Marshall Willen

Verdict

A portable speaker with a clear and detailed audio performance, and an attractive design; the Marshall Willen is not the most exciting speaker to listen to especially when it comes to bass, but if you want a small, pocketable speaker to take outside, it’s worth a look.

Introduction

Marshall’s smallest speaker in its wireless speaker line-up managed to evade us when it launched, but now we’ve got our hands on it in time for the warm summer weather.

The Willen is designed to be easily transportable – a speaker you can hold in your hand – sporting a rugged design at a price that’s affordable for most.

The Marshall Willen isn’t short of competition at this price, so how well does it fare against the likes of Ultimate Ears and JBL?

Design

• Classy looks
• Rugged design
• IP67 rating

If you’re familiar with the Marshall aesthetic then the Willen continues that in a much smaller form. Shaped like a square, it’s adorned with the Marshall logo (in gold, of course), and in the top-right corner is the multi-function button for powering on the speaker, playback, and volume control. Like with other Marshall products, it’s simple and easy to use.

On the top surface is a Bluetooth pairing button, and icons for the microphone and battery levels. Switch to the side and you’ll find a USB-C port for charging; flip the speaker over and there’s a fastening strap for connecting the Willen to other surfaces so you don’t have to carry it.

The Willen feels tough, solid and durable. It’s a sealed cabinet with an IP67 rating that protects it from the ingress of dust while it can be submerged into water 1m deep for 30 minutes, so there’s no need to panic if you’re using it near a pool, for example.

Features

• 15+ hour battery
• Bluetooth 5.1
• Built-in microphone for calls

There aren’t many features that the Marshall Willen can call upon but considering the low price that shouldn’t be a surprise.

Marshall says you’ve got 15+ hours of battery to count on, and if true then that’s more than the original Sonos Roam (12), Soundcore Motion 300 (13), JBL Clip 4 Eco (10), and Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 (12). Fast charging offers three hours of playback from a 20 minute charge.

Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity only supports SBC streaming but before anyone raises their hands in disgust, it’s the driver that will have the greatest effect on how the speaker sounds rather than how much data it can pipe through a Bluetooth stream. Considering its size though, the Willen is only capable of mono sound.

If you want a bigger performance, you’ll need to enact Stack mode. If you and your friends have more than one Willen to hand, they can be ‘stacked’ or daisy-chained together to produce a bigger sound. For that, you’ll need to jump into the app.

The app provides a few features such as EQ presets (Marshall, Bass Boost, and Voice), a battery indicator, and while not in the app (as far as I can tell), there’s a Find My Location feature where you can cause the Willen to emit a ringing sound to help find it. It’s rather frugal on the feature count but this is a simple portable speaker.

The Bluetooth performance is strong, the signal between my phone and the speaker doesn’t break despite being well over 10 metres away.

If you’re using the Marshall Willen on an Android 14 device, you’ll likely encounter some issues. For whatever reason, the app won’t also connect to the speaker, causing the app to crash. Turning the Willen on and off sometimes helped but not always. If you can get it to connect, software updates are guaranteed until June 2025.

Lastly, with the built-in microphone, you could use the Willen for taking calls, and considering its emphasis on voice, that’s a feature you may want to use often.

Sound Quality

• Good focus on voices
• Clear, detailed midrange
• Lacking bass output

Having tested a range of Marshall products over the years, I’ve become accustomed to the Marshall Signature sound, which is more or less, balanced but energetic, clear and crisp; and the Willen – more or less – holds true to that.

With music there are good levels of clarity and detail, the Marshall comes across as having an informative and incisive midrange compared to the Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 3; and the midrange clarity it has a good focus on vocals. Despite its size, the soundstage doesn’t come across as congested.

The top end of the frequency range is clear, with enough variation to avoid sounding dull. It’s not too bright with GoGo Penguin’s Raven but it’s not as if the treble notes come across as overly dull.

Where the Willen lacks is in its bass output. Compared to the Wonderboom 3 it lacks not just weight to the low frequencies, but power and depth too. The bass here is fine but with Rob Zombie’s Dragula and Lola’s Theme, it lacks the energy that would make for a more fun and engaging listen. That ultimately is where the Willen misses out – it’s not the most fun speaker when it comes to sound.

It’s a mostly directional-sounding speaker too – from the front is where you’ll get the best performance; and if you pump the volume up, then the Willen scales decently too. With more high-tempo tracks it does sound a bit thin, so it’s a toss up between a sense of energy and still getting the same levels of clarity and detail.

The EQ options aren’t the best. I’d stick with the Marshall Signature sound option as the Voice option doesn’t really alter the performance, while the Bass Boost makes the speaker sound heavy and turgid. What clarity there was is stripped away and the bass doesn’t sound too good anyway.

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