Review: Marshall Uxbridge Voice speaker with Amazon Alexa

Review:  Marshall Uxbridge Voice speaker : With a look that is recognizable at first glance, Marshall’s speakers quickly stood out from the competition and established themselves as real benchmarks in the sector.

Today, the manufacturer’s range is very complete, with portable speakers, sedentary models or even connected versions with voice assistants on board and able to operate in “Multi-room” mode.

Smaller “smart” speaker of the brand, it is able to connect via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and includes Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. A version with Google Assistant is also on the program.

Offered at a manufacturer price of 199 € , it competes with the Sonos One and some Bose products .

Unboxing

The Marshall Uxbridge Voice speaker is delivered in a small cardboard box with its main characteristics. We discover in particular that the speaker is natively compatible with the Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect features and that we can obviously control all of this in person thanks to Alexa.

 

Inside the box, the Marshall Uxbridge Voice speaker comes with the bare minimum, with a power cable and a user manual.

Design and features

• Wi-Fi / Bluetooth connected speaker
• Amazon Alexa voice assistant
• Full controls from the speaker
• Mains power supply
• Spotify Connect / Apple AirPlay / Alexa Cast

 

You don’t change a winning team and little Marshall Uxbrigde keeps the atypical and vintage look of the range. As with its previous speakers, the brand is largely inspired by the lines of its famous amps and we recognize the manufacturer’s touch from the first glance.

The speaker is here offered in black or white tones and relies on an ultra-compact format to be placed discreetly but proudly in your home. With dimensions of 128 x 168 x 123 mm, it is almost half the size of its big sister the Marshall Acton II Voice and much less bulky than the enormous Stanmore II Voice .

Despite its miniature size, the Marshall Uxbrigde is not portable either. Unlike a Marshall Stockwell II that presented to you a few months ago, the model of the day works only on mains and does not carry any internal battery. With a weight of 1.39 kg, we did not necessarily imagine carrying it in our backpack, but we would have liked to be able to move it more easily from one room to another or in our garden for example.

A little more in detail, the structure of the enclosure is designed in a slightly rough plastic. Visually it is quite successful, but the appearance appears a little cheaper than on previous wireless speakers from Marshall. The brand ignores the imitation leather upholstery here which brought a certain premium side to the Kilburn, Acton and other Stanmore models.

The front retains the famous fabric mesh dear to the manufacturer and we find in its center the Marshall logo in a copper look. The lower part also has a copper area where there are 4 LEDs indicating the state of the speaker, with particular indications concerning the volume or the activation of Alexa.

On the upper part of its small Uxbridge, the brand makes some changes compared to its previous wireless speakers . Here, exit the knobs in the form of potentiometers and make way for more discreet controls, reminiscent of the frets of guitars.

From the latter, we can come and adjust the sound volume but also adjust the intensity of the bass or treble. A specificity that is found on most of the brand’s speakers, but which is here a little less intuitive since we lose the numbered marks via this new control system.

On either side of these controls, there are also two more discreet buttons. The first one supports play / pause, skip to the next track or return to the previous track by pressing it once, twice or three times respectively.

The second button can be used to mute the microphone and therefore deactivate the voice assistant. The LEDs on the front of the speaker then turn red. At the back of the speaker, there is a last button supporting Bluetooth pairing as well as the only connector of the Marshall Uxbridge, for its power supply.

To finish with the design of the speaker, finally note that the base is slightly raised, with four rubber feet providing good stability to the whole.

Connectivity

The Marshall Uxbridge only works wirelessly, either directly through your Wi-Fi network, or through a more traditional Bluetooth connection. No 3.5 mm port is present on the speaker and it is therefore not possible to connect a wired device such as a vinyl turntable for example.

To connect to your Wi-Fi network, you will need to download and install the Marshall Voice app on your smartphone or tablet. It is available for free on iOS and Android.

The process is rather simple to carry out and you just have to follow the instructions displayed on the screen and the various voice announcements.

Mobile App and Alexa

Once the speaker connected to your Wi-Fi network, the Marshall Voice app lets you control your music, but also to adjust several sound settings.

We find such an equalizer, which can automatically adjust to one of the presets of the brand or customize according to their own preferences. We can also rename her pregnant (handy if you set up a multi-room) or select the language of Alexa.

Alexa, just people come. Uxbridge Marshall comes bundled with the Amazon voice assistant and brings a great versatility to the speaker. To benefit, it will download and install the application Alexa Amazon, also available on iOS and Android.

The setting is carried out again in a few minutes and then used to exchange directly with the speaker. You can use voice commands to launch your music from Spotify, Deezer or Apple Music, adjust the sound volume, switch from one track to another …

Obviously, integration does not stop there and if one has other compatible devices Alexa, it becomes possible to drive them from the Marshall Uxbridge.

Sound performance

We end with the sound performance of this little Marshall Uxbridge. The loudspeaker is advertised with a speaker and a tweeter driven by a 30W class D amplifier.

In practice, we benefit from a generally correct sound but which can quickly become a bit messy on tracks with a slightly loaded mix or quite simply when the volume is pushed a little too much.

The services are therefore quite variable and on Jazz-Hop tracks, nothing to say about this Uxbridge. The speaker is able to sound without the slightest concern an average room with a volume of 50%. The sound rendering holds up perfectly and we benefit from a good presence, especially at the midrange level.

If we go on tracks of electro or Hip-Hop a little more dense, the speaker reveals a little more its limits. The rendering becomes more aggressive and if it remains possible to soften all this a little via the equalizer available in the application, this will not completely correct its shortcomings.

If you are looking for a wireless speaker capable of livening up big parties, we would recommend that you opt for the slightly larger models of the brand.

Marshall Uxbridge Voice speaker – Conclusion

This little Marshall Uxbridge should undoubtedly be able to seduce many users. With its style still mastered and its many connectivity options, it stands out from the competition and in particular from traditional Bluetooth speakers.

The addition of Alexa is also a big plus, allowing you to verbally control the speaker but also to take advantage of all the applications of the Amazon ecosystem.

Only downside, sound performance below what one might expect for a price of 199 € . If the performance remains quite honorable in practice, the speaker struggles to keep pace when you push the volume a little more and limit. If you favor sound rendering in design, the Sonos One might be a better candidate for you.