The story goes that in the early 1960s, John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, couldn鈥檛 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鈥檚 bass鈥攁nd thus was Marshall able to go into business making history鈥檚 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
鈯 Top-notch, dynamic sound
鈯 Rockin鈥 design
鈯 Highly grippable stems
鈯 Shorter-than-average battery life
If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside.聽Learn more.
Sixty years later, the Marshall company has smartly reapplied its rich pedigree, bringing its engineering know-how to today鈥檚 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鈥檚 Motif II ANC true wireless earbuds, which in shape and size are very similar to Apple鈥檚 AirPods Pro, except they鈥檙e all decked out in black, the Darth Vader to Apple鈥檚 Stormtrooper.
The Apple-pioneered stem design has found its way into lots of other companies鈥 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.聽The stem also makes for a nice place to grab onto them, which, if you鈥檙e 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鈥檙e wearing them鈥攕omething 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鈥檚, Marshall鈥檚 earbuds did a pretty good job of blocking out wind while running and loud talkers in caf茅s (though no amount of ANC would be enough to cope with Keith Moon). They also have IPX5 ingress protection, meaning they鈥檙e 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鈥檚 worth noting that they weigh less than the AirPods Pro鈥攁t 4.3 grams per bud, compared with Apple鈥檚 5.3 grams.
But design isn鈥檛 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鈥檙e at a rave at 4 a.m., these delivered clear, faithful highs, mids, and lows鈥攑roducing 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鈥檚 app and playing around with its equalizer.聽More versatile than the typical companion app, Marshall鈥檚 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鈥檚 textured vinyl surface evokes the classic Marshall amp stacks, and it鈥檚 built tough鈥攚e鈥檝e dropped it and sat on it and it didn鈥檛 crack. The case gives you four charges of six hours each, in addition to the six hours of initial playing time you鈥檒l 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 鈥渂est sound quality of all the buds in this test鈥 and a design that made everyone take notice, they鈥檙e a prime example of the state of the art of Bluetooth earbuds today.