MarshallEmberton II Portable Bluetooth Speaker, Black & Brass

I am very pleased with this purchase. It has that certain crispness of sound that sets apart good quality speakers from generic ones. I am not a total audiophile, but I do have a couple of cheaper little BT speakers, a tailgate speaker, and also a Bose unit, the non-portable kind with a remote and clock display that might be called a shelf speaker (?).I am very impressed with the clarity and quality of sound produced by this little speaker! Of course, if you need something that gets super loud, or has deep subwoofer bass, then this isn't the one for you, but no small portable BT speaker would do those things either. For a small BT speaker, this one has way better sound than expected. There might be better out there, but I am sure they would cost a lot more. I think this was a good value for the price.Once paired, this speaker connects quickly to the phone. Within seconds after turning it on, the audio playing on the phone routes to this speaker. So it is much faster to connect than the other speakers I own for comparison.There's one button on the top to control the power and other functions. There is also a phone app, but I have not felt the need to use the app. So far, it sounds good to me as-is. One unique feature is that the silicone sleeve around the sides can be removed and replaced with a new one. I was concerned about buying the white speaker, afraid that dirt or stains might eventually be a problem. Thankfully, if that happens, I can just buy a replacement sleeve. Or, buy one if I want this to be a different color or have a strap. I have also purchased a hard-shell case elsewhere to store this in. That's another good thing about this speaker, you can find cases advertised that fit it.My only slight complaint about this item is that when you power it on or off it makes a somewhat jarring electric guitar type of sound. Yes, that is quite on-brand for this company. I don't hate the sound, but I suspect a lot of people would.

I compared the Marshall Emberton II head-to-head with Klipsch Nashville and Bose SoundLink Flex (2nd Gen) across 35 songs in 7 genres. 1980's Pop, Classic Rock, Classical Symphony, Contemporary Jazz, New Orleans Style Jazz, Opera, and Vocal.The Marshall Emberton II came in first place 70% of the time. The Marshall Emberton II performed 2nd place on 3 of the 4 songs that performed best with Klipsch Nashville.The Klipsch Nasvhille is claimed to be better with YouTube influencers and I found it did not dominate any genre and only won the best performance for 4 of the songs. The Klipsch Nashville came in second place 50% of the time and very surprisingly came in last place 40% of the time. It does not live up to the hype.The consistently great performance of the Marshall Emberton II convinced me to keep it for the long-term and is a solid performer.The YouTube videos has the Klipsch Nashville far ahead but the videos seem to miss the volume balance between devices. The YouTube videos show 50% volume on one device is not the same as 50% volume on another device. It is true the Klipsch Nasville is louder at all levels but sound quality hands down puts the Marshall Emberton II ahead. I do not need a speaker that has only volume, I rarely if ever live at 100% volume. I am not throwing raging parties. if y ou need the volume spend more on a larger speaker.I ended up keeping the Marshall Emberton II and Bose SoundLink Flex (2nd Gen) and returned the Klipsch Nashville.Marshall Emberton II dominated Classic Rock, Classical Symphony, Contemporary Jazz, New Orleans Style Jazz, and Vocal.Bose SoundLink Flex (2nd Gen) dominated Opera and it was worth it to me to keep the Bose for that reason.1980's was a hot mess and all over the place with these units. I think a lot of people would say the same about 1980's music in general anyway. LOLEDIT: added (2nd Gen) for clarity on which version I tested.

A few months ago I had an epiphany. When I was a kid my father loved to have the best in sound equipment in the house, and I would play with graphic equalizers and lay in the floor looking for the best position between the giant speakers to experiment how to better enjoy the music.Today, I hear music in monophonic audio in an old JBL Charge 3 speaker (don't tell my dad, he would be ashame of me).So I started to get better equipment. Now, I live in a small apartment with thin walls in a 3rd floor, so, big amplifiers and so are out of the question, but at least I could get better bluetooth speakers, so I tried the Marshall Emberton II.To say that I impressed with the sound would be an understatement. With out-of-the-box settings, the sound is more than detailed. 80s and 90s music sound outstanding although, Peter Cetera's Glory of Love and Toto's Africa vocals sound as I never heard them before, they are sharp and strong, sometimes detracting just a little from the overall sound (keywords here, really, just a little).This brings me to my first recommendation: do not mess with your applications equalizers if you don't know what you are doing. This speakers were clearly designed to use the manufacturer equalizer settings (more on this later). I have youtube music and amazon prime music (yeah, I know, no spotify), and my sound with the latter was to heavy on bass, to the point of drowning the music and feeling almost distorting. Tron: Legacy's soundtrack sounded specially dreadful, as Daftpunk uses heavy bass in their electronic music for that specific music. I then set the equalization in Amazon Prime Music to flat. It was a different performance altogether. I could ever hear some slight effects they used, that I had not noticed before.Now, one down for the application. Bluetooth pairing used Google Fast Pair, which was seamless and impressive (it shows appears to be a custom Marshall little window, so, it looks cool), but the application takes forever to actually "discover" the device, even when it is already paired.When it finally discover it (which was not too long, but took a couple of turning on and off the speaker), the application notified me of a firmware upgrade, which I proceeded to install. The installation failed miserably, so, I temporarily stopped that effort, which I retook successfully a day later. The update was surprisingly big in size, taking around 5 minutes to download, and the application simply marked the update successful while the speaker was still rebooting, which took a few seconds more than what I feel comfortable with, but it went through, and after that, the application again took surprisingly long to detect the speaker.To end that topic, the equalization settings are definitely underwhelming, with only three modes: Marshall, Voice and Push, of which I have only tried Marshall as everybody else says that Voice is just for podcast and such and Push increases bass at the expense of all the other sound bands quality.Lesson learned: unless too picky, when using this speaker, leave your apps equalizers on flat, their profile is that good.Now, to the hardware itself, people will notice this little wonder. Using the nostalgia factor with the Marshall amplifier design was a touch of genius, and the brass button on top is the cherry on top. Some reviews complain about a single button approach to multifunction (power, volume, forward-back, bluetooth pairing has another almost invisible button, which fits because you are not changing your pairing frequently). If we can handle touch control on over-head and in-ear speakers, this button is a piece of cake.My only complain in this department is that, at least for me, an old guy, the signs indicating the functions around the button, being carved in the black speaker, which has texture, are for all intent and purposes invisible, but once you get accustomed, an use the logo as a positional reference that's not a problem anymore.And finally, the little caveat. Single speaker, stereo sound. Let that sink in.Done? Ok, they achieve this trick by separating the sound left and right with drivers back and front respectively (or was it the other way around? well, you get my point). Stereo suffers a little (not too much) because both sources are incredibly close, but it brings this caveat. This speaker should not be set as others, against walls, like in shelf, and so, because you end up drowning one side.The best position for this speaker is in the center of the audio stage, and if you want to appreciate the sound, you should point one side (not the front or back) to you. that way both sources are equally distanced from you so you get a better balance.If you are ok with the caveats this product is worth the price, I definitely recommend it.