Marshall Mode II True Wireless In-Ear Headphones M-006345

Nice!

I like this product

I am a huge fan of Marshall headphones. I have had a set of Monitor headphones forever and absolutely love them. I wanted to love the Modes as well, but they have failed the test of time. I have had 3 pairs. The first pair had a faulty left earbud that just buzzed and crackled. I returned them and after 3 weeks with the second pair the right earbud stopped charging, exchanged. The third pair lasted me 4 months. A solid 4 months and I used to them daily. Now the right earbud is suddenly much quieter than the left and the battery life is much shorter.

If these worked without issue, I’d probably give them 4/5 stars. The sound quality is probably better than average and the low profile is fantastic and comfortable. The noise cancellation is sub par, but they don’t necessarily advertise them to be noise cancelling. The transparency mode, however, is terrible. I can’t hear anything beyond the headphone when transparency is activated and when using them to make calls the person on the other end is constantly saying how loud it is in the background. Even more, I frequently have a hard time getting both earbuds to connects and often have to put them both back in the charging case and essentially reset them to work.

Again, I love Marshall and would certainly consider buying another pair of their over ear headphones, but these wireless earbuds leave a lot to be desired and I will be moving on without a second thought.

Edit 9/26/22:
I do not want to change any of what is outlined above as it still remains true, but feel obligated to add this edit to compliment Marshall’s customer service. I had returned these 3 times due to malfunctiona and with the Amazon return policy was not able to return my last pair. I reached out to Marshall about 9 months after my last exchange and they were extremely responsive, gave me very clear instructions on how to work through a warranty and ultimately offered me a replacement free of charge. I was a bit discouraged after my experience with these headphones (as I mentioned above I had a pair of monitors that are still incredible) but my customer service experience with Marshall has redeemed a lot of my loyalty.

Honestly, I’m a big fan of Marshall’s products – especially that they’ve gotten into the speaker/headphone market. I was really rooting for them when I saw the Mode II pop up on Youtube, ordered a pair in hopes to stand out from the AirPods crowd. Right off the bat, the packaging looked cheap and unflattering. The product itself is amazing, the charging case screams rock and roll and the headphones with the signature ‘M’ are very punk rock. Hearing guitar riffs as they synch up are truly an exciting experience and the integration with my phone was a few button clicks away.

The sound was crisp, punchy and loud. Usually bass suffers in wireless headphones but this was an exception, I’d say this model is on par with the AirPods gen 2 in the sound category. Really liked the in ear fit – snug and comfortable. This unfortunately is where the issues arose, the headphones infrequently crackled, specifically in the right ear. Trying to connect with my MacBook Air, there were serious latency issues and I couldn’t figure out why there was such a serious delay (may have been user error). Even on my phone there were connection issues regularly and cutting out.

It’s a shame because I really wanted to like this product, but it felt like this wasn’t a quality product, especially for over $120 dollars. Had these been half the price, it might be a different story and I might have kept them but for full price good luck. Certainly the marketing is great, but it’s not enough to make up for the shoddy quality of these ear buds. I saw there was an app you can download and register but I didn’t bother, I don’t see the point in having to jump through hoops for something that should work right out of the box.

Marshall needs to competitively price their gear if they’re hoping to capture a piece of the market instead of relying on their guitar amp history and flashing rock marketing if they want to upheave the EarPod army – and I’m hoping they do but until then, I’d avoid them.