Marshall Heston 60 Feature Scores
Explore all 55 feature scores for Marshall Heston 60, organized into pros and cons.
Scores by Feature
Summary
55 reviewed features-
Very positive 4.5-5.036 (65%)
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Positive 3.5-4.48 (15%)
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Neutral 2.5-3.48 (15%)
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Negative 1.5-2.43 (5%)
Pros
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Design is a major selling point. The amp-inspired grille, gold accents, cream option and magnetic details make this one of the most distinctive compact soundbars around.
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The Heston 60 earns strong overall praise as a stylish, compact and capable soundbar. Its premium price, software quirks and limited expansion keep it from being an automatic choice for everyone.
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This is particularly well suited to small and medium rooms, where its compact footprint still produces surprisingly full, powerful sound.
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Overall sound quality is consistently strong, especially for a compact bar, with punchy bass, clear mids and convincing scale for movies and music.
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Bass is one of the Heston 60’s biggest surprises, with unusually strong punch and weight for such a small bar. Deep sub-bass still benefits from an added subwoofer.
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Basic setup is one of the easiest parts of ownership: HDMI hookup is quick, and most testers were up and running with little effort.
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Dialogue is usually crisp, well separated and easy to follow, even in dense action. A few tests found speech could become muddied when background activity became especially busy.
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Build quality matches the premium styling, with solid construction, tight finish and a durable feel that several testers ranked among the best in the compact class.
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Music performance is a standout strength, with strong energy, clear vocals and engaging instrument separation. Spatial mixes tend to fare better than plain stereo in the most critical listening.
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Day-to-day operation is mostly easy thanks to intuitive controls and a well-organized app, though app delays and bugs can interrupt the experience.
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The 73cm-wide chassis works especially well with smaller TVs and narrow stands, while remaining easy to wall mount. It can look undersized beneath very large screens.
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Repairable and replaceable parts are a genuine long-term strength, giving the Heston 60 a stronger durability and sustainability story than many sealed soundbars.
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The Heston 60 has enough bass to work well alone, while the optional Heston Sub 200 adds deeper cinematic impact. The matching sub is useful but expensive, and a few testers wanted even more power.
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Wall mounting is unusually thoughtful, with reversible magnetic branding and controls plus compact proportions that keep the installation neat.
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For its size, the bar gets impressively loud and can fill small or medium rooms with substantial output.
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The top-panel controls are tactile, clearly labeled and intuitive, giving useful access to core functions without opening the app.
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Tonal balance is generally strong, with clear mids and detailed highs, but some listening exposed a bass-to-midrange gap or sharper, more sibilant treble in Atmos music.
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Support for both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X is a meaningful strength, especially against compact rivals that omit DTS:X.
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Sound elevation can be remarkably convincing for a compact bar, with several tests hearing clear overhead movement, though the effect varies by room and content.
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The five-band EQ and mode-specific tuning give useful control over tonal balance and let owners work around some of the preset limitations.
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Fine details come through clearly, helping subtle effects, textures and small soundtrack cues remain audible in busy scenes.
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Dynamic range is strong, with smooth transitions from quiet dialogue to loud action and plenty of headroom for big moments.
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Atmos height performance is the most divisive part of the sound. Some tests heard convincing overhead motion and surprising vertical reach, while others found height effects limited and short of truly enveloping.
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Spatial positioning and imaging are precise, with movement across the screen and individual elements placed clearly within the soundstage.
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Wi-Fi streaming is generally easy and dependable, especially with direct services, though individual casting paths can behave differently.
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Horizontal width and motion are often excellent, but full wraparound immersion is inconsistent. Without rear speakers or dedicated height channels, some listeners still hear the action as coming mainly from the front.
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The Heston 60 generally stays controlled at high volume, but one Bluetooth music test produced audible distortion and muddiness.
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Broad Bluetooth codec support adds flexibility and helps the Heston 60 stand out from more limited compact rivals.
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Complex soundtracks stay impressively unified, with effects and voices presented as parts of one coherent performance rather than disconnected elements.
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HDMI eARC makes basic TV use convenient, including volume control from the television’s existing remote.
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Voices are clean and natural, with music vocals in particular described as smooth, detailed and highly intelligible.
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The analog input and sub output make the Heston 60 unusually flexible for a compact bar, including turntable use and third-party subwoofers.
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Room calibration is inconsistent: it made the soundstage more immediate in one room and produced a clear improvement in another, but made no audible difference in a third.
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AirPlay playback is straightforward and, where directly tested, reliable and good-sounding.
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Bluetooth playback was reliable in direct testing, though one separate Bluetooth music test also exposed some muddiness that was scored under distortion rather than connection stability.
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Bluetooth phone hookup is easy and adds a convenient alternative to Wi-Fi and wired playback.
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Google Cast is generally a strong high-quality streaming route, though one tester encountered a source-specific low-volume quirk.
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The physical buttons are simple, responsive and effective, even if some testers miss the larger Heston 120’s knobs.
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Voice mode helps keep speech intelligible at lower listening levels or in tricky rooms without requiring high overall volume.
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A strong mix of connectivity, streaming options, room tuning and app controls gives the Heston 60 more flexibility than a basic TV-only soundbar.
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Spotify Connect is a reliable, great-sounding direct streaming option and avoids some of the quirks seen with other casting paths.
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At roughly six pounds, the Heston 60 is light enough to reposition or mount without much hassle.
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Cable management is mixed: the rear cover can keep ports and wiring tidy on a stand, but one wall-mounted setup left the power and TV cables awkwardly exposed.
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The Heston 60 can create useful vertical scale, but height is less consistent and less expansive than its impressive horizontal width.
Cons
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Rear-speaker expansion is a clear weakness: there are no matching rear channels, so owners cannot build the same kind of wraparound system available from Sonos and some other rivals.
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The lack of HDMI passthrough is a recurring practical limitation for owners who want to connect source devices through the soundbar.
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There is no HDMI passthrough for consoles or other HDMI-reliant devices, so gaming setups may lose a convenient connection path.
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The Heston 60 works well as a compact one-box TV solution, but its home-theater ecosystem is less expandable than rivals because rear channels are not supported.
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The USB-C port is of limited appeal in this compact setup; one tester was unsure what practical use it offered.
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A/V sync is adjustable in the app, but one tester had to correct the delay manually at the start of a movie.
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There is no built-in voice assistant. Some testers see that as a minor omission, while others simply consider it something to know before buying.
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Remote-free control divides opinion. TV-remote and app control are convenient for many users, but several testers still wanted a dedicated physical remote.
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Wireless subwoofer linking can be easy and stable once established, but some setups experienced initial pairing friction. Marshall’s broader speakers also do not integrate with the soundbar as a unified ecosystem.
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The Marshall app is capable but inconsistent. Some testers found it stable and responsive, while others hit pairing failures, slow reconnects, loading delays, freezes, and small bugs.
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Value is the toughest tradeoff. The Heston 60 feels premium and some testers think it earns the price, but many note that cheaper compact rivals or full soundbar-and-sub packages can cost less.