When it comes to Bluetooth speakers, style and good sound quality don’t go together as frequently as you’d like them to. Enter the Marshall Stanmore II Voice, keen to buck that trend and offer some powerful sounds while still looking pretty great. Oh, and Alexa is built-in too for good measure.
It’s a pretty great speaker although, as you’ll see in a moment, the Alexa integration is more of a novelty than a core feature. Here’s what we made of our time with it.
The Design
Marshall’s guitar amps are some of the most recognized in the world so it’s hardly surprising that the Marshall Stanmore II Voice takes that familiar look and merely tweaks it a little to fit the home speaker appearance.
It has a meaty looking presence to it. It looks expensive and is suitably heavy at just over 10 pounds and at 13.78 x 7.68 x 7.28 inches it’s a decent size too. Hefty enough to pack a punch, but small enough that you can still put it somewhere in your living space without feeling like it’s dominating the space. There’s no need to make concessions in exchange for portability, as this speaker requires mains powers to run. As a little nod to Marshall’s pedigree, there’s even room for the legend ‘EST 1962’ to be embossed across the fascia, just to remind you of its heritage.
The sense of class continues with how the knobs work on top of the device. There are dials for volume, bass, and treble with LED indicators that light up to reflect their position. There’s a weighty feel to them too, so don’t be surprised when you childishly tweak them at first just for the sake of it. Elsewhere on top is a 3.5mm auxiliary analog input, a source selector button, play/pause, and a mute/unmute button for the mic so Alexa doesn’t have to listen to everything you say.
The back of the device offers a pair of RCA analog inputs and a bass reflex port. Wireless connectivity offers up Bluetooth, Wi-Fi play, and Spotify Connect. Things can be almost as varied as you want them to be, although I expect most people to opt for the Bluetooth connectivity a lot of the time.
