Marshall Acton IV reviewed: sound personality

Speakers are a dime-a-dozen these days, but the Marshall Acton IV goes its own way, offering a retro vibe with some serious sound chops and controls to match.

You don’t have to look too hard to find a speaker these days, because every company makes them. Audio companies make them, phone companies make them, and you might even find them from a few brands who aren’t known for them, either.

Sharing sound with the whole house is apparently easier than ever, and there is plenty of choice when it comes to picking something for your life.

But what if you’re after something that comes from a musical pedigree? What if it needs the style to match the sound: what then?

Instrument amplification maker Marshall has an idea of just what you can do, and the fourth-generation Acton speaker may well be it. Priced around $500, it’s not inexpensive, but it also might just be the most good-looking speaker you can place. Does it have the audio quality to match?

Design and features

Available in cream (white) and black, the aesthetic of the Acton IV is clear: amplifiers. Classic amplifiers. That’s something Marshall is practically known for, and the style is very clearly that.

A padded leatherette look on the top and surrounding the rectangular wooden box of the speaker, with gold-coloured knobs and switches that wouldn’t be out of place on a proper amp or speaker.

Inside, Marshall uses a 4-inch woofer with two 0.75-inch tweeters, each with their own Class D amplifiers, providing a 60-watt version for the woofer and 25 watts each for the tweeters.

The box itself weighs around 2.65 kilograms, but needs to be plugged in, making it a speaker largely meant to stay in place.

In-use

Usability is one of the key parts of the Acton IV, with the retro looks extending to how you actually use the hardware. This is form and function following the same approach, and it’s something we can truly dig.

Unlike pretty much every speaker out in the world today, Marshall is giving you the control. You get to decide the volume as you normally would, but you can also control the treble and the bass. Dial it up or down, and make the speaker truly yours.

It’s the sort of thing that you’d find on an instrument amplifier, which is fitting because that’s exactly what Marshall is known for. Guitar amps and the like have these knobs, and Marshall is a guitar amp brand.

And so the Acton IV looks the dead ringer of a guitar amp, only that it’s not.

This is designed for the sound from your phone, and so you also get controls inspired by how an amp might interpret those. A switch with a button behind it for track forward and back, plus a push button to pause and play.

It’s a control scheme you won’t have any problems with, and may be the most obvious we’ve ever seen on a speaker interface. It is somehow more obvious than the giant plus and minus buttons etched into some speaker models. This is knobs and switches. It could not be any easier.

You also aren’t limited to just Bluetooth, which adds to the usability.

While the wireless connection from your phone is the one you’ll use more than any other, there are also two wired connections with an auxiliary 3.5mm connection up top and an RCA red-and-white cable section at the bottom. Think of that as an option for extra media players or a record player, because that’s how we’re interpreting things.

Performance

Connect the Acton to your phone and you’ll hear a clip of feedback, as if the lead from your guitar was plugged in ready to go. It’s as good a sign as it gets that this Marshall is ready for action, and so are we.

For this review, we’ve left the settings largely in the centre, because this speaker affords you the control to change the sound. Want more bass? Dial it up. Want more treble and less bass? Dial dial. You have control and it can seriously change how the speaker sounds.

But for the Acton IV review, we’re leaving things dead centre, and keeping Marshall’s equaliser setting, which likely achieves the standard sound, whatever that may be.

And like we do with every speaker, we’re testing things out using the Pickr Sound Test, which you can hear for yourself.

As usual, that kicks off with electronic, which offers a great sound in both Tycho and Daft Punk, delivering a mostly balanced set of lows, highs, and mids, and a warm sound. Given the wooden box it all sits in, this should come as no surprise, though aspects of the bass do sound a little muddled.

In pop, the sound is punchy where it counts. Both vibes from Carly Rae Jepsen and Ariana Grande are impactful, with a thud you can’t ignore. That said, it’s not a detailed bass, just a punchy one, and that continues with a deep, thick bass into Mark Ronson and Charlie Puth.

You can feel that effect in some tracks, such as the hefty bass vibe of FKA Twigs’ “Two Weeks”, or even the warbling in Muse’s “Madness”. The sound of each really jumps off the grill, and there are few complaints, except to say the highs can also fuzz out when the volume is up.

Across excellently engineered audio, however, and the Acton IV shines. The Deftness is moody and clear, while a track from David Bowie offers that slightly warm approach to balance. And when you jump into jazz and classical, there’s a richness that can make you think the audio is almost live.

It’s warm and easy, like a loudspeaker somewhat shrunk. This is a great little speaker.

Value

Priced at $499, the Acton IV can feel a little pricey for what you get. It’s a very good speaker, but it’s also a speaker that needs to stay plugged in, and these days, you can get a wireless model for that.

It’s not to say the Acton is badly priced, it just feels costly because of what it is.

Pricier than the Sonos Play, but meatier and with more connection options, the $500 price tag just seems too much, especially when speakers in this range tend to get wireless support. Bose’s Soundlink Max is a little more, but offers a lot of volume and great sound, and manages to be totally portable.

Clearly both competitors are different speakers, but the lack of portability on the Acton really stings that price just a bit more than you might expect.

What needs work?

And that means the biggest problem with the Acton IV is quite possibly that it doesn’t include a battery, and so needs a cord. This one has to be plugged in. There’s no getting around it.

It’s a meaty speaker with a corded requirement, though one that’s very much obvious and doesn’t falsely advertise itself as a wireless or cordless speaker. But that means it will only work when it’s plugged in, and that’s a shame.

The style and sound are both the sorts of things you’ll want to move around the house, which is easy enough provided you keep the cord.

There’s also an omission of WiFi, meaning you need to keep your phone connected to control the thing, and that too is a shame.

It would be nice to control volume or media sources, and make the Marshall speaker a properly wireless speaker that still needs power. That would make it more like an actual speaker you’d keep plugged in. You could control it using the dedicated Marshall app, or maybe even use Alexa to do things.

But none of that exists here, and those are the main reasons we typically keep speakers plugged in these days.

There are other smaller issues, such as how high volumes can also distort almost too easily, a problem you’ll pick up on when you decide to do the Spinal Tap thing in search of 11. Push the volume to make the sound feel that much more live, and you’ll hear the very limits of the speaker, as aspects distort.

For some tracks, that’s around the nine mark on the knob, though it’ll depend on the recording, clearly.

What we love

Minor distortion aside, the Acton IV is really easy to love because of what it offers: style, substance, and sweet, sweet sound.

The retro stylings are impossible to hate, and help to give off the feeling that this is made for people who love music. No joke, the moment we reached the rock part of the Pickr Sound Test, this reviewer’s internal monologue screamed “YEAH ROCK ON”, throwing in a few expletives for good measure. The vibe is impossible to ignore.

The substance is there, too. The controls are just like the source material, so you’re not getting something loosely inspired, but clearly based on.

If an amp could be a speaker for the home, it would be what the Acton IV is portraying. And jumping into the sound, that vibe is successfully communicated.

When blended together, the style, substance, and sound all come together to deliver an awesome speaker that’s impossible to deny. The signature Marshall sound is one of warmth, but the app offers a way to change that using the equaliser, and so too do the knobs up top.

That ability to shape the sound as you listen can really make a difference.

For instance, leaving the bass where it was for some Billie Eilish really made the speaker sing, but then getting stuck into some jazz from Ulysses Owens Jr, turning up the bass helped make the sound really come to life, as if the band had somehow been packed into this cramped little office. Like a personalised version of NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts, so to speak.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

It’s really difficult to capture the vibe offered by the Marshall Acton IV, and it’s probably more exciting if you’ve come from a musician’s background.

Weirdly, this reviewer has never owned a Marshall amp. His instruments are typically made by Fender, and his amps have never been quite as rich. Hendrix might have played with Marshall, but the gear is typically too rich for his bloody (plus it’s normally a guitar amp maker, less so for bass).

But when you see the Acton IV, it’s difficult to deny the vibe. This is unmistakably rock and retro, and the result is more than what’s on the surface.

The Acton IV has a sound personality that puts your sound centre stage. It’s a fun little speaker that’s so easy to fall in love with, you just might never want to upgrade. In fact, you might just keep on listening. We sure will. Recommended.