Marshall Acton IV Review: Great Looks, Still No Wi-Fi

With the Acton IV, Marshall renews the most compact of its home speakers. This fourth generation keeps the retro look modelled on the brand's amplifiers while modernising the formula with a customisable M button, Bluetooth with Auracast support and both RCA and mini-jack inputs for connecting different audio sources.

Under that fairly contained format, the Acton IV also promises a fuller and better controlled sound. Marshall claims wider spatialisation, improved stereo separation and cleaner bass thanks to reworked tweeters, waveguides and bass-reflex port. That last change is also meant to allow the speaker to be placed closer to a wall without degrading its performance. The Acton IV has been available since July 2026, and the unit assessed here ran firmware 1.1.2 with version 1.3.1 of the Marshall app.

Visually the Acton IV changes very little from the Acton III. Marshall sticks to its usual recipe of textured faux-leather covering, a black and grey acoustic grille, a gold logo and brass finishes lifted directly from its amplifiers. The main cosmetic novelty is around the fascia, which is now outlined by a brass ring.

The structure has been reworked, though, to make the speaker easier to fit into a room. Marshall has moved the bass-reflex port and the connections to the underside so that the Acton IV can sit closer to a wall. The top control panel keeps the emblematic knobs for volume, bass and treble, and adds a customisable M button alongside them.

The Acton IV remains particularly compact for a home speaker. It measures 17.1 cm high, 26 cm wide and 15 cm deep, and weighs 2.65 kg. Those contained dimensions let it find a place easily on a shelf, a TV unit or a desk.

Like the other Marshall home speakers, the Acton IV does without Wi-Fi and relies solely on a Bluetooth 5.3 connection for wireless playback. That inevitably limits what it can do against genuinely networked rivals.

With no network connection, the Acton IV supports neither AirPlay nor Google Cast nor Spotify Connect. Nor can it be controlled by voice through Alexa or Google Assistant.

Marshall does offer a way of synchronising several speakers around the home. The Acton IV is Auracast compatible and can be paired with the Heddon network player to play the same track across several of the brand's devices. That option requires buying an additional piece of equipment, however, where a built-in Wi-Fi chip would have made the whole arrangement simpler and more flexible.

Physical connectivity does improve on the Acton III. The 3.5 mm mini-jack input on the top panel is still there, but it is now joined by an RCA line input on the underside. That is a welcome addition, and it makes life much easier for anyone connecting a turntable with a phono preamplifier or any other analogue source.

The Acton IV offsets the modesty of its connected features with an immediacy that few rivals match. All the essential controls are gathered on the top panel, notably the volume, bass and treble knobs, which are a particular pleasure to use.

The toggle power switch adds to the charm, while dedicated buttons handle source selection and playback control. This fourth generation also introduces a configurable M key, which can be assigned either a sound preset or the Spotify Tap function.

The Marshall app supplements those physical controls with more scope for personalisation. It offers a five-band equaliser, several sound profiles, a tool for adapting the output to where the speaker has been placed, and the settings associated with the M button. Volume and input selection can also be driven from a phone. The experience is still short of ideal, though: the app has no built-in music player of its own, and its interface remains untranslated in several languages.

The Acton IV uses an acoustic architecture close to that of its predecessor, with a central driver handling bass and midrange, supported by two tweeters for the high frequencies. The whole thing works with a bass-reflex port now fitted underneath the speaker, an arrangement intended to improve airflow and make placement near a wall less problematic.

The new waveguides are not enough to create a genuine stereo image. Separation between the left and right channels remains very discreet, to the point where it is difficult to place individual instruments precisely. The Acton IV does appear to spread sound a little more evenly than the Acton III, with a slightly wider listening zone and a result that depends less on where the listener sits.

Although musically very close to it, the Acton IV differs noticeably from its bigger sibling the Stanmore IV. Less powerful and fitted with a smaller woofer, it is naturally more reserved in the low frequencies. The bass does not reach as deep and delivers less impact, but it is also less intrusive at the default setting. The result gains in balance and legibility, even if the speaker sometimes lacks foundation on tracks that demand a lot of energy at the bottom of the spectrum. Its dynamics and volume nonetheless remain convincing given the compact format. Turning the volume down, incidentally, produces a deeper account of the bass.

The midrange and treble carry over some of the limitations already seen elsewhere in the range. The Acton IV is enjoyable with airy productions but loses precision as arrangements become denser or richer in harmonics. Saturated guitars, cymbals, bagpipes and other complex instruments can then take on a slightly hard tone. That behaviour becomes more pronounced at high volume, where the delivery grows progressively more aggressive and less controlled.

The placement settings offered in the app do not amount to a genuine acoustic calibration system. They essentially modify the bass level according to where the speaker sits: more bass when it is away from walls, and attenuation when it is installed against a wall or in a corner.

The outgoing Acton III retains a very similar construction, controls that are just as pleasant to use and a nearly identical sound. The Acton IV distinguishes itself mainly through its RCA input, its M button and easier placement against a wall. Those are useful but evolutionary changes rather than a wholesale redesign.

The JBL Authentics 200 is far more versatile thanks to Wi-Fi, AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect and voice assistant support. It also has a slightly better controlled sound signature, despite imperfect precision and some troublesome vibration. The Klipsch The One Plus shares the retro styling and limited connectivity of the Marshall, with a softer sound that is nonetheless less dynamic, and distinctly more austere ergonomics.

The Sonos Era 100, finally, relies on a very complete multiroom ecosystem and a more natural midrange. The Acton IV keeps its style, its excellent controls and its analogue connectivity, but it looks less versatile than the networked models and not different enough from the Acton III to stand out as the most rational choice.