Why Marshall Speakers Are So Expensive ?

Introduction :

Hi, your favourite roll brand has decided to enter the soundbar world and your TV. Thanks for being here. While most soundbars are black and featureless and quite boring, Marshall gives you just a little bit of flair, making this more of a furniture item or a fashion accessory to your home, with that beautiful crossweave texture pattern they have on them, and just the golden Marshall logo.

Both the Marshall 120 here and the 60 provide all of your normal soundbar creature comforts, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and app control, including support for Dolby Atmos and DTSX.

Heston 120 breakdown :

This is the Hen 120.
It is their flagship model, and it is mid- range. So, it’s not cheap, but for that price, it features a whopping 11 drivers pushing out sound from all directions. It starts with these two midwuffers for lateral sound performance, along with two upward-firing tweeters for that Atmos effect.

It’s got two side-firing drivers for reflecting off the walls to give you that multi-directional sound. And it’s got three front drivers to ensure you can hear those vocal frequencies clearly. And it’s actually got two subwoofers built into the back of it here, so that you get that bass in case you can’t really shell out yet for the subwoofer. Honestly, the subwoofers in here are pretty decent for their form factor and size. We were playing Metal Gear Solids the Phantom Pain, and the rumble from the helicopter and other deep explosions sounded pretty good just on the soundbar alone.

Heston 60 :

This is the Hen 60. This is about half the price of the 120, and instead of 11 drivers, you’re only getting seven, and you don’t get any upward-firing Atmos speakers with this. You just get the sidefiring ones. What you do get, though, is pretty much the same sound signature. Honestly, wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the 120 and the 60 at low volumes. The only big giveaway is that there’s a bit more spatial dissemination of the audio on the 120.

Impression of the 120 vs 60 :

You’re definitely getting a lot more with the 120 versus the 60. They both sound good, but like this one definitely is, there’s an immediate effect on your ears putting this one in. Both the 60 and the 120 actually have these four different modes, which we find very useful. It’s got music, movie, voice, and night mode. In a nutshell, night mode just kind of compresses those louder peaks and low bass frequencies so that it’s not traveling through the walls and stays in your watching area.

And then there’s voice mode, which allows you to focus the mid-range and push that forward in the mix a little bit more. Both these sound bars also calibrate themselves. You do have to go in the app to enable it, but we would highly recommend it. You will notice a distinct difference after calibration, as long as your room has decent acoustics, and you push the button to do it. The H 60 and the 120 do differentiate themselves in a few distinct ways.

The H 60 here comes in both the black and this beautiful cream colour. It’s also much smaller, so that could have a distinct difference in how it fits aesthetically in your space and pairs up with the size of your TV. You don’t want things to be completely out of proportion. We’d say for a 65-in TV as we have here, you definitely benefit from a bigger soundbar. It looks more proportional. Here’s the H 60. You can see it’s a baby soundbar, but gosh, we think it’s a little dwarfed by this giant TV.

What’s really cool about the Hessen 60 that differentiates it from the 120 is that you can also mount it on the wall. All you have to do, curiously enough, you can actually detach the logo. It’s just magnetized on there. So, we think you just Yeah, you just magnet it there and then put the control panel and put it upside down like that. There you go. We had to fix it a little bit. Now you’ve got a a wall oriented version. There are a few features you can access on the app that you can’t physically do on the soundbar itself.

Yes, the 120 has a bass and treble knob here, but on the app, you can actually access their full equalization settings so that you can really tweak it to what you want. Also, for voice and night mode, if it’s just a little bit too much for you, you can dial back the effect on the app and have a little bit more control.

Heston 200 Subwoofer – Do you need it?

So, do you need the sub with these sound bars? Our personal answer is that you should always have a sub with your soundbar, but we know that different people’s budgets are only going to allow so much. We would say if you’re going to get the 120, get it without the sub first, just to see if it’s enough for you, and you can add it later. With the H 60, both the soundbar and the H 200 here are the same price. So, you could basically just get the 60 with the sub for the same price as the 120, and you will be able to extend to lower frequencies than the actual 120 would. The Heston 200 here is no slouch.

It’s pretty capable. All of the air pressure comes out of the bottom here. So, like when you’re looking at it on the sides and stuff, it’s like, where’s the sound actually coming out of? It’s coming through the bottom. And it will definitely shake the ground it sits on. We put a little tissue just to show you what that looks like. We did compare it to our KEF KC62, but that sub is over twice, well over twice the price of this, so it’s a bit of an unfair comparison. The H 200 here is a it’s a good sub.

We wish it had just been a smidge louder. We wish it were just a smidge more powerful. But if you’re trying to complete that Marshall look, you kind of have to go with this because it’s the only thing that really matches. Despite the simple controls on the back, just the volume knob, your input, and a setup button, you can actually change the crossover on the app for when you want it to take over the low frequencies from your soundbar. And you can also change the phase control, which could be critical, for people who care more about audio than we usually do.

Connection-wise, the H 60 and the 120 are the same in the digital realm. Physical connections are a little bit different. On the 60, you just have a 3.5 millimeter aux input, so if you want to put something back there, you could. Other than that, though, it’s just the HDMI ERC to go to your TV and the standard sub out cable. For the 120, you get an additional HDMI pass-through cable, so you could pass through 4K 120 Hz. It also has RCA inputs, so you could maybe hook up a record player.

We did we also wanted to provide you with a sound sample. We only have one other soundbar, and that’s the KZO, which is way more expensive than the H’s, but that way you can, you know, you can hear what a soundbar sounds like in comparison to something half as expensive. It’s a mono recording with our microphone, so you’re not going to be able to hear all the differences, but here you go.

Conclusion :

So, which one should you get? Obviously, if you’re looking at Marshall sound bars, the looks are probably a huge determining factor for you. It’s definitely one of the most beautiful sound bars we have seen on the market. Here’s what we would say.

If you’re an audio file, you should definitely go for the 120. We think if you got the 60, you might be a little disappointed with the spatial dispersion of the sound. The 120 is going to have the Atmos speakers. It’s it has a couple more drivers in it. It’s just going to give you that bigger sound.

You’re going to hear a little bit more. But if you’re just trying to have fun and you think that the H style is really cute, we would recommend the 60, you know, especially if you have a smaller TV, and you can also put in the sub for the same price as the bigger one.

If we were to repeat our purchase as a consumer, we would, and we really wanted the Marshall look, we would go for the 120, and we would wait on the sub until we felt like we needed the sub. So, what do you think? Do you like what Marshall’s doing? Are you hoping they push out some rear speakers so we can get an even more immersive sound experience? Do you think this is a hit or a miss for them?

Will getting the Marshall Hest make us switch out from our K soundbar and sub? No. Those were way more expensive. We’d be a fool. You know, even if we’re lying to ourselves because the Marshall H sounded good. We’re still not going to switch them out. Like, we think the KEF is better, but it’s tremendously more expensive. So that’s our reasoning. So anyways, if you made it to the end.

Let us know if you’re going to buy one. So thanks for being here.