Marshall Stanmore II Voice (2018) vs Sony SRS-XB30 Series (2018)

The Marshall Stanmore II Voice (2018) is a great Portable Bluetooth Speaker for its $314 asking price.

The Sony SRS-XB31 (2018), on the other hand, is not worth its $99 price tag and should be avoided by most people. We strongly suggest that you take a look at some better alternatives if you're considering spending around $80 on a Portable Bluetooth Speaker.

Two highly trusted sources that perform well-thought-out in-depth testing consider the Marshall Stanmore II Voice (2018) to be a great product - it earned the "Also great" title from Wirecutter (NYTimes) and "Best sound" from SoundGuys in their respective Portable Bluetooth Speaker roundups, which is a good indication of it being a notable product.

As for the Sony SRS-XB31 (2018) - Android Central, a source that conducts reliable hands-on testing, has featured it in its Best Smart Home Tech For Christmas 2018 roundup. However, it didn't make it to any of the top spots.

We couldn't find any sources that tested both of these Portable Bluetooth Speakers, so we only analyzed how they performed in reviews from different sites.

We first examined which sources rated each of these best and found that the Marshall Stanmore II Voice (2018) got its highest, 9, rating from Top Ten Reviews, while the Sony SRS-XB31 (2018) earned its best, 9.4, score from Technically Well.

Lastly, we averaged out all of the reviews scores that we could find on these two products and compared them to other Portable Bluetooth Speakers on the market. We learned that both of them performed far better than most of their competitors - the overall review average earned by Portable Bluetooth Speakers being 7.6 out of 10, whereas the Marshall Stanmore II Voice (2018) and Sony SRS-XB31 (2018) managed averages of 8.0 and 9.4 points, respectively.

Due to the difference in their prices, however, it's important to keep in mind that a direct Marshall Stanmore II Voice (2018) vs. Sony SRS-XB31 (2018) comparison might not be entirely fair - some sources don't take value for money into account when assigning their scores and therefore have a tendency to rate more premium products better.