We Loved the Classic Look of These Earbuds from Marshall. Then We Were Wowed by Their Sound Quality.

The story goes that in the early 1960s, John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, couldn’t hear his instrument over the clamorous drums of his maniac bandmate, Keith Moon, so he asked London drum shop owner Jim Marshall to build him a louder amplifier. This resulted in guitarist Pete Townshend needing a louder amp from Marshall so he could hear his guitar over Entwistle’s bass—and thus was Marshall able to go into business making history’s most beloved amps.

Updated August 2024: We’ve updated the formatting of this review and updated the retailers and pricing of the product.

Marshall Motif II ANC

Pros and Cons
⊕ Top-notch, dynamic sound
⊕ Rockin’ design
⊕ Highly grippable stems
⊗ Shorter-than-average battery life

$200 at Marshall $185 at Amazon

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Sixty years later, the Marshall company has smartly reapplied its rich pedigree, bringing its engineering know-how to today’s consumers by producing (in conjunction with Zound Industries) a stellar line of headphones, earbuds, and Bluetooth speakers, like the Emberton II, the best speaker in our roundup last year).

This year our attention was captured by Marshall’s Motif II ANC true wireless earbuds, which in shape and size are very similar to Apple’s AirPods Pro, except they’re all decked out in black, the Darth Vader to Apple’s Stormtrooper.

The Apple-pioneered stem design has found its way into lots of other companies’ offerings, which testifies to how the design, despite looking clunky, manages to stay firmly lodged in your ears, through some kind of ergonomic alchemy, during most basic activities. The stem also makes for a nice place to grab onto them, which, if you’re a big-handed person on a cold day, can make smaller, rounder earbuds a pain in the ear.

The Motif II ANCs, however, one-up Apple by adding textured plastic on their stems (with an attractive gold touch on the tip), which makes them even more grippable and seems to help hold them in place while you’re wearing them—something our testers universally appreciated. On the outside of each earbud is a touch control that allows you to pause, skip tracks, turn on active noise cancellation (ANC), and employ Spotify Tap, which lets subscribers play from the music service without opening their phone.

As for the ANC in its name, while their noise canceling is not as robust as Apple’s, Marshall’s earbuds did a pretty good job of blocking out wind while running and loud talkers in cafés (though no amount of ANC would be enough to cope with Keith Moon). They also have IPX5 ingress protection, meaning they’re not rated for their ability to keep out dust and solids but will do fine with heavy rain, sweat, or sea spray. One tester found that they needed occasional fit adjustment during runs, though it’s worth noting that they weigh less than the AirPods Pro—at 4.3 grams per bud, compared with Apple’s 5.3 grams.

But design isn’t what made these our favorites. Listening to our favorite tracks on the Motif II ANC was a consistently pleasant experience. Where some brands use artificial bass boosting or other gimmicks to make it feel like you’re at a rave at 4 a.m., these delivered clear, faithful highs, mids, and lows—producing more of a sense of sitting inside a sealed-off recording studio, hearing every note and nuance. Should bass really be important to you, that can still be achieved by downloading Marshall’s app and playing around with its equalizer. More versatile than the typical companion app, Marshall’s lets you dial in exactly the balance you like, and you can even program multiple EQ settings and then use the touch control to shift among them.

Marshall also nailed the design of the charging case. Made from 70 percent recycled plastic, the case’s textured vinyl surface evokes the classic Marshall amp stacks, and it’s built tough—we’ve dropped it and sat on it and it didn’t crack. The case gives you four charges of six hours each, in addition to the six hours of initial playing time you’ll get in the buds with ANC turned on (or nine hours without). This is about average: in line with the AirPods Pro but two to three hours less than competitors like Sony, Sennheiser, and JLabs.

The Motifs were our 2024 pick for Best All-Around earbuds, for their build quality, consistently impressive audio, everyday versatility, and sheer character. Our Gear Guide testing team spent some 35 hours with them, happily grabbing them when heading out on runs, hikes, ski tours, and cross-country travel, and they also performed admirably when making phone calls, washing the car, and tinkering in the workshop. With what one tester called the “best sound quality of all the buds in this test” and a design that made everyone take notice, they’re a prime example of the state of the art of Bluetooth earbuds today.