Marshall Emberton II vs Willen Review 🔥 (With Sound Samples)

The Marshall Emberton II and Willen are the latest entries into Marshall’s galaxy of portables. Blessed with Marshall’s iconic aggressive vinyl and brass style, something that’s become associated with this brand, the speakers feature one brass control knob that does everything: from power, volume, to music playback controls. This control scheme is easier compared to having multiple buttons for different controls, something you don’t get with other brands.

Features

A new feature called Stack Mode allows you to daisy chain any number of Embertons and Willens to broadcast your audio across a wider area. So for instance, you can have one speaker in the kitchen, one in the study, another in the bedroom, all playing the same music as long as they are within Bluetooth range.

In addition, the speakers now support multipoint pairing, which lets you connect to two mobile devices at the same time. So if you prefer, you can pause your music on one device, and seamlessly start playing your music from the other. There’s no need to go into the device’s Bluetooth settings to unpair and re-pair the speaker.

Another unique element that people have come to expect from Marshall products is its heavy sound signature. This means deep, heavy bass with a lot of gravity.

The first Emberton was a treat in terms of sound and style. This second-gen Emberton II now comes with a bigger battery of up to 30 hours of play time, IP67 rating, and app support. The Marshall app brings over the air updates as well as the ability to customize the Emberton’s sound with EQ presets. You’ve only got three presets to play with and there isn’t a graphic EQ, but for such a product that is meant more for casual, background listening, anything more than that is simply overkill.

The Marshall Willen is meant to be a more compact, carry-everywhere speaker. The main focus here is portability so it’s got a strap at the back. I can see this being strapped to bags, belts, anywhere you could possibly want a speaker to be at. It’s got all the features of the Emberton including app support, EQ Presets. The only differences are that it’s got a smaller battery of up to 15 hours of playtime, just a single 2” full range driver instead of the Emberton’s dual 2” setup, and a built-in microphone.

When I was testing the microphone, it seemed to perform better if you are about 3 to 6 feet away, that means about one to two meters. If you’re nearer, it picks up the echo of the room, otherwise it sounds pretty good for a built-in mic. You can listen to the sample here.

I kinda liked the Emberton II sound more. Track separation was cleaner, the soundstaging sounded more airy and there was a lot more heaviness, more oomph in its bass response, which made it sound more groovy. The Willen has a more compact sound, and it had a lot more emphasis in the lower and upper mids rather than the bass. Separation was not as clean as the Emberton’s because it’s relying after all on that single 2” driver. However its vocals do sound brighter than the Emberton’s, which makes it more ideal for listening to podcasts, news, and talk shows. You can hear the difference between the speakers here. Between the two speakers, I will definitely use the Emberton II for background music and watching movies. As for the Willen, I will use it for podcasts.

Conclusion

Both of these models are compact and portable, but I can see them fulfilling different roles. If you want something that’s much easier to carry about, something lightweight, got a strap, sounds decent, built-in handsfree microphone, that’s the Willen. It’s definitely the speaker for the seasoned traveller or the backpacker. For more serious “casual” listening that isn’t necessarily something you wanna bring outside, but is still something that can wear many hats - be it a music system, bigger sound for watching videos, movies, mobile gaming - that’s the Emberton II.

Personally I would pick the Emberton II, as it meets my needs better in terms of sound and my particular use case as the exact opposite of a backpacking, active lifestyle guy. If there’s one criticism I have about both speakers, it’s that they both don’t have a 3.5mm auxiliary input. So if you want to save battery or connect a traditional source that does not have Bluetooth, it is not possible to connect it to these speakers. Other than that, both of them sound great, and I’m sure many people will find them useful for different use case scenarios.

Check the latest Amazon price here:

Marshall Emberton II - https://amzn.to/3E3b9ch

Marshall Willen - https://amzn.to/3E3ROIc

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