Marshall Monitor ll ANC vs Bose QuietComfort 35 II: Which One Has Better Features?

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This is the review of the comparison between the updated version of the two different headphones. Both are of different brands and they are retailing at different prices. These headsets have many features some of them are the same and some of them are different. To know which one has better features, go to the detailed review.

0.2 Marshall Monitor II ANC 70.3 Bose QuietComfort 35 II 1
Marshall Monitor II ANCBose QuietComfort 35 II
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PROSPROS
Unsurprisingly rich sound.
Highly effective and adjustable noise cancellation.
Adds a dedicated button for Google Assistant.
Works in wired mode with included cord.
Class-leading noise cancellation. Highly immersive experience.
CONSCONS
Setup requires mobile app.Battery isn’t replaceable.
No auto play/pause.
Google Assistant doesn’t work well with iOS devices.

SPECIFICATIONS:

MODELMARSHALL MONITOR II ANCBOSE QUIETCOMFORT 35 II
BrandMarshallBose
ModelMonitor II ANCQuietComfort 35 II
HEADPHONESMARSHALL MONITOR II ANCBOSE QUIETCOMFORT 35 II
Connectivity TechnologyWirelessWireless
Frequency Response20 Hz-20 KHz
Sensitivity96 db SPL
Impedance32 ohm
Diaphragm40 mm
DIMENSIONS & WEIGHTMARSHALL MONITOR II ANCBOSE QUIETCOMFORT 35 II
Width5.7 in6.7 in
Depth2.9 in3.2 in
Height8.1 in7.1 in
Weight11.29 oz10.9 oz
POWERMARSHALL MONITOR II ANCBOSE QUIETCOMFORT 35 II
Battery30 Hour(s)20 Hour(s)
FEATURESMARSHALL MONITOR II ANCBOSE QUIETCOMFORT 35 II
FeaturesUses advanced active noise cancelling technology

Delivers iconic sound with the 40 mm drivers

Provides 30 hours of playtime with the ANC and Bluetooth on

Has ergonomic construction and iconic design
World-class noise cancellation

Bluetooth and NFC pairing with voice prompts

Your Google Assistant, built in

Balanced sound at any volume

Noise-rejecting dual microphone for clearer calls

Access to your phone’s virtual assistants

Bose Connect app control

Up to 20-hour battery life per charge

Lightweight and comfortable for all-day listening

Includes audio cable

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

These are one of the most popular noise-canceling headphones that I’ve recently tested. These have a very minimalistic look and style which personally I like a lot. The Marshall Monitor 2 headphones are pretty identifiably Marshall. These are currently retailing for around 320 dollars.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

The Bose QuietComfort 35 series 2 headphones are the flagship noise cancellation headphones made by Bose. They are currently running for $248 which is fairly expensive. These headphones are one of the best headphones for comfort among all other headphones in the market.

0.3 Marshall Monitor II ANC 1

DESIGN:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

On the right ear cup, we have our M button on the back. You can use this to toggle between three equalizers presets. You can use the Marshall Bluetooth app to set these up. Each preset is identified by a different guitar sound, so there’s a single one when you switch to the Marshall, there’s double when you switch to your second preset, and a triple for your third. You can also change this button in the app to invoke Google’s assistant or your native voice assistant.

Also, on the right cup is a pretty clever concept which is this joystick instead of using buttons. Using it, you can control volume by simply pushing it up or down, next to or previous track by pushing left and right, and pause and play by pushing it in. It saves from adding extra buttons too which is good. On the Left, we have our ANC button which shows something similar to the M button but for the level of active noise-canceling in the app, you can select the amount of ANC on the settings, then select the same for the monitor setting which you can then tap this button to switch between the two. On the left ear cup with a 3.5-millimeter audio jack that you can use with the included audio cable to plug in the headphones instead of using them via Bluetooth. This is handy if you want to listen to the plane’s in-flight entertainment system. Next to that, we have our USB-C port.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

You have a few different controls on these headphones. On the right-hand side, you have the power button you could turn it off, you can turn it on and if you push it all the way over that, it will initiate Bluetooth pairing. You have a few other buttons on the side as well. You have your volume up button, your volume down button and then you have a versatile button in the middle. You could use it to start a phone call, you can use it to end the phone call, you can use it to call to wake up Siri, you can use it to jump to the next music track, to jump back to the last music track, you could use it to fast-forward, you could use it to rewind, you could use so many different things.

All you have to do is you have to memorize how many times you need to press it and whether you long-press or whether you short press. It does a lot of different things in contrast to these, the volume up and volume down just do volume up and volume down. One of the other buttons that you have on the headphone on the left side is the action button and that will initiate the Google Assistant or Alexa. You can also set it to adjust the level of a noise cancellation if you’re not into assistants. So, you can set it to either a high, medium or you could turn off a noise cancellation altogether. So, it’s your choice what you want to do with that button.

You have your headphone jack on the headphones, you have your USB charging port. What do you also have is there’s a little light. That’s your battery indicator, it has three different colors, you have green for a full charge, you have an orange for a medium charge, and you have a red light for a low charge. So, it’s just kind of a quick visual way to see how much battery you have left. There’s also another light, if you’re in pairing mode it’ll let you know that it’s in pairing mode. Some of the other things that you have on the headphones you’ll notice that there’s a little microphone Jack right there on the right side, there’s also another microphone on the left-hand side.

COMFORT:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

The headband and ear cushions are covered in a vegan synthetic leather while the ear cup’s outer parts are made out of ABS. We have a decent amount of padding at the top, which helps it sit on your head a little more comfortably and we have very plush ear cups to help with that as well. It had a bit of weight to it but the good news is it has probably the most comfortable ear cushions. It’s very soft but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like light or too soft in a sense that it’s gonna like go out of shape really easily or it’s gonna start to present to your ear, not at all. It’s soft yet, it’s really good quality.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

These headphones weigh about 8.3 ounces. For people who don’t like weighing stuff in ounces, it’s also about half a pound. One of the ways to visualize how much that weighs is you could take your typical cell phone it’s about the same weight or maybe it’s had heavier but that’s about how much the Bose QuietComfort 35 series 2 headphones will weigh. So, they’re fairly light.

In terms of padding, these headphones have much padding. You’re gonna have padding on top of the headphones and you have nice padding around the ears also. The way they’ve set up the speaker within the headphones, they angle it in a way that the part of your ear that sticks out a little more and won’t touch any of the headphones. Especially, when you’re wearing headphones for an extended period of time you’re really gonna find a valuable and you’re really gonna enjoy it as it is comfortable enough.

0.3 Bose QuietComfort 35 II 2

FEATURES:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

In the Marshall app, you have three presets for the equalizer. You have the first one which is the one tune by Marshall themselves which you can’t change.  Then there are two customizable presets that you can either choose from genre-specific presets that they have pre-loaded or select custom and then you can adjust the frequencies yourself. I personally don’t like the Marshall one that much, so I change it to a different preset but that helped and made it sound a lot better to me.

They can be folded up way smaller than you’d think by looking at them frankly. It comes with a carrying pouch, that isn’t hard like the Sony WH-1000XM3. While the hard case seems like it would be better to protect the headphones, I actually preferred this soft bag because I feel like it protects them enough and it fits a lot better in the bag where space is very limited.

They cost three hundred and twenty dollars just undercutting Sony’s by a bit which is three hundred and fifty. Honestly, they’re great. I’d say that the noise-canceling maybe isn’t quite as good as the Sony’s but it’s pretty close and at least they’re a little cheaper. Honestly, they give you a solid choice of ANC headphones but with a much different look that you can choose from there.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

In terms of the color for these headphones, you don’t have that many options. Bose by default has black which I opted to go for and they also have silver. If you want to get a different color there are other colors available but you have to pay more for them. So, if you just want the cheapest price possible you’re gonna get either black or silver.

To test out the noise cancellation, I’ve walked around the city I’ve had cars go by, I’ve had trash collectors go by, I’ve had trucks go by, and it’s done a very good job at cutting out all of that background noise. In fact, it’s almost a little dangerous wearing these around because I don’t really hear many vehicles, so if I step into the street I might not hear that car that’s speeding towards me. So, just be aware of your environment when you’re wearing this because it does a very good job of canceling out sounds. Especially, if you’re playing music or if you’re carrying on a phone conversation, you’re going to hear the music, you’re going to hear the phone call, you’re not going to hear all the different environmental sounds. So, in terms of noise cancellation, it does a fantastic job.

These headphones also have its app called Bose QuietComfort 35 series 2 app and it’s pretty versatile. Inside the app, I could set the volume level, I could check the battery level, and also I could check what I’ve paired to. In the settings, I could set the name for my headphones, I get to set the connections. What’s nice is I could set up two connections at once. They also have a product tour, meaning that you could have two sets of headphones listening to the same music. You can set the level of noise cancellation all the way up to high, they also have low which is considered better for quieter or windy environments, and then you can also just turn it off all if you don’t want the noise cancellation.

There’s also the action button, for which you can set the level of noise cancellation if you’re not really into assistance, or you can choose Alexa or the Google assistant. So, you can decide what that button does. You can also have voice prompts what that’ll do is as you say put on the headphones, it’ll tell you the battery level, and when you’re clicking on different buttons it will announce kind of what you’re doing when you do that. That’s those are all the functionalities of the app, kind of the primary functionality that relates to the headphones. They’ve also included music where you could stream local radio stations.

BATTERY:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

According to Marshall, the battery will last up to 30 hours with ANC on and up to 45 with it off. There’s also fast charging, so you can plug it in for 15 minutes to get 5 hours of playback which is crazy and also handy for when you forget to charge it before that flight. You can also use this as wired so that you can save the charge at times.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

In terms of the performance of these headphones with Bluetooth, you’re going to get about 20 hours of performance, if you decide that you want to use a wired connection you’re going to get even more time, you’re going to get about 40 hours. I don’t want to have a wire dangling down over me, so effectively for me, the performance time is about 20 hours.

0.3Marshall Monitor II ANC 2

MICROPHONE:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

The idea of monitor mode in this headset is that you can use the ANC button to get to that monitoring mode and it’ll pause the music and set the sound transparency to whatever you’ve selected and you’ll be able to hear people around you without having to take off the headphones with the help of the microphone. The call quality of the microphone is also pretty good.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

This has dual microphones and what do those microphones will do is they’ll listen to the environmental sounds and then it will produce an opposing sound and that offers the noise cancellation. What it also does is if you’re on a voice call, those microphones will pick up your voice so you could carry on your conversation with whoever you’re talking to on your phone. so, you could have your phone in your bag, you could have these headphones on and you can still make the phone call because you’ve got microphones on these headphones. These do work well for both the noise cancellation as well as for voice calls.

SOUND:

Marshall Monitor II ANC

This headphone comes with the 40-millimeter dynamic driver which makes them sound pretty good. The base sounded crisp and clear but it didn’t drown all other ranges there. The highs were weak some times but still, it’s pretty good. The bass is punchy but it does not affect the treble at all. It’s not the best sounding headset ever but it sounds pretty good. You can also play with the equalizer in the Marshall app to get it sound as you want. There is a clear instrumental separation with these headsets.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II

In terms of the sound quality, I found that the sound is clear, it’s crisp, the base is very good. It sounds very good and the audio really sounds best-in-class to me. The sound quality is really good but they have sort of a special character that I haven’t really heard anywhere else. It sounds like a linear headphone which is something that we usually use in the studio when we make music when we make soundtracks for movies and games and stuff but this is a consumer headphone that is supposed to be totally different but it ain’t this is actually. This is one of the most linear consumer headphones out there on the market. You can kind of hear everything that’s going on from the TV and grumbling lows and to the fresh Airy highs but nothing like over-saturated.

The sound is just very controlled and it’s very detailed. They have a different sound than most other consumer headphones and I really like that. They are really good at digging up details in the sound that you would otherwise not even know about. You can hear when things are compressed and you can hear when things are not and you can still hear the breath leanness but it’s not overdone, and it’s not over-saturated. You can hear the bass and the bass is clear and the bass is perfect but it’s not overdone. It’s not too much like in some other headphones. So, I think that sound quality wise the Bose-QC 35 II is pretty much perfect for my taste.

0.3 Bose QuietComfort 35 II 3

WHICH ONE HAS BETTER FEATURES?

In my opinion, Bose QuietComfort 35 II has better features than the Marshall Monitor II ANC like better sound, better active noise cancelation, and better microphone at the price less than the Marshall Monitor II ANC currently. Also, in the Bose QC 35 II, you can have two connections at a time, which we don’t have in the Marshall Monitor II ANC.

Expert Reviews of Marshall Monitor II ANC:

By TechAdvisor
The Marshall Monitor II ANC headphones are an excellent choice for those looking for comfortable over-ear cans with noise canceling. They offer a well-rounded balance of design, comfort, features, and performance at a competitive price.

By Sound Guys
The Marshall Monitor II ANC headphones are good at active noise canceling, have a great build and design, are easy to use, and are perfect for commuters and frequent flyers alike. Unfortunately, they don’t exist in a vacuum and for a similar price…

By Mashable
Marshall’s new headphones provide excellent sound, effective noise cancellation, and physical convenience at a more reasonable price point than some competitors.

By TechRadar
The Marshall Monitor II ANC is undoubtedly the brand’s best headphones yet; the audio quality on offer here far surpasses any of its previous models, with a balanced presentation, smooth mids, and a generally powerful, rock-ready sound. They feel…

By Trusted Reviews
It’s hard to find anything to truly dislike about Marshall’s ANC headphones. Their sound is enjoyable and fairly well balanced; they look smart; plus the collapsible design makes them a good travel companion. Other similarly priced headphones offer…

Expert Review of Bose QuietComfort 35 II:

By Craving Tech
Thanks to Bose QC35 II, my Netflix series watching experience gets an upgrade while I commute from and to work on the train. It has enough power to drive all sorts of sounds that you throw at it, cancels many background noises, and lets you immerse in…

By AndroidGuys
The Bose QuietComfort 35 II is one of the de facto standards when it comes to active noise-canceling headphones. With a solid build quality, high-quality sound, and some of the best noise-canceling around the reputation is well earned. My only criticisms…

By Home Theater Review
I know that plenty of audiophiles read this publication, and my advice to you is to put stereotypes aside–because if you are looking for a very comfortable, features-laden, balanced pair of affordable wireless headphones, the Bose QuietComfort 35 Series II belongs on your shortlist to consider.

By Gadget360
The Bose QC35 II carries forward the same level of audio and noise cancellation performance of the original, which makes it a solid pair worth considering. We found the addition of Google Assistant to be quite useful, at least when it worked. If you use it a lot, this integration will come in handy. We did face some moments where the experience got a little buggy, but hopefully, all these things can be fixed with firmware updates.

By goodhousekeeping.co.uk
They may not be cheap but the Bose QuietComfort 35 II is the bee knees of on-ear wireless headphones. As usual, the sound quality is excellent but the headphones are comfortable to wear too, have 20 hours of listening time, and even build on the previous version by including access to Google Assistant (if you have a compatible phone).