i've got three bars which is representing 30 percent of my battery life compared to other speakers that maybe have four little dots on there this is much more emblematic of what you're actually getting in terms of battery because it's much more granular with all those little dots going up much much much better than most of them out there and has a really nice animation as you turn it on where they kind of glow up it's very cool i love the battery indicator on this thing it's nice and solid built in this thing is super durable there's like a silicone material on the outside in this newer version of an update with more of a pebbled texture that looks reminiscent of marshall's actual amps and on stage speakers it looks like that much more now than it did in the past which had more of a smooth coating to it this is more on brand with the marshall style i like the changes to the exterior of this plus it's also made from 50 post consumer recycled materials things like old electronics or plastic bottles so i like that it's more eco-friendly as well as still rugged and durable and it has an ip67 rating which is preventing dust as well as water from getting in here you can actually drop this thing in a meter of water and leave it under water for up to 30 minutes and it's still going to rock on this thing is an exceptionally durable speaker that you can easily take with you anywhere since i didn't mention when we were talking about the controls battery life this thing has a 30 hour battery life depending on your volume i think of getting pretty close to that listing at about half the range of the volume when it's inside you can't turn this up any louder because it gets pretty darn loud so about 30 hours or so on battery life for power it charges up over usbc super handy because again you can use any usbc charger that supports power delivery so anyone that you're using for your mac your ipad all those can plug directly into here and charge it up even a power bank if you have one with you now let's compare the last generation marshall emberton with the new marshall emberton 2. there are a few notable changes here that i want to make sure we cover first is the durability marshall did increase the durability here it had an ipx7 rating and now has an ip67 rating that x that has turned into a six that is the dust resistance so this one the last generation did not promise to protect against the ingress of dust but now it will on the updated model that's going to be great if you plan on taking this thing anywhere where there's going to be a lot of dust or small particles like the beach another change is that exterior material not only is it now that recycled material but you can see it has more of that pebble texture when we're side by side i absolutely like the new look a bit better then we have the upgrade from bluetooth 5 to bluetooth 5.1 if you have a bluetooth 5.1 device you should see better connectivity here there was a couple times that i had some dropouts with that last generation device but overall it was very solid moving to bluetooth 5.1 should only be better for updated devices then there's the battery life the battery life is now 50 more the last generation unit would only last about 20 hours now it's 50 more at the 30 that have already mentioned the biggest difference though is a feature called stack mode and this is pretty sweet so you've got your marshall emberton 2 and your friend also has a marshall emberton too you can bring them together stack them on top of one another to double your sound output basically you triple tap the button on the main one and double tap that bluetooth button on your second one and you bring them together and boom you're in stack mode they will sync together as many of these as you want stack them up like you're looking at a marshall amp and multiply that volume that audio output it's a really really neat feature that i love but it just depends on if you have multiple of these around if you're just buying one for yourself this may be a cool feature that you're never going to use but if any of your friends also buy these you guys can come together for a party stack them together and multiply that output really easily it's an awesome feature that i think is super unique and i'm very excited they built built it in to the new marshall emberton 2. sound wise though not too much changed it sounds pretty darn similar to that first generation version i might be able to tell a difference but i can't tell if i'm just thinking there is because it's an updated device what is nice that you can connect this to the marshall app and control the eq there but we're going to come back to the app in just a few minutes so how is the audio quality on the marshall emberton 2. i really like the sound quality here i mean as soon as you turn this thing on and start playing music it sounds like a martial speaker there's that kind of iconic marshall sound that you pick up after listening to enough of these things and for some people like me it's a reason to choose these speakers over a lot of the other ones that are out there on the market i just love that kind of raw crisp rocky sound that comes out of this is it perfect is it you know super clean like a sono speaker no i wouldn't put it in there it is definitely a stylized sound that comes out of this thing and now it while it's better tuned for rock and instrumental and acoustic tracks it doesn't mean it's bad with anything else i mean i'm listening to pop and rap and r b and all this stuff and it all sounds good and you can even get into the app and adjust the eq to better tune it to the music that you're listening to but personally that marshall style is what i like here and there's some really neat stuff there's not too much bass it is more bass than the smaller willen speaker but there is good bass here but not a huge amount of bass listening to something like the world's smallest violin you can hear the timpani's just throughout this song and everything is clear but it seems to give a better emphasis on the vocals and even the mids and highs than just pushing out a whole bunch of bass it just didn't do it for me in terms of like shake your room base even with the volume all the way up but i appreciate that it's giving that importance to the instruments and the vocals more than anything else especially when you're listening to that world's smallest violin they have those really cool instrumental breaks and they're kind of changing instruments going from a xylophone to a guitar to actual vocals in these breaks as they're going through like the tiny symphony that they're singing about and it just brings that out so much and i i like it i like it a lot this thing sounds pretty darn awesome if you need more bass you're just going to have to go up to a bigger speaker because there's only so much bass you can do in tiny footprint for its size this sounds great with perfectly adequate base let's talk about smart functionality with the marshall connect app once you pair this to your phone you can jump into the marshall connect app that's free to download from the app store and view your speaker there you can do things like perform firmware updates as changes come out to help improve it and you can adjust the eqs that i've mentioned 30 times already in the eqs you can choose between boosting things like the bass and the trouble you can choose the vocals one that gives you more spoken word stuff or just stick with the iconic marshall sound personally i stuck with the marshall one when i switch it to the one that boosts the treble and the bass to me it sounds almost like muddled a little bit when you're on that that standard one the marshall one it sounds like you can hear them just like talking to the mic as they're singing and they're right in front of you but it seems that it it tightened up the sound stage a little bit though it did give a little bit more bass it really just wasn't for me but i like that you do have the option to tune these things if you so choose one thing that might have been nice inside of the marshall app is full control over the eq some of the merchant's bigger speakers give you absolute control over the treble and the bass and you can tune them in with dials while i don't expect there to be dials on the portable speaker with the app connect version i kind of would like to see them being able to bring those dials there then again i probably would just stick with the marshall sound just the default but for people who do want to get in there and tinker and change things it could have been a nice addition now look i'm not saying this speaker is going to be for everyone but for me this is perfect has 360 degree sound with speakers on the front and the back very tactile controls this awesome retro design and it sounds amazing plus great battery with 30 hours and stack mode if you have multiples or combine them with your friends there's a lot of cool stuff here it may be missing out on things like speaker phone mode but i don't care about that i'd rather strap on some headphones than talking through this as a speaker phone there are other devices for that and i don't need it to be my portable speaker that i'm bringing with me i really do like the marshall willen that's coming out too it's very small and has a strap on the back it's a cool device but this is just a perfect sweet spot for me i can almost fit it in like back pocket easily toss in a backpack it's got a little bit of a weight to it but between the base and the extended battery life i think it's worth it let me know what you guys think do you guys like the new marshall emberton 2 do you like the upgrades let me know in the comments or on twitter at andrew underscore osu if you'd like to grab this guy there is a link in the two colorways down below in the description otherwise i'll catch you in the next video youwe need to talk about the marshall emberton 2 because i'm pretty sure i just found the best new portable speaker welcome everybody to apple insider it is andrew here and i've been using the new marshall emerson 2 for a few weeks let's go ahead and take a look at it so yeah this is it this is the updated marshall emberton 2 and in this video i'm going to give you a good review of this covering its sound design and other unique features i'm going to compare it directly to the previous generation marshall emberton and we'll wrap it up by talking about the smart controls using the marshall connect app so let's go ahead and dive into this with the design of the marshall emberton 2. the marshall emergen 2 has a rock solid design and i am not mad in the slightest that very little of the design changed from the first generation unit inside you'll find dual 2 inch full range drivers as well as two passive radiators that are usually used in smaller compact speakers where there's not room for a full vent system that can help out on the low range apple actually uses this in the homepod mini on the front you'll find this really nice all metal grille as well as that marshall word mark in script right there on the front so iconic of all of marshall's speakers on top you're going to have a few different controls on the far left is your bluetooth button you're going to use this for the new stack mode more on that in a minute as well as pairing to a new device in the center is this brass multi-purpose button so it's kind of like a joystick you can press it down to play or pause your music you can move it left or right to skip backwards or forward in your track list and move it up and down to adjust the volume this is a fantastic button they always use these gold brass controls on all of their speakers and i'm very glad they do because it's awesome it feels great it's tactile it's protected by being flush with the outside it's an amazing button and more speaker companies need to use these physical metal buttons like this because it's just so perfect then on the far right you have this battery indicator it looks kind of like a sound bar that's moving up and down with the music but it's actually representing the battery life so in my case i've got three bars which is representing 30 percent of my battery life compared to other speakers that maybe have four little dots on there this is much more emblematic of what you're actually getting in terms of battery because it's much more granular with all those little dots going up much much much better than most of them out there and has a really nice animation as you turn it on where they kind of glow up it's very cool i love the battery indicator on this thing it's nice and solid built in this thing is super durable there's like a silicone material on the outside in this newer version of an update with more of a pebbled texture that looks reminiscent of marshall's actual amps and on stage speakers it looks like that much more now than it did in the past which had more of a smooth coating to it this is more on brand with the marshall style i like the changes to the exterior of this plus it's also made from 50 post consumer recycled materials things like old electronics or plastic bottles so i like that it's more eco-friendly as well as still rugged and durable and it has an ip67 rating which is preventing dust as well as water from getting in here you can actually drop this thing in a meter of water and leave it under water for up to 30 minutes and it's still going to rock on this thing is an exceptionally durable speaker that you can easily take with you anywhere since i didn't mention when we were talking about the controls battery life this thing has a 30 hour battery life depending on your volume i think of getting pretty close to that listing at about half the range of the volume when it's inside you can't turn this up any louder because it gets pretty darn loud so about 30 hours or so on battery life for power it charges up over usbc super handy because again you can use any usbc charger that supports power delivery so anyone that you're using for your mac your ipad all those can plug directly into here and charge it up even a power bank if you have one with you now let's compare the last generation marshall emberton with the new marshall emberton 2. there are a few notable changes here that i want to make sure we cover first is the durability marshall did increase the durability here it had an ipx7 rating and now has an ip67 rating that x that has turned into a six that is the dust resistance so this one the last generation did not promise to protect against the ingress of dust but now it will on the updated model that's going to be great if you plan on taking this thing anywhere where there's going to be a lot of dust or small particles like the beach another change is that exterior material not only is it now that recycled material but you can see it has more of that pebble texture when we're side by side i absolutely like the new look a bit better then we have the upgrade from bluetooth 5 to bluetooth 5.1 if you have a bluetooth 5.1 device you should see better connectivity here there was a couple times that i had some dropouts with that last generation device but overall it was very solid moving to bluetooth 5.1 should only be better for updated devices then there's the battery life the battery life is now 50 more the last generation unit would only last about 20 hours now it's 50 more at the 30 that have already mentioned the biggest difference though is a feature called stack mode and this is pretty sweet so you've got your marshall emberton 2 and your friend also has a marshall emberton too you can bring them together stack them on top of one another to double your sound output basically you triple tap the button on the main one and double tap that bluetooth button on your second one and you bring them together and boom you're in stack mode they will sync together as many of these as you want stack them up like you're looking at a marshall amp and multiply that volume that audio output it's a really really neat feature that i love but it just depends on if you have multiple of these around if you're just buying one for yourself this may be a cool feature that you're never going to use but if any of your friends also buy these you guys can come together for a party stack them together and multiply that output really easily it's an awesome feature that i think is super unique and i'm very excited they built built it in to the new marshall emberton 2. sound wise though not too much changed it sounds pretty darn similar to that first generation version i might be able to tell a difference but i can't tell if i'm just thinking there is because it's an updated device what is nice that you can connect this to the marshall app and control the eq there but we're going to come back to the app in just a few minutes so how is the audio quality on the marshall emberton 2. i really like the sound quality here i mean as soon as you turn this thing on and start playing music it sounds like a martial speaker there's that kind of iconic marshall sound that you pick up after listening to enough of these things and for some people like me it's a reason to choose these speakers over a lot of the other ones that are out there on the market i just love that kind of raw crisp rocky sound that comes out of this is it perfect is it you know super clean like a sono speaker no i wouldn't put it in there it is definitely a stylized sound that comes out of this thing and now it while it's better tuned for rock and instrumental and acoustic tracks it doesn't mean it's bad with anything else i mean i'm listening to pop and rap and r b and all this stuff and it all sounds good and you can even get into the app and adjust the eq to better tune it to the music that you're listening to but personally that marshall style is what i like here and there's some really neat stuff there's not too much bass it is more bass than the smaller willen speaker but there is good bass here but not a huge amount of bass listening to something like the world's smallest violin you can hear the timpani's just throughout this song and everything is clear but it seems to give a better emphasis on the vocals and even the mids and highs than just pushing out a whole bunch of bass it just didn't do it for me in terms of like shake your room base even with the volume all the way up but i appreciate that it's giving that importance to the instruments and the vocals more than anything else especially when you're listening to that world's smallest violin they have those really cool instrumental breaks and they're kind of changing instruments going from a xylophone to a guitar to actual vocals in these breaks as they're going through like the tiny symphony that they're singing about and it just brings that out so much and i i like it i like it a lot this thing sounds pretty darn awesome if you need more bass you're just going to have to go up to a bigger speaker because there's only so much bass you can do in tiny footprint for its size this sounds great with perfectly adequate base let's talk about smart functionality with the marshall connect app once you pair this to your phone you can jump into the marshall connect app that's free to download from the app store and view your speaker there you can do things like perform firmware updates as changes come out to help improve it and you can adjust the eqs that i've mentioned 30 times already in the eqs you can choose between boosting things like the bass and the trouble you can choose the vocals one that gives you more spoken word stuff or just stick with the iconic marshall sound personally i stuck with the marshall one when i switch it to the one that boosts the treble and the bass to me it sounds almost like muddled a little bit when you're on that that standard one the marshall one it sounds like you can hear them just like talking to the mic as they're singing and they're right in front of you but it seems that it it tightened up the sound stage a little bit though it did give a little bit more bass it really just wasn't for me but i like that you do have the option to tune these things if you so choose one thing that might have been nice inside of the marshall app is full control over the eq some of the merchant's bigger speakers give you absolute control over the treble and the bass and you can tune them in with dials while i don't expect there to be dials on the portable speaker with the app connect version i kind of would like to see them being able to bring those dials there then again i probably would just stick with the marshall sound just the default but for people who do want to get in there and tinker and change things it could have been a nice addition now look i'm not saying this speaker is going to be for everyone but for me this is perfect has 360 degree sound with speakers on the front and the back very tactile controls this awesome retro design and it sounds amazing plus great battery with 30 hours and stack mode if you have multiples or combine them with your friends there's a lot of cool stuff here it may be missing out on things like speaker phone mode but i don't care about that i'd rather strap on some headphones than talking through this as a speaker phone there are other devices for that and i don't need it to be my portable speaker that i'm bringing with me i really do like the marshall willen that's coming out too it's very small and has a strap on the back it's a cool device but this is just a perfect sweet spot for me i can almost fit it in like back pocket easily toss in a backpack it's got a little bit of a weight to it but between the base and the extended battery life i think it's worth it let me know what you guys think do you guys like the new marshall emberton 2 do you like the upgrades let me know in the comments or on twitter at andrew underscore osu if you'd like to grab this guy there is a link in the two colorways down below in the description otherwise i'll catch you in the next video you\n"