Marshall Motif II ANC

Verdict

Marshall fans will dig these stylish true wireless earbuds with their clear and energetic performance. The ANC is solid and battery performance an improvement over the original. Call quality is average, and the Motif II ANC are up against plenty of strong competition at this price.

Introduction

The original Motif were true wireless earphones that received accolades for its style, but less admiring notices for its ANC and battery life.

Like a band whose debut album didn’t set the charts alight, Marshall is back with the Motif II ANC and hoping its sophomore effort gets more attention.

The design has been tweaked, battery life boosted, and Bluetooth performance enhanced; and the price remains pretty much the same as before.

Is the Marshall Motif II ANC better or does it still struggle to find its voice? If you’re a Marshall fan looking for an earbud for the everyday routine, I think you’ll be happy enough.

Design

• IPX5 rating
• Decent comfort
• Responsive touch controls

Though it bears the Marshall branding, the Marshall Motif II ANC is from the same company behind Urbanears and Adidas earphones. That was known as Zound Industries, but merged with Marshall in 2023 to become the Marshall Group.

With the merger and acquisition update out the way, the design and fit are similar to the Urbanears Boo Tip, though the new Motif features better build quality and is graced with more style – both the faux-leather design on the earbud stem and gold stylings recalls Marshall’s amps. Though plastic is the abiding material, there’s a nice tactile feel to these earphones.

They’re slightly heavier (by a measly 0.6g) and the size and shape of the earbud housing means they slot right into my ear; though to create a tight passive noise-isolating seal I find that they need to be wedged in and pushed back often. There are various ear-tip sizes (I switched to the largest) to find the best fit. I find them comfortable enough, though I can always feel their presence.

Touch controls are responsive through depressing the Marshall logo (a hold cycles through ANC modes, while double-tap pauses/play). You can customise controls, but more on that later.

The earphones are rated to IPX5 to protect against water splashes and sweat, while the case has an IPX4 rating – the same as the original. The case’s faux-leather appearance is a nice look, with a Bluetooth pairing button to help you get started. They only come in one finish, which is black.

Features

• Improved battery life over original
• Marshall Bluetooth App
• Active Noise-Cancellation

Let’s kick off with the battery performance. Marshall claims an improved capacity of six hours with the Motif II ANC (up by 1.5 hours) and nine hours with ANC off. In total, Marshall reckons about 30 hours from the case or 43 hours without ANC.

A battery drain at around 50% volume and the Marshall Motif II ANC fell to 80% within two hours. That’d suggest about 10 hours per charge, and higher volumes will drain the battery more. That’s better than what Marshall claims, so presumably the six hour figure is at a higher volume.

The charging case supports Qi wireless charging, and fast-charging through USB provides an hour more from 15 minutes. Marshall also includes some life preservation features within its app, such as limiting the maximum charge to 90%, limiting the maximum charge speed, and lowering the speed of charging depending on temperature. You select which features to include by swiping across the bar from ‘None’ to ‘Max’.

There is Active Noise-Cancellation, and you can switch between the Transparency mode and ‘Off’ modes, as well as manually set the ANC’s strength from low to high. The ANC’s performance is a slightly qualified aspect of the Marshall’s performance as it depends on a good fit and seal, as well as playing around with volume, which at its default level is too quiet.

Used on a plane, I thought the ANC performance was decent. The insulating qualities of the fit gets rid of most ambient noise and I found voices were a little quieter, but noise still peeks through.

Walking around London, I found the Marshall Motif II ANC to be quite effective. Most sounds are suppressed once the fit is nice and tight (and volume up), and while some voices pepper my bubble of isolation, it tends not to distract. On the Jubilee line they managed to quell the noise of the tunnel – not quite as successfully on the Victoria line, but no headphone seems able to cope with that one.

I would say they’re good enough for the commute, though I do find I’m often having to push the earbuds back in to reassert the seal. The noise-cancelling isn’t affected by wind noise much, which is always a plus. This is good ANC, though you’re not short of alternative options with the likes of Beats Studio Buds Plus and Sony LinkBuds S around.

Transparency mode sounds natural enough, ferrying more awareness of what’s around with enough clarity. The Marshall’s ANC feels like you’ve got blinkers on, while the Transparency mode in effect takes those blinkers off.

The Marshall Motif II ANC supports Bluetooth 5.3 with SBC and MPEG + AAC streaming, and you also get Bluetooth Multipoint support for connecting to two devices at once. Wireless is an area where Marshall say they’ve improved over the original with the addition of Bluetooth LE Audio to ensure a better connection.

The wireless performance is both good and a bit patchy. Some general ambling about London didn’t cause the Motif II ANC any issues, nor did walking through Victoria station, but a busy Waterloo caused the wireless performance to crater. It seems that, when put under stress, the wireless performance struggles.

Then there’s the Marshall Bluetooth App, which offers a range of customisation options (the aforementioned battery preservation features), along with enabling Spotify Tap for quick access to that service; EQ options with presets or creating your own five-band preset, toggling auto-play and audio prompts on and off, as well as customising touch controls.

What’s interesting about touch controls is that, along with assigning what goes where, there are different sets of controls to choose from. Standard includes all the media/call options, Mini reduces them to a few necessities or you can turn the controls completely off.

The main issue is that you have to choose between certain options. Want volume control on both earphones? That would mean you lose out on ANC activation. Rely on your voice assistant? You’ll have to swap something else out to get it.

Call quality is average. While the Motif II ANC seem to have no issue picking up my voice and making it clear, they also pick up sounds around me. Windy conditions can knock the Marshall off its stride, but essentially you’re getting decent call quality – nothing more, nothing less.

Sound Quality

• Clear, crisp sound
• Gets thin at higher volumes
• Decent bass

I wasn’t sure what to make of the Marshall Motif II ANC initially. Upon a first listen I was surprised by how weedy and out of puff they sounded. It wasn’t the Marshall rock ‘n’ roll tuning I was expecting.

Switching to a larger ear-tip, making sure the seal was tight and upping the volume improved matters; especially the latter, as the Marshall sound quiet at default. At lower volumes, Kingdom’s Bank Head features less powerful bass while Lenny Kravitz’s Fly Away sounds on the thin side.

At higher volumes the thin characteristic sticks around. It’s a crisper, energetic sound at higher volumes, and if you feel it’s a little too sharp I would suggest checking the seal. The crisp and lean approach to audio gives music flow, but also lacks much in the way of weight.

Still, the Marshall Motif II ANC performs fine enough with bass. It’s a balanced sound with Faye Webster’s Sometimes (Qobuz) as the Marshall offers a clean performance, allied with good midrange clarity and decent crispness to the higher frequency notes and cymbal crashes. There’s more character about the Marshall’s sound than there is from the flat and neutral Jabra Elite 7 Pro.

The same is true of Bauuer’s Can I Say, a throwback to house party music with its pounding bassline. The Marshall Motif II ANC summons decent depth, though in terms of bass depth and weight, it’s outperformed by the Beats Studio Buds Plus.

With Benjamin Clementine’s London, the Motif II reproduces his distinctive inflections well enough; and back to Webster with Kind Of, there’s an agreeable dynamism with the rising bass levels.

Midrange clarity is good with vocals, characterised by the true wireless’ crisper tone. The soundstage is not the widest – again, upping the volume pushes it out wider, though like too little butter on too much bread, in St Germain’s Land Of… I can hear brass instruments get thinner with each nudge of the volume.

There’s decent brightness, clarity, and variation to treble notes in GoGo Penguin’s Raven; and in terms of its rhythmic performance the Motif II ANC is fine, but its lack of weight comes across a little lightweight.

You can play with the presets – Bass Boost adds some warmth, the Mid Boost seems to strip voices of weight. My preference is to stick with the Marshall preset as that seems the best and most consistent across music streaming services.

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