With Sonos dragging its feet on the Beam (Gen 3), I'm excited about Marshall's new Dolby Atmos rival

This week Marshall lifted the lid on its second ever Dolby Atmos soundbar, the Heston 60, showing off the tiny unit next to its Heston Sub 200 subwoofer.

And while Marshall may not be the biggest name in soundbars right now, being more famous for its guitar amplifiers than anything else, for me personally, this is pretty awesome news.

How can you say that when you gave the firm’s first soundbar, the Marshall Heston 120 only three stars I hear you ask? Well there’s one big – or maybe small, depending on how you look at it – reason.

Specifically, size matters.

Many of us may not jump straight to thinking about home cinema hardware after hearing the phrase, but that doesn’t stop it being at least partially true for the category.

But, in this specific instance, rather than being about a unit's giant dimensions and how much cool custom tech is contained within, as was the case with the KEF XIO, the reason the phrase is true here is actually down to the new Marshall's tiny dimensions.

I have long argued we need more small, but good-sounding soundbars, cut from the same cloth as the Sonos Beam (Gen 2), which has sat as a key recommendation in our best Dolby Atmos soundbars buying guide for multiple years.

This is because, while the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) remains a stellar performer and the best you’ll find at its current price and size – we still use it as a baseline comparison point when testing sub £500 / $500 soundbars to this day – it is undeniably getting a little long in the tooth.

The soundbar launched four years ago, which in soundbar years means it’s gunning for a Guinness World Record for longevity and coming close to getting a letter from King Charles.

And if you put a gun to my head and asked, truthfully, I can’t help but feel its longevity is in part due to a lack of credible rivals over the past two years.

JBL’s 2025 lineup of soundbars are all full-width, and the last Beam-sized rival it launched that we managed to test was the JBL Bar 5.0 MultiBeam, which came out all the way back in 2021.

Honestly, since the Beam Gen 2 came out, it’s felt a lot like every soundbar company’s opted to indulge its flight, not fight, instinct and been happy to let Sonos have this segment of the market unchallenged.

Which is massively sad in my mind as lots of people want a smaller soundbar. For starters, there are the silent majority who don’t have 55-inch or bigger sets in their living rooms.

Loads of us still have 48-inch or smaller units, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want a good audio experience. We may just be short on space, or not want our TV and sound system dominating the room.

Based on our testing, smaller TVs' stand designs mean they are usually set too low to accommodate a full sized soundbar. When I first moved into my house and tried to put a full width Sonos Arc in front of my 48-inch LG C2 OLED TV, the unit not only looked comically large, it also blocked a good inch of screen real estate due to its height.

Even if you do have a larger TV, I’ve seen numerous examples in my personal life of people using shorter stands, which can’t accommodate a full-length bar – as comically demonstrated by the below image, courtesy of What Hi-Fi? contributor, Joe Svetlik.

Not only does the full-sized soundbar look terrible in that scenario, placing it like that also impacts its audio performance – because it’s not sitting stably on its intended feet, unwanted vibrations will creep in, impacting its sound.

Trust me, don’t do it, kids – it’s not worth it.

So having more small, good-sounding soundbars that can neatly sit on smaller stands, below smaller TVs, just makes sense to me.

This is especially true as we’ve seen clear improvements to soundbar audio quality year-on-year since the launch of the Beam (Gen 2).

We saw this just last year, comparing the older Sonos Arc to the new, five-star Sonos Arc Ultra and the Sony Theatre Bar 9 to the Sony HT-A7000. In both instances, the wealth of hardware changes led to palpable audio improvements with the newer units.

So it’s clear there are plenty of tools at Sonos’ and other soundbar makers’ disposal to make something better.

And that’s why, even though we haven’t tested it and can’t make any comments on its audio quality, I want to applaud Marshall for at least having the guts to take a step up to the plate and have a crack at dethroning the Beam (Gen 2).

I'd love to see more companies do the same.

MORE:

These are the best soundbars we’ve tested

Our picks of the best 40-inch TVs

We rate the best OLED TVs for serious movie fans