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The iconic black and gold tones of Marshall speakers are such that I never miss it when I spot it in someone’s living room or even in an advert for another product. Apart from its unique aesthetics, the British company has been well-known for delivering amazing acoustics for more than six decades. While most of its lifespan has been spent producing pro-level amplifiers, it’s been since 2010 that the brand started building personal audio gadgets. The latest in this series is the Marshall Motif II ANC, which I’ve been using over the last two weeks.
Design
Rugged luxe is the term that comes to mind when I unpack the Marshall Motif II ANC case. The case has a cracked leather-style finish, with the cursive logo across it in white. The pairing button rests just below the logo, with a green indicator above it. The company says that both the case and the buds are made from 70 per cent post-consumer recycled plastic, including used electronics, water bottles and automotive light covers.
Acoustics
The sound while streaming most music is as well-balanced as they come. But for people who are partial to the bass profile while streaming music might find it a bit flat to begin with. However, unlike the Middleton speaker I reviewed sometime ago, this one actually lets me customise the sound profile once I hook it up to the app. While listening to the Set Me Free Pt.2 by Jimin of BTS, his trademark tenor tones come through clearly, but the punchier bits of the instrumentals feel a bit lost. Happily enough, customisations are aplenty on the app with the Marshall Motif II ANC.
Most of the usual functions — single tap to play and pause, double-tap to skip forward, are hardwired and cannot be tweaked. What’s customisable is the long press on each earbud and I set mine to tweaking volume. The other options include tweaking noise control levels or accessing the equaliser through a long press.
One thing that stands out is that there’s a significant change in acoustics when I switch between ANC on and off. Usually, with ANC earbuds like this (hyperlink to Apple AirPods review), once ANC kicks in there’s a noticeable seal-in effect along with music taking over and drowning out any ambient noise. However, with the Motif II there’s an additional aspect of the audio itself feeling a bit more tinny when I switch ANC off, and noticeably getting boomier when I turn ANC on. In addition, as I toggle through the three levels of noise cancellation, I find no significant difference. Even with the highest ANC level set, I can hear faint banter coming from a cabin almost 20 meters away.
The runtime that the company promises for the buds is 6 hours of wireless playtime on a single charge. In my experience, the earbuds did live up the promised battery life as I plugged in to stream music from Spotify as well take some work calls.
With a fully charged case, the buds deliver up to 30 hours of listening time. There’s a quick charge feature that also charges the buds in 15 minutes to deliver an extra hour of playtime.
Verdict
The aspects of the Marshall Motif II ANC that work in its favour are its unique design language, crystal clear audio, tonnes of customisations on the app and decent battery life. Things that I wish were slightly better on these buds are a better (maybe one-step) indication of volume going up/down when I long-press each bud. I’d also have liked it to have more effective ANC considering the TWS buds available in the Indian market, in this price range and lower, do manage to offer great seal-ins.
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