Marshall Stanmore Bluetooth Speaker
£349/$349
189
Key features 50-20,000Hz frequency range • Bluetooth • Airplay • RCA input Learn more marshallheadphones.com Available from amazon.co.uk
Despite being a British innovation, Marshall amps are synonymous with loud American rock and roll, ripped denim, long hair and cruising down the open highway listening to music at dangerously high volumes. The Marshall Stanmore brings that feeling into your home by retaining the classic look of its iconic guitar amps in the form of a Bluetooth speaker that sounds incredible as a standalone or can form part of a multi-room setup along with the smaller Acton (reviewed on page 89) and the larger Woburn models.
Lust at first sight
Let’s start with the finish. After unboxing the Stanmore you feel compelled to gently place it down, take a step back and just stare at it for a while. It boasts the same hard-wearing casing as the guitar
amps but with more curvature, with the grill and logo on the front, framed by gold lamé trimming and a golden lozenge of knobs on the top. The back of the unit sports a bass reflex hole, microusb port and RCA input. The only way that the design could have been better, in our opinion, is if Marshall had cut away sections in the side for indented handles, similar to some of its amplifier heads. Its lack of handles means it is ill-suited to portability. But you’ll never want to take this fine unit out of your home anyway. The aesthetics also improve greatly when you power the Stanmore up and get connected because each increment of the Volume, Bass, Treble and Source knobs lights up with red LEDS. It’s a very nice, premium-quality touch.
Connectivity options
There is certainly little danger of not being able to hear the Stanmore as you can connect it to anything. You can connect wirelessly with Airplay, Bluetooth, built-in Chromecast or Spotify Connect, and it also comes with a 3.5mm input as well as the aforementioned RCA for wired connections. Up to seven presets can be accessed instantly via the Source knob, meaning that you can play your favourite Spotify playlists, internet radio stations or podcasts effortlessly. And if you are intending to use the Stanmore as part of a multi-room setup then the free
IOS Marshall Multi-room app lets you control everything from your iphone or ipad.
Turn it up to 11
Coming from Marshall, purveyors of all things loud, you can rest assured that the Stanmore doesn’t hold back on the decibels. What’s most impressive is how the 50 Watt Class D amplifier for the woofers and the twin 15 Watt Class D amplifiers for the tweeters hold everything together, especially at the higher end of the volume range. The bass rumbles and the tweeters punch out the mids with barely any noticeable distortion – it’s like having your own personal Woodstock in your living room.
As a standalone, the Stanmore has the style and sound to drown out any wireless speaker we have sampled of late. And as a multi-room setup it is definitely up there with the market-leaders.