I can’t tell you how excited I was to get the Marshall Heston 120 in for review.
My very first guitar amp was a Marshall, and I’ve had an affinity for the British brand ever since. I no longer play guitar, but I am a home cinema addict, so Marshall’s first Dolby Atmos soundbar caught my attention from the off.
The brand has astutely leaned into its classic aesthetic flourishes with its headphones and wireless speakers, which look great, but applying them to a soundbar has resulted in a unique design that stands out superbly against the sea of aesthetically similar, all-too-subtle bars.
The thick woven cover, brass accents and tactile knobs do a great job of tugging at the nostalgia glands, and the soundbar acts as a great conversation piece while not being so outlandish as to drag too much attention away from your TV.
The listening experience didn’t start badly, either.
As you would very much hope of any soundbar, let alone one costing £900 / $1000 / AU$1799, the Heston 120 is a huge improvement on the sound of pretty much any TV.
Weighty, smooth and fairly tonally balanced, it will be a huge upgrade if you’re going straight from the lightweight, shrill speakers that are built into your TV.
But as we watched Alex Garland’s brilliant Civil War in Dolby Atmos, I felt curiously unenthused.
Where was the punch to the gunfire, the guttural depth to the explosions and the ramping up of tension through the soundtrack?
They were all missing. And as we switched between our favourite tried and tested Dolby Atmos scenes, these traits remained consistent.
The Marshall just isn’t very good at defining the leading edges of notes, so effects sound a little soft. And while there is a reasonable amount of bass, it doesn’t reach deep enough to provoke a particularly emotional response.
More of a problem, though, is the lack of dynamic expression – the difference between the quiet and loud bits.
Turn the volume up on the Heston 120 and it’s really quite loud, but its volume levels remain quite flat – so a steadily swelling score doesn’t swell as it should, and an exploding Humvee doesn’t audibly leap from the rest of the soundtrack as intended.
There are other, smaller issues with the Heston 120 (some treble brightness and sibilance, for example, and a lack of projection to the Dolby Atmos presentation), but it’s the way this lack of punch, bass depth and dynamics combines to rob a movie of much of its excitement that is most disappointing to me.
Home cinema is all about excitement, so arguably the worst thing that any home cinema product can do is sound dull – and that, unfortunately, is the trap into which the Heston 120 has fallen.
I really wanted to love Marshall’s first Dolby Atmos soundbar, but alas, I have to continue recommending the far less novel, but much more accomplished, Sonos Arc Ultra instead.
MORE:
These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars you can buy right now
Check out our Marshall Heston 120 vs Sonos Arc Ultra comparison
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