Marshall’s Heston 120 soundbar is another bold move from the guitar amp brand£899, marshall.com
Few audio brands have successfully occupied both the pro and consumer spaces. Marshall, however, has reason to be proud of its efforts so far, finding success in recent years with its audio products like the Emberton and Motif Bluetooth speakers, and earbuds styled after the company’s legendary guitar amplifiers and speakers.
The Heston 120 is a step up in terms of price, ambition and scale; the company’s first soundbar, designed to compete at the higher end of what one might reasonably spend on such a product without venturing into the supremely costly world of audiophile models from the likes of Bang & Olufsen.

READ MORE: Sonos Arc soundbar review: sleek, powerful and Dolby Atmos-compatible

In case anyone needs a refresher, soundbars exist to enhance the home entertainment audio experience. But the Heston 120 does much more, incorporating multiple speakers firing in different directions to create a surround sound effect without the additional boxes and trailing wires.
Before we get to that, though, some basics: Weighing just over 7 kg, the soundbar is well built and feels like a solid piece of kit. The design is again clearly taken from Marshall’s black leather-style guitar amps and has a classy feel. While any design is a matter of personal taste, Marshall has pulled off the right balance of high-end finish and retro looks here. In the box, you get a power cable and an HDMI cable, with a downloadable mobile app working as the device’s remote. Not including a physical remote for a product at this price might irk some people, and not unreasonably, though increasingly many regularly use iOS apps as remotes, so maybe it’s not a stretch.
Around the back you’ll find a selection of ports, including HDMI 2.1 with eARC (a high-bandwidth audio transfer protocol that allows seamless transmission of uncompressed, multichannel audio), HDMI passthrough, RCA for connecting devices like turntables with a preamp stage and a USB-C port that can be used to charge a portable device. There’s also a 10/100 Ethernet port for connecting to your router if it’s nearby, which will take some load off your wi-fi network.
Image: Press
While the HDMI connection is essential for achieving latency-free streaming from your TV or set-top box to the soundbar, many of the Heston’s other talents work over wi-fi 6 or Bluetooth 5.3 connections. Use the mobile app to get things set up – joining your wi-fi network is easy, as is pairing any devices.
The soundbar supports multiple codecs from simple AAC to FLAC and also supports AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify and Tidal Connect, all of which can be managed in the app and pre-programmed to the three hardware shortcut buttons on the bar itself. Apple users should note that streaming music over AirPlay from an iPhone, Mac or iPad allows lossless quality, while Bluetooth is restricted to much lower-bandwidth AAC.
Internally, the soundbar houses a total of eleven speakers made up of two subwoofers, two mid drivers, two tweeters and five full-range drivers, each powered by its own class D amplifier – two at 50W and nine at 30W.
As noted earlier, this model creates a surround sound effect by employing drivers that fire in multiple directions from inside the unit instead of from separate physical speaker cabinets. Dolby Atmos and DTS-X are natively supported, and the soundbar will allocate compatible source channels to speakers dynamically.
There’s also a room calibration procedure you can run from the app that uses the two small onboard microphones — we do notice that this results in a slightly more focused surround effect.
Image: Press
Heston’s performance with movies and indeed with TV is superb. There are four modes you can choose from the top panel (as well as volume and EQ) or from the app – movie, music, night and voice, each of which is self-explanatory. In movie mode, the soundstage is hugely impressive, revealing the power and detail of a well-mixed surround production in a way regular speakers can’t manage. In 2024’s Twisters, tornadoes are viscerally rendered, debris crashing around you as the score pulsates. In Alien: Romulus, jump scares are greatly enhanced. The Dolby Atmos effect is quite remarkable from a single box, with sounds genuinely seeming to come at you from different directions. Even with simpler content the soundstage is broad, rich and deep, the low end being particularly striking.
It’s also capable when playing music, although it’s impossible to escape the fact that this is a soundbar and not a pair of stereo speakers. That’s not a criticism but rather just a recognition that even the best soundbar is going to output music in a way that’s different to a pair of stereo monitors. Maybe only music producers will notice the difference, but it’s there nonetheless. You might argue that music playback will always be a secondary feature in a product primarily designed for movies and TV, which is a valid point.
The Heston 120 is priced the same as the Sonos Arc, which has a similar feature set, adding voice control and smart home integration, which Heston doesn’t have built in, but lacks DTS-X support and some of the casting options. It also lacks the RCA inputs that make the Marshall compatible with a wider range of hardware.
After experiencing your movie collection and favourite streaming services through this soundbar, it’s tough to go back to a smaller, less capable model, let alone the TV speakers, which seem almost comically weak by comparison. And yet £899 is a serious investment – you’re probably spending at least that much on your TV to make this whole package perform as well visually as it does sonically.
But why pair this with a cheap TV? If you are the kind of person who takes your home viewing seriously, you’ll love the sonic depth, power, and sheer visceral joy this soundbar adds to your experience. Sounding as impressive as it looks, you might never go to the cinema again.

Key features

11 drivers with dedicated class-D amplifiers
Frequency response 40 Hz – 20 kHz with a total output of 150W
Wi-fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, 10/100 Ethernet
HDMI 2.1 eARC and passthrough, RCA inputs and sub output
Dolby Atmos and DTS-X
Room calibration via app
AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect
Multiple sound modes
Tactile on-body controls
1.1m width, 7kg weight

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