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Half the appeal here is that it looks like somebody shrank a guitar amp, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The Marshall Emberton III sits at around $169 and backs the styling with real hardware: two 10W full-range drivers, two passive radiators, and two 38W Class D amplifiers doing true stereo out of something that weighs 1.5 pounds. IP67 means dust-tight and submersible to a metre for half an hour. Bluetooth 5.3 with multipoint and a claimed 100 metre range. And a battery rated at 32-plus hours.
It sounds considerably better than its size suggests, which is the whole trick. It’s punchy and gutsy, and it produces clearer audio at maximum volume than the similarly priced Beats Pill despite being smaller. Where it gives ground is at the bottom: the bass is present and tuneful but wants more spaciousness and detail down there, and it never quite becomes a room-filling speaker. The Marshall app has EQ presets including a dedicated bass mode, which helps, though annoyingly there’s no physical button to switch modes so you need your phone.
Battery is the quiet standout and it is not close. The rated 32 hours takes forever to drain, and it comfortably beats the JBL Charge 5’s 20 hours and the Dali Katch G2’s 30. A 20-minute top-up buys you six hours. Build is genuinely good, with a carrying strap, USB-C, and 79% recycled plastic, up from 50% on the previous model. The Emberton III also finally added a microphone for hands-free calls, which the Emberton II lacked. The trade-offs are the price rise over the old model and a retro look that some people simply won’t want.
Bluetooth 5.3 LE with multipoint means a laptop and a phone can both stay connected, and the range is genuinely long in the open. It’s Auracast-ready for multi-speaker streaming, though that arrives via a future firmware update rather than working today, which is worth knowing before you buy on that basis. The app holds the EQ and the sound modes. Charging is USB-C, two hours from empty. There’s no Dolby Atmos and no aux input.
Get one if you want a portable speaker that sounds properly good, runs for days, survives weather, and looks like nothing else on a shelf. Kitchen, garden, hotel room, camping. Skip it if you need deep bass or genuine party volume, because it’s a small speaker being clever rather than a big one being loud. The Marshall Middleton II is the pick if you want fuller sound from the same family, and the Beats Pill as the direct rival if you prefer the look. At this price the Emberton III is a very easy thing to like.
Pros
• 32-plus hours, comfortably beating most rivals
• True stereo from two drivers and two amps
• IP67, so dust-tight and submersible
• Finally has a microphone, which the II lacked
Cons
• Bass lacks spaciousness and detail
• No physical button for sound modes, so app only
• Auracast needs a future firmware update to work
• Pricier than the model it replaces
Our score: 8.5/10
