Gadget Review: Marshall Minor IV is major contender among earbuds

Simplicity. It’s an often-overlooked yardstick of a great product or a great design. In this day and age when your refrigerator is supposed to go grocery shopping and your watch is supposed to be your doctor, there are still some brands coming out with uncomplicated and simple products that are designed to do very few things but built with the single-minded pursuit of doing them well.

From the house of Marshall – that audio brand with an illustrious history of producing high quality equipment – comes one such simple yet efficient product: the Minor IV earphones.

A testament to Marshall’s commitment to blending vintage aesthetics with modern technology, the Minor IV is the latest addition to the brand’s line-up of in-ear sound devices.

Exuding the classic Marshall aesthetic, the design, look and finish are what catch your attention first. Marshall products have a distinctive look and the Minor IV is no exception, albeit it comes in a small package. With Marshall’s signature logo emblazoned on the front of the case, you will not mistake it for any other product. The use of a high-quality material like textured vinyl, reminiscent of the legendary Marshall amplifiers, not only enhances the durability of the case but also adds a touch of elegance.

And best of all, the case is taller in shape than it is wider, unlike most of its competitors, which are wide and short. The Marshall’s design enables it to fit in pockets better, so when you need to take it around with you – which you obviously do – it is more convenient to carry in, say, the Dubai Metro.

Coming to the buds themselves, the earpieces also feature the same textured vinyl casing, are lightweight and compact, making them highly portable and comfortable for extended use. They are ergonomically designed to fit snugly into the ears, and seem to follow the Apple ear pods school of design in having long stalks that hang down from the ears. This seems to hook the earbud in place, making it sit comfortably in each ear for prolonged listening sessions without causing discomfort or fatigue.

And that's just as well – the Minor IV boasts a whopping 30 hours of use on a full charge, with seven hours of battery time on the buds and the rest in the case battery for a quick refill. In our extended usage of our test mule, the times it spent being hooked up to the charger plug were so few and far between that we felt we were never charging it at all and that it was running on energy from the ether. This is great for users who enjoy immersive audio experiences and do not want a rude “battery low” warning voice interrupting their long tryst with, say, a Beethoven symphony or a binge-watch of all episodes so far of House of Dragon.

And for those who are not satisfied with even this long play duration, there is the scope to enhance the battery life further by activating a power saver function in the app. But more about the app in a bit.

The earphones feature multi-functional touch controls that allows users to adjust volume, play and pause tracks, and answer calls, among other functions, with ease. The controls are responsive and located conveniently on the stalks, ensuring quick access without needing to reach for the connected device.

The crux of the Marshall Minor IV, though, is on the sound experience. These Marshalls deliver a sound signature that will appeal to audiophiles and casual listeners alike, offering a balanced audio profile with emphasis on clarity and richness across the frequency spectrum. The earphones incorporate custom-tuned dynamic drivers that reproduce detailed highs, well-defined mids, and balanced, in-proportion bass, catering to a wide range of musical genres and audio preferences.

And this is where the Minor IV really catches our fancy with its simplicity of operations. While almost every other in-ear audio product we have tested lends its own colour to the sound with its own signature audio reproduction, this Marshall is as close to neutral as we’ve come across.

Of course there is an accompanying app in which you can tweak the frequencies to your heart’s content by using the equaliser settings, but for yours truly the default sound was neutral enough to require no fiddling with any such settings. This is something that a finicky audiophile like me has seldom experienced in an earphone of late.

The audio performance of the Minor IV is commendable, providing clear vocals and instrument separation that bring out nuances in music tracks. The balanced sound profile ensures that no particular frequency overwhelms others, resulting in a pleasant listening experience across various genres. Despite their compact size, the earphones deliver adequate bass that adds depth and impact to music tracks without overshadowing other frequencies.

For those who just have to fiddle with equaliser on the app, there is another in app feature that we loved: a battery-saver feature that increases play-time further than the standard 30 hours. Activating this, we expected the sound quality to suffer, but surprisingly, our ears felt no difference at all. What wizardry Marshall does with this we do not know, but we have to take their word for it that it enhances the battery life while we feel no loss in audio quality.

With these and other market-standard features -- such as seamless multipoint Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity for multiple devices, good microphone reception and reliable wireless performance without any drops in the sound – the Marshall Minor IV is a great value proposition for Dh599.

But can there ever be the perfect gadget? Does this mean we have no gripes about the Marshall Minor IV? Not at all. Remember when we said simplicity was this Marshall’s calling card? Well, your USP can sometimes be your undoing too. Marshall does not offer active noise cancelling in the Minor IV and any passive in-ear noise cancelling is minimal at best. With the like of Jabra and Sennheiser offering active noise cancelling in earbuds that are not that much more expensive than the Minor IV, we feel Marshall may have missed a trick here.

But if you consider active noise cancelling a gimmick and are a fan of balanced sound in a simple and robust package, then Marshall Minor IV is a major contender in the earbuds market.

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