Marshall Heston 120 soundbar review: Massive TV sound from a rock’n’roll legend

Marshall, the iconic UK-based guitar amp company, has finally taken the leap from wireless headphones, earbuds, and Bluetooth speakers into the world of TV audio with its first soundbar. And it’s a Dolby Atmos and DTS-X doozy.

The Marshall Heston 120 is big, brash, and has a price to match. That makes the Heston more expensive than soundbar heavyweights like Sony, Bose, and Sonos, which means that Marshall can’t rest on the power of its brand — the Heston 120 must deliver a powerful home theater experience to be ranked among the best soundbars.

Spoiler: It does. It may not be perfect, but if you’re in the market for a simple yet high-performance TV speaker, the Heston 120 should be on your shortlist.

Marshall Heston 120 review: Design

Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

Take a look at literally any of Marshall’s audio products, and you will see the company’s guitar amp heritage proudly echoed for all to see. And despite the fact that the Heston 120 is a soundbar, not a dedicated music speaker, I’d argue it’s one of the most authentic-looking Marshall home products so far.

Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your taste.

I’ll be honest, when I first unboxed the 43-inch wide Heston 120 and found myself staring at its many gold-tone accents — especially those unique top control knobs — I worried it would prove too visually distracting. After all, when you’re watching a movie, the screen should be the only thing you’re looking at.

One month later, I’m still aware of the tops of those knobs, but I’ve also become quite fond of seeing the Heston in front of our TV, whether we’re watching content or not.

The black cabinet, with its faux-leather construction, distinctive Marshall logo, and salt’n’pepper fabric grille (which Marshall insists on calling a ‘fret’) — it’s not just a soundbar, it’s a conversation piece.

Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

At three inches tall, it looks great sitting on a surface (and it probably won’t block the bottom of your screen), but you can also wall-mount it with an optional set of brackets that Marshall sells separately.

I don’t tend to get very physical with my soundbars, but if you’re concerned about how the Heston deals with rough handling, apparently, the fret, end caps, drivers, and even the circuit boards are all replaceable.

Those top-mounted controls really help evoke the guitar amp vibe, and I love the red LED ring indicators that surround them. But having them as the only visual indicator for things like source, volume, and tone might not be the right call. When seated on our sofa, they’re invisible, and the Heston 120 doesn’t have a front-facing alternative.

Marshall Heston 120 review: Set up

Unboxing the Marshall Heston 120 soundbar.
Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

Getting the Heston set up couldn’t be easier. Once you plug the speaker into your TV via an HDMI cable and then plug it into the wall with the power cord (both included in the box), you’re pretty much good to go, at least for TV sound. You can control the volume using your TV’s remote.

But don’t stop there.

Download the Marshall app (iOS/Android) and let it walk you through the quick process of getting the Heston connected to your Wi-Fi network. Doing so will enable Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and a variety of other handy features, including the soundbar’s built-in room correction process, which takes less than two minutes to complete.

Because the Heston doesn’t ship with its own remote, the app is also the way you’ll control the speaker’s source (TV/HDMI/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/Aux-in) and sound mode (music/movies/night/voice) from your sofa.

Marshall Heston 120 review: Connections and Controls

Around the back of the Heston 120, you’ll find one of the most extensive collections of ports I’ve seen on a soundbar at this price. In addition to the standard HDMI-eARC port, you get an HDMI input (with HDMI 2.1 including Dolby Vision and 4K/120Hz passthrough), a set of analog RCA inputs, and a mono subwoofer output.

Seriously, so many ports.
Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

The HDMI input is very handy—it helps to offset the HDMI port on your TV needed for the soundbar’s connection. But it’s the subwoofer output and stereo inputs that deserve a special call-out. Sony, Bose, Sonos, Samsung, and LG — these brands all offer subwoofers for their soundbars, but you’re limited to the wireless models that they manufacture. With the Heston 120, you can use any subwoofer with a wired input.

Those other brands occasionally include an optical input — great for connecting a CD player or network music streamer — but an analog input is a rarity, and it’s more flexible, letting you connect those digital devices as well as a purely analog source like a turntable (if you have a preamp).

There’s also a USB-C port, but this is just for power. Why is it there? A stick-style streamer like the Amazon Fire TV Stick could occupy the HDMI input and draw its power from the USB-C port, for a super-clean installation.

On the networking side of the equation, the Heston supports both wired Ethernet (10/100) and Wi-Fi 6. With Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, UPnP, Tidal Connect, and Spotify Connect, the Heston can play almost any source of music you have access to, at very high resolutions.

Finally, you also get Bluetooth 5.3 with support for SBC, AAC, and LC3 codecs for ad-hoc audio streaming from a mobile device.

As I said earlier, the Heston’s controls are aesthetically beautiful. They’re also a joy to use, with a delightful knurled finish and the sort of precise tactile feedback I’ve come to expect from Marshall’s excellent wireless speakers. The three main knobs (volume/tone/source) are accompanied by three preset buttons and a sound mode button (more on these later).

Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

Their proud, highly visible presence on the speaker’s top surface hints at the fact that Marshall places an equal emphasis on music listening.

There’s no way to mute the volume, but the source knob doubles as a playback control, with a single click to play/pause, a double click to skip forward, and a triple click to skip back.

Like many soundbars these days, there’s no power button. Once you plug it in, the Heston is effectively on all of the time, though it hangs out in a low-power standby mode when it hasn’t been actively used in a while.

Marshall Heston 120 review: Great for movies and TV shows

Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

Under the hood, the Heston 120 sports 11 discrete drivers and amps. And though that’s fewer than you’ll find in the Sonos Arc Ultra ($999, 14 drivers/15 amps), Marshall’s soundbar can easily compete with the Ultra for raw power and emotion.

With frequencies that get as low as 40Hz, the two built-in subwoofers generate the kind of deep low-end that lends itself to both movies and music. They provide a decent level of power — Max Rockatansky’s opening monologue in Mad Max: Fury Road comes across as deep and gravelly, as it should —  though it stops short of the Arc Ultra’s impressive low frequency energy. 

My other go-to Dolby Atmos test clips from No Time To Die, Dune, and Unbroken proved that the Heston 120 is a capable spatial audio speaker, with good width, depth, and height. In Movie mode, dialogue clarity is strong and gets clearer when you use the dedicated Voice sound mode. Once again, the Arc Ultra proved more agile, with better definition for surround sound effects.

The Marshall app is commendable for its simplicity. Most of the settings are all accessible from the homescreen, but I found myself wishing for a few more adjustments. A notable omission is the lack of individual channel levels, especially for the height drivers. To get the most out of the Heston’s Dolby Atmos capabilities, I had to drive it loud. At 50 percent volume, the virtual surround channels and height effects lacked oomph. At 75 percent, they roared to life. With more control over these channels, I suspect I could have heard them better, even at a lower overall volume.

Credit: https://mashable.com/review/sonos-arc-ultra-soundbar

As you might expect, adding a wired sub improves the whole experience. In my case, with an Energy S8.2 sub, it added significant power to the lows. The soundbar diverts all frequencies lower than 50Hz to the sub, a setting that Marshall says will be adjustable with a future firmware update. Curiously, when you connect a sub, the app doesn’t prompt you to recalibrate the room correction — possibly because it doesn’t really control any of the sub’s parameters other than the frequencies it receives.

It’s worth noting that the Heston 120 also supports DTS-X, a Dolby Atmos competitor. I tried a few DTS-X demo clips, and they sounded amazing. However, DTS-X fans may want to double-check the specs on their favorite DTS-X movies. While the Heston had no trouble decoding Dolby Atmos at up to 9.1.6 channels, its DTS-X decoding proved to be more limited.

Marshall says it will downmix DTS-X 7.1.4 to 5.1.2, but when I ran a channel-by-channel test, the soundbar skipped the rear height and side surrounds.

Marshall Heston 120 review: For Music

I’ve reviewed a lot of soundbars, and it’s rare for them to do as good a job with music as they do with movies. The Heston 120 is one of those rarities: Listening to streaming music is a blast. 

I credit the Heston’s built-in subwoofers for the sound, which has a warm tone when using the default Music mode. It can get remarkably loud, with no noticeable distortion, even when playing tracks like Billie Eilish’s bad guy — a torture test for low-end fidelity. Marshall doesn’t discuss how it processes two-channel stereo, but I’m fairly certain there’s some upmixing happening to take advantage of the soundbar’s multiple drivers. Instead of getting a phantom center channel, it’s a much more expansive soundstage. I happen to like it, but if you don’t, there’s no way to alter it.

Your best bet is to use the lossless, Wi-Fi-based Google Cast protocol from apps like Amazon Music or Qobuz on an iPhone. Alternatively, if you’re on Android, you can also Google Cast Apple Music. Tidal users can leverage the Tidal Connect system from either platform.

Equally good are music apps on a connected streaming device like an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.

Finally, if you don’t mind a lossy connection, Apple AirPlay and Bluetooth are also available.

If you’ve never heard Dolby Atmos Music on a speaker system, you’re in for a treat. Fire up a track like M.I.A.’s Marigold, or the excellent Atmos version of The Doors’ classic, Riders On The Storm, and I suspect you’ll seek out Atmos content at every opportunity.

The only downside to Atmos on the Heston is the way the speaker handles volume levels. For some reason, Atmos content plays much quieter than two-channel mixes. If you’re listening to an entire Atmos album (say, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms), it’s no problem. But bounce between Atmos and stereo, and you’ll be wishing Marshall had included a remote control to help you stay on top of the volume changes.

Those preset buttons (both on top of the speaker and in the app) are handy, but limited. You can program with any radio station from the Marshall app’s built-in Airable Internet radio service, or any Spotify station or playlist. Unfortunately, the Spotify integration didn’t work for me while using a free subscription, and there’s no way to use the presets with other services like Apple Music, Tidal, or Amazon Music.

Marshall Heston 120 review: Sound adjustments

Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

Like most soundbars at this price, the Heston 120 has built-in room calibration. The effectiveness of this feature can depend on a lot of factors, like room shape and size, furniture placement, the capabilities of the soundbar, and the algorithms used to do the calibration. In my case, the Heston’s calibration helped to reduce some bass muddiness while increasing high-frequency definition.

If you’re not happy with the calibration, you can repeat the process or disable it entirely. Either way, you’ve also got two more options to fine-tune the sound.

The speaker’s sound modes deliver an instant change of emphasis, and each input (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc) will remember the last mode you applied. Movie mode boosts lows and highs for more cinematic punch. Music mode keeps things balanced for a more neutral presentation. Night reduces dynamic range, so you’re less likely to bother neighbors or family members, and Voice de-emphasizes lows and lower-mids while boosting the frequencies that belong to dialogue.

However, each sound mode can be further tweaked by using the bass/treble knob. Push it once to swap between these adjustments, then spin the dial.

If you really want to get granular, the Marshall app lets you manually tweak a five-band equalizer. These changes can be done per mode (different tweaks for Music vs. Movie, for instance), but they can’t be saved if you try different combos.

Marshall Heston 120 review: Untapped potential

Credit: Simon Cohen / Mashable

Most high-end soundbars either come with their own wireless surround speakers and a subwoofer (LG, Samsung, JBL) or they’re designed with expansion in mind (Sonos, Bose). At the moment, the Heston 120 offers neither, but Marshall says that will change soon.

A dedicated wireless sub is on the way, and the plan is to let users expand the Heston via Marshall’s line of third-gen Homeline portable Bluetooth speakers — all the way from the tiny Emberton III to the Woburn II.

I didn’t get to test this capability, so I can’t say how it performs compared to existing solutions. Marshall says it will use Bluetooth Auracast as its wireless protocol for these add-on speakers, which is an industry first for a soundbar. Time will tell if it’s as reliable and effective as Wi-Fi.

Is the Marshall Heston 120 worth it?

Yes. Considering its price, design, features, and performance, the Heston 120 is an excellent choice for a single-speaker home theater sound system. While not as precise or immersive as the Sonos Arc Ultra for movies, its support for DTS:X, HDMI input, and wired subwoofer output make it a more versatile choice. It’s also a superb music speaker that offers the highest quality wireless streaming protocols (like Google Cast), so you can get up to 24-bit/96kHz resolution from your music, something the Arc Ultra can’t do.

Enthusiasts may wish for more control, especially around two-channel stereo and individual channel levels, but if you’re among the set-it-and-forget-it crowd, I doubt you’ll mind this at all.

Finally, there’s the potential for discrete surround and subwoofer additions via Marshall’s range of existing Bluetooth speakers. It’s always a bit iffy to buy a product for its promised features, but if this comes to fruition, it could make the Heston 120 one of the most compelling soundbars on the market.

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Credit: Marshall

Marshall Heston 120 soundbar

$999

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Marshall Heston 120 review: Just the specs

• Dimensions: 43.3 x 5.7 x 3.0 inches

• Wall-mountable: Yes, wall-mount sold separately

• Remote included: No

• Number/type of drivers: 11 (2 tweeters, 5 full-range, 2 mid-woofers, 2 subwoofers)

• Number/power of amps: 11 class D (2 x 50 watts, 9 x 30 watts)

• Channels/configuration: 5.1.2

• Ports: HDMI eARC, HDMI IN (Pass through), RCA Stereo, RCA Mono (Sub Out), USB-C

• Video specs/formats: HDMI 2.1 eARC, 4K 120 Hz, Dolby Vision, HDCP 1.4

• Wired/Wireless networking: Bluetooth 5.3/Wi-Fi 6, Ethernet (10/100)

• Wi-Fi streaming platforms: Apple AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect

• Bluetooth codecs: SBC, AAC, LC3

• Audio codecs: MPEG-4, ALAC, FLAC, LPCM, Ogg, Vorbis, WMA, WMA9 

• Audio formats: Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital, DTS-X

• Expandable: via Auracast (future update)

• In the box: soundbar, HDMI cable, power cable, Quick-start guide

• Colors: Black