Rock the flash bar

Marshall ups its game to launch a high-end Dolby Atmos soundbar that doubles as a powerful music speaker – but can this striking unit take on Sonos?

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£900 / go.stuff.tv/Heston

Marshall's distinguished history as a British guitar and bass amp specialist has certainly taken some diversifying turns in recent years.

In 2010 it teamed up with Swedish company Zound to make Bluetooth speakers and headphones. That resulted in Zound buying Marshall in 2023 and rebranding the whole thing as the Marshall Group. The firm has been planning to expand its range of Marshall-branded tech for a while... and that bring us to the Heston 120.

This is a high-end one-box soundbar with full Dolby Atmos and DTS-X support, and as such it's taking on the Sonos Arc Ultra. That's far from an easy task. But the Heston 120 is a soundbar that looks a little different from the norm – and one that's well suited to music as well as TV.

Is that enough? Marshall believes so, and more products will follow: a Heston 60 soundbar with virtual Atmos is coming later in the year.

London scrawling The design is unmistakably Marshall (1), but it’s more subtle than it could have been – the large logo might put some off, but it doesn’t stick out much. The physical controls (see panel opposite) only protrude a little, so you won’t be bothered by them when watching TV.