Marshall has carved out quite an interesting niche for itself in the speaker market. All their products, from headphones to speakers, are rich in modern features but wrapped in a classic retro style that’s hard to miss. One of the latest speakers to come out of their London headquarters, the Marshall Stanmore III is no exception – it’s a modern Bluetooth stereo speaker with an old soul. In this review, I’ll test the speaker out, evaluate it sound quality, set up, and operation, talk about what it’s good for and not so good for, by telling you if I think I can recommend it for you.
Marshall Stanmore III
Summary
Overall, the Marshall Stanmore III is a stylish and powerful Bluetooth speaker with great sound quality. It also has intuitive controls via both the manual buttons on top of the speaker and through the app, which makes it easy to set up and use.
Pros
- Great sound
- Powerful
- Cool retro knobs/controls
- Wireless connection to phone
- Nice design
- Solid bass, adjustable EQ
Cons
- No smart home features
- Not truly portable
- App controls are very limited
Design
Like most Marshall products, the Stanmore III is designed to resemble a guitar amp from the company’s heyday in the 1980s. It has a classic design with a modern appeal with its black, brown, and cream color scheme options, all with a subtle hint of brass.
Size and Weight
| Height | 8 inches |
| Width | 13.8 inches |
| Depth | 7.4 inches |
| Weight | 9.4 lbs |
The speaker is portable, or maybe ‘easily moveable’ is a better term since it can be relocated but it’s really conducive to being carried around. Marshall Stanmore II does not have a built-in battery, running instead only off AC power.
Sound Quality
The sound quality on the speaker is excellent. It’s certainly powerful and can easily fill not just a room but probably most of your house, depending on how loud you want to crank it. The speaker also features two 50W class D amplifiers that provide enough power to fill up large rooms with sound.
The bass is strong and vibrant, which is great if you love bass, but if you don’t, just twist the dial to tune the sound more to your liking. The design of the speaker ensures the sound from the front of the cabinet, which is not necessarily a downside, just something you want to have in mind when you place it in your room.
I found the speaker to be quite well balanced with both lows and highs sounding rich and clear. It’s capable of producing a loud and powerful sound with very little distortion, even at the highest volumes. When it comes to sound signature, the Stanmore III is a little bass-heavy with decent mids and highs. It’s ideal for bass-heavy music such as hip-hop, electronic dance music, and even rock.
As I noted, if there’s something you’re not loving about the sound profile, you can customize your experience with dedicated analog control knobs for bass and treble, with an option for in-app adjustments as well.
Ports and Connectivity
| Wireless | Bluetooth 5.2 aptX |
| Ports | RCA, 3.5mm jack |
By “wireless” speaker you don’t necessarily need to connect your phone or tablet to the device for the cable in order to play music. (Of course, since this speaker requires AC power it’s not truly ‘wireless’.) If the retro stylings of this speaker are having you feeling pangs of nostalgia, you can also connect a 3.5 mm or auxiliary cord and listen to music that way, or use the red-yellow RCA cables in the back.
The Stanmore III supports Bluetooth 5.2 with aptX, which translates to lower latency and higher sound quality than typical wireless connections. This is great if you’re using any modern smartphone or tablet to play your music as long as they’re not made by Apple. Marshall, unfortunately, decided not to include the Cupertino giant’s AAC lossless codec support.
Controls (Manual & App)
Device controls on this speaker further hearken back to a simpler time. Before touchscreens and captive buttons, there were knobs and switches just like you find on today’s Marshall Stanmore III Review.
The built-in controls are straightforward and easy to use, with intuitive symbols for the different functions. It uses three separate control knobs for bass, treble, and volume adjustment, while it offers a switch to select from the three input sources available.
You can control the Stanmore III using either those built-in controls at the top of the speaker cabinet or the mobile app that you can pair with it.
The app doesn’t offer much in terms of remote control since you can’t adjust volume with it (you can with your phone’s volume settings) but it does give you more play with the EQ. You can also tweak extra features such as ‘placement compensation’ which helps adjust for speakers that need to be snuggled in close to a wall or corner.
What’s missing?
While this speaker does have some smarts, it’s not able to connect to your smart home or a digital assistant, meaning you can’t use Google Assistant or Alexa to play music or control the speaker. I suppose that’s not necessarily a major downside since many of us have more than one smart speaker or digital assistant device in the house nowadays. But if you’re hoping to get an all in one speaker that can also control your smart home, this is not it. This is meant to be an uncomplicated music device.
Marshall Stanmore III vs Marshall Willen
Depending on your perspective, this might not exactly be a fair comparison, but these are the two Marshall speakers I happen to have in my home, so give you a bit of a look at what makes them similar and different.
The Marshal Willen speaker is a super small, highly portable travel speaker that can click onto almost any bag or hang from any rock or loop. It’s battery powered with a 15 hour Battery life. It’s also waterproof with an IP 67 dust and water resistant design. While it sounds good, and gets reasonably loud, this speaker is not meant to be a room shaker.
The Marshall Stanmore III is a completely different thing. It’s large and meant to stay put in. a home. It needs power to run, and it’s not weather or water resistant. But it’s about 10 times larger than some thing like the Willin so it’s going to be able to crank out a lot more sound with a lot more power, making it ideal for larger spaces.
There’s no picking any winner here since each of the speakers has a specific used case, but I can definitely say from my several weeks of testing. I enjoyed using both of them.
Overall: Marshall Stanmore III Review
Overall, the Marshall Stanmore III is a stylish and powerful Bluetooth speaker with great sound quality. It also has intuitive controls via both the manual buttons on top of the speaker and through the app, which makes it easy to set up and use.
I had a hard time finding things to knock on with this speaker. I suppose some may lament its lack of AAC lossless codec support and a built-in battery. But it’s not designed to be a carry-with speaker so that hardly seems fair. The app is also not really helpful beyond giving you the ability to adjust to the
But for the price, the Stanmore III provides exceptional sound quality and great value for money, making it a solid purchase. It sells for about $379US/$529CAD and you can get it from Marshall or Amazon.
**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada & TechGadgetsInternational is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
