Marshall MID ANC Wireless Headphones Review

The Marshall MID ANC are fairly stylish-looking on-ears. They look and feel more premium than the Marshall Major II but have the same design language, with a rugged textured coating on the ear cups reminiscent of Marshall guitar amps. They have small, square-ish ear cups that don't protrude much and a low-profile headband that fits the contour of your head well. They have a few golden accents for the branding logos and the control knob, which creates a great-looking contrast and makes them look a bit more high-end. They only come in a black color scheme, but the understated look will work for most.

The Marshall MID ANC are decently comfortable headphones. They're not as tight on the head as on-ears we've tested, like the Beats Solo3 2018 Wireless. They're lightweight and decently well-padded, especially the headband. Unfortunately, the ear cup pads aren't as soft as the Bose SoundLink On-Ear Wireless. They also clamp your ears a bit which is slightly more noticeable when wearing glasses. It can get fatiguing during long listening sessions, but they're comfortable enough for most listeners.

These headphones have a good control scheme that's easy to use and efficient. They have a multi-directional control knob on the left ear cup that's responsive and tactile, so you know exactly when you've triggered a function. Flicking the knob up and down changes volume levels, and left/right skip and rewind tracks. Pressing directly on the knob pauses and plays tracks, while holding it down will switch the headphones On or Off and enables the Bluetooth pairing mode. They have a noise cancelling switch on the right ear cup to enable and disable their ANC. You get a lot of auditory feedback when commands are registered. However, the layout is cramped and may not be as intuitive as the Plantronics Backbeat Pro Wireless 2014 or the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 Wireless 2016. They also lack a talk-through/ambient mode for their noise cancelling.

The Marshall MID ANC are breathable headphones. Your outer-ear remains relatively cool, and since they're on-ears, they don't obstruct as much airflow as some of the closed-back over-ear models we've tested. They won't make you sweat more than average during casual listening sessions but won't be as good as in-ears when working out and exercising.

The Marshall MID ANC are decently portable headphones but won't fit in any pockets. They fold into a more compact format and come with a pretty great soft case, so you can easily put them in your bag. Unfortunately, they're still a little too large and cumbersome to comfortably carry around on your person if you don't have a bag or backpack.

These headphones come with a premium-looking soft case that will shield them against scratches and mild impacts. However, since it's a soft case, it doesn't offer as much protection as a hard case against drops and water damage. On the upside, it doesn't add much bulk to the headphones, and the soft case is collapsible to save space.

The Marshall MID ANC have a good build quality that feels decently durable. They're lightweight and have a metal headband that's flexible yet sturdy enough that you won't worry much if you accidentally drop the headphones once or twice. The ear cups also feel decently dense, but their padding doesn't feel or look as premium as the pad on the headband. Since they fold, they have a few more susceptible joints than the Skullcandy Grind Wireless, but the hinges are well-made and feel durable enough to last you a while.

These headphones are stable enough to jog with but won't be the ideal option for more intense exercises. They're not as tight on the head as the Beats Solo3 Wireless, so they'll slide from time to time when tilting your head. They're wireless, so they won't get yanked off your ears because the audio cable got hooked on something. They also have a fairly low-profile headband and lightweight ear cups, so they don't sway as much as some over-ears when shaking your head side to side.

• Marshall MID ANC headphones
• Audio cable
• USB cable
• Manuals
• Carrying case

The Marshall MID ANC's frequency response consistency is amazing. In the bass range, there's barely any variance across our five human subjects, even for the one who wears glasses. In the treble range, below 10kHz, the maximum deviation is less than 2dB, which is also very good. This means that the Marshall will have a consistent bass and treble delivery across multiple users and re-seats.

The Marshall MID ANC's bass accuracy is very good. The LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, and low-bass is within 1dB of our neutral target. This means that the Marshall have a deep and extended bass, with just the right amount of thump and rumble, making them suitable for bass-heavy genres like EDM, hip-hop, and film scores. Mid-bass and high-bass, responsible for the body of bass guitars, punch of the kick drums, and warmth of the vocals, are also flat and within 1dB of our target.

The Marshall MID ANC have fantastic mid accuracy. The overall response is flat and even, indicating a clear and well-balanced reproduction of vocals and lead instruments. However, their mid-range is consistently recessed and underemphasized by about 1.5dB. This nudges vocals and lead instruments towards the back of the mix by giving more emphasis to the bass and treble ranges.

The Marshall MID ANC Wireless have mediocre treble accuracy. Their response is a bit uneven throughout the range. There are some dips present, but treble range overall is overemphasized and bright sounding. It's especially noticeable around 4kHz and 7kHz, which brings excessive emphasis to vocals and leads and could make S and Ts a bit sharp and piercing on overly bright tracks.

The Marshall MID ANC have a great imaging performance. Their weighted group delay is at 0.23, which is within good limits. The GD graph also shows that their group delay never crosses the audibility threshold. This indicates a tight bass and a transparent treble reproduction. In terms of driver matching, the L/R drivers of our test unit were very well-matched in amplitude and frequency response, ensuring accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, and video game effects) in the stereo image. But we measured a significant mismatch in their phase response. This could make the stereo image weak in the higher frequencies and give the sense that a hole is in the middle of the stereo field.

The Marshall MID ANC's soundstage is poor. They don't interact with the pinna that much and therefore don't activate its resonances like a loudspeaker does. You can also see this in the PRTF graph, where there's no activation below 5kHz, and there's no "10kHz notch" present either. This suggests that their soundstage will be perceived to be small and located inside the listener's head, as opposed to in front. The closed-back design of these headphones also means that their soundstage won't sound as open and spacious compared to that of open-back headphones.

The noise isolation performance of the Marshall MID ANC is adequate. With active noise cancellation (ANC) enabled, they reduce outside noise in the bass range by about 8dB, which is mediocre for cancelling the rumble of bus and airplane engines. In the mid-range, important for blocking speech, they achieved 16dB of isolation which is good. In the treble range, occupied by sharp S and T sounds, they reduce outside noise by more than 25dB, which is above-average. If you want a better isolating pair of on-ears, check out the Beats Solo Pro Wireless, although they won't be as comfortable.

The Marshall MID ANC have an alright leakage performance. A significant portion of their leakage is spread from 1KHz to 5KHz, which is a relatively narrow range and will mostly consist of speech, leads, and cymbals. The overall level of the leakage isn't very loud either. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away will average around 40dB SPL and peaks at 53dB SPL, which is the same as the noise floor of most offices.

The recording quality of the Marshall MID ANC's microphone is mediocre. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 223Hz suggests that speech recorded with this mic will sound relatively thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) of 3.5KHz indicates a speech that sounds noticeably muffled and lacking in detail. The response between the LFE and HFE is quite uneven, which negatively affects the quality of speech. However, it'll still be decently understandable in quiet environments since speech intelligibility mostly depends on the 500Hz-4KHz range.

The Marshall MID ANC's integrated microphone is mediocre at noise handling. In our SpNR test, they achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of about 14dB, indicating that this microphone is best suited for quiet environments and will struggle to separate speech from ambient noise even in moderately loud environments.

The Marshall MID ANC have a good battery performance. These headphones have a continuous battery life of 17 hours when Bluetooth and ANC are enabled but last much longer if you use just the ANC or just Bluetooth. However, please note that battery performance can vary with real-life usage, and your experience may vary. Also, unfortunately, they take quite a bit of time to charge and don't automatically turn off when inactive. This means if you forget to switch them off, the battery will continue to drain as long as they're paired to a device, which is a little disappointing.

These headphones don't have a dedicated app for added customization options.

They connect wirelessly via Bluetooth. Unfortunately, they can't pair simultaneously with multiple devices and don't have NFC support. On the upside, they're fairly easy to pair, thanks to their great control scheme.

The Marshall MID ANC have a bit too much latency with PCs for gaming and watching movies, but they perform better with the aptX codec enabled. They also have high latency with iOS devices, but on the plus side, you should be able to stream video on an Android phone without noticing a delay. Also, some devices seem to compensate differently for latency, so your experience may vary.

The Marshall MID ANC come with a non-OS-specific audio cable with an in-line remote microphone compatible with the PS4 and the Xbox One. This gives them a secondary connection option in case you don't want to use Bluetooth.

These headphones don't have a base/dock. If you want a versatile headset with a base that you can also use wired, check out the SteelSeries Arctis 7 2019 Edition Wireless.