In years gone by, the name Marshall conjured images of a huge number of speakers stacked high on a stage. These days, though, you’re just as likely to see the British brand’s logo emblazoned across portable Bluetooth speakers as you are a massive guitar amp.
There are several of these diminutive boomboxes in the growing Marshall range, giving music fans the chance to carry that iconic look and sound with them wherever they go.
Launched in August 2024, the Marshall Emberton III is the latest of these portable Bluetooth speakers, and the follow-up to the successful Emberton II that was released in May 2022. That was a pretty solid speaker, so why should you consider its successor?
In this review, I’ll give you the lowdown on the Emberton III’s design, features, sound quality and competitors, to help you decide if it’s worthy of your money.
Design
The first thing that struck me when the Emberton III arrived in the post was how small the outer packaging was. It’s about the size of a brick – which makes it ideal for fitting into a Christmas stocking, but did make me wonder whether the speaker inside would provide the power I need. I’ll let you know about that later in the review.
Kudos to Marshall for the way they’ve packaged the Emberton III. It’s all very neat and tidy, with the unit itself clothed in soft polystyrene, and the cable and instructions contained in separate compartments.
As for the speaker itself – I've reviewed the Sage version (the Emberton III also comes in Black & Brass and Cream), and it looks absolutely lovely. Although not particularly rock'n’roll, the colour scheme is modern and stylish and provides a nice contrast to the trademark Marshall grille and gold/brass logo. The rubbery casing has an aesthetically pleasing, snakeskin-look effect too.
Speaking of the casing, it has a solid feel to it, which you might expect from a firm that’s renowned for making robust studio and stage equipment. This undoubtedly contributes to the speaker’s heavy feel (it’s 0.67kg) – don’t worry, though, as the Emberton III is still easy to carry around, even without a handle.
Marshall report 27% of the Emberton III is made from plastic (79% of which is recycled plastic). This is interesting because the speaker doesn’t feel at all plasticky. Holding it in my hand, it felt like one tough cookie – and this is backed up by its IP67 dust and waterproof rating, which means you can submerge it in three feet of water for up to 30 minutes... if you really want to!
In terms of controls, at the top of the unit there’s a gold/brass rocker switch (up or down for volume; left or right for skip tracks), on/off and Bluetooth pairing buttons, plus a bright, red battery status bar.
While I don’t have a major aversion to the rocker switch, I would prefer a proper knob for adjusting volume – but that’s just personal preference. You can also control the speaker using the Marshall Bluetooth app – I’ll talk more about that in the next section.
Last but not least, there’s a USB-C socket on the side of the device for when you want to charge the battery or power it via the mains.
Features
As previously mentioned, the Emberton III can be controlled using the Marshall Bluetooth app. This allows you to play/skip tracks and adjust the volume, which is useful for when you’re not standing close to the speaker.
Elsewhere, there are three equaliser presets to choose from – which I’ll talk about more in the ‘Sound’ section below – and a Battery Preservation feature, which enables you to do things like limit the maximum charging speed in order to prolong the battery’s lifespan.
Speaking of the battery, the amount of play time you’ll get from a two-hour full charge is one of the Emberton III’s key selling points. You can expect 32+ hours, which is roughly two hours more than the Emberton II, and more than twice the longevity of the original Emberton speaker.
What’s more, if the speaker’s completely out of juice and you don’t have time to charge it fully before going out, you can plug it in for just 20 minutes and expect to get six hours of playtime – which should be enough to soundtrack your whole day.
Helping the Emberton III to preserve battery is its support for the power-efficient Bluetooth 5.3 LE (low energy) standard, which is an upgrade on the Emberton II’s Bluetooth 5.1. This latest speaker also supports Bluetooth multipoint connectivity, which means you can connect more than one device (phone, tablet, etc) at the same time.
Another way in which the Emberton III trumps its predecessors is in the microphone department – put simply, this speaker has one while the others didn’t. This means you can now use the speaker for hands-free calls, and also communicate with the voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc) on your phone.
As for what’s inside this speaker, the Emberton III packs two 2” 10W drivers, two passive radiators and two 38W Class D amplifiers. To find out how well these components perform together, carry on reading.
Sound
When I turned the Emberton III on, it cranked into life by playing a short electric guitar riff. It’s a nice touch and lets you know that the speaker is ready to rock and roll.
To test its sound quality, I started off with an HD version of Oasis track Cigarettes And Alcohol. As those iconic first chords began to chug through the front and back grilles, I was immediately struck by how loud this portable speaker could go. The bass is also really impressive for a unit of this size – tinny it most certainly ain’t. For me, the most satisfactory equaliser preset was the standard ‘Marshall’ one, as it offered the most balanced output. I felt that ‘Push’ was a little too heavy on the bass, while ‘Voice’ accentuated the mid ranges too much.
On to Walk This Way by Run DMC and Aerosmith. Again, nice weighty bass. However, listening to this track backed up a feeling I’d got while listening to the Oasis song – that the output, and especially the bottom end, isn’t quite as spacious or as clear as I like it to be. Indeed, if I’m being honest, when I subsequently played Walk This Way on my 2nd Generation Amazon Echo, I preferred how it sounded. OK, so it lacked the ballsy bass of Marshall’s speaker, but for me the music was given much more room to breathe.
I’m not dismissing the Emberton III – far from it. It’s a lovely-looking speaker that offers terrific power, hefty bass and outstanding battery life. I just can’t shake off the feeling that the sound could be a tad clearer.
The alternatives
That thing I mentioned about the Emberton III not sounding as good as my Amazon Echo? Well, that speaker is pretty old now, so you might want to try Amazon’s We Hear 2 instead. Made in tandem with German brand Loewe, it’s a similar size to the Echo but can be used out and about. It offers 17 hours of battery life and packs a whopping 60W of power.
If you’re happy to spend more money, then the Bose Soundlink Max must be considered. This portable powerhouse provides superb stereo sound and more than enough oomph to fill a room – even if the 20-hour battery life is down on what the Emberton III offers.
Read more
- Best Marshall headphones: Top picks from across the range
- Best Marshall speakers: Speakers from the guitar-amp giant
