Marshall's Lunar New Year speaker is a spotlight-stealer

Here’s a festive gadget with a bit of a different twist: Marshall has teamed-up with an artist to bring you a special edition of one of its neatest portable Bluetooth speakers.

野Dark Question worked on the look of this Emberton III Lunar New Year Edition 2025 speaker, an artist known for highly stylised illustration.

As per the Chinese zodiac, 2025 is the year of the Wood Snake, which you’ll see on the speaker’s box.

The only bad bit is this mostly comes through in the packaging, rather than the design of the speaker itself.

The Marshall Emberton III Lunar New Year Edition 2025 is a lot more punchy-looking than the standard black/white/gold colour scheme of the normal edition, mind.

Its faux leather outer is now green, the grille an eye-catching orange, but the spotlight-stealer has to be the purple control up top.

The Marshall logo remains the classic gold, though — a tradition hard to topple.

Funky design aside, the Emberton is one of Marshall’s handiest, most versatile speaker lines. It’s a mere 16cm long, but uses two active drivers with two bass-reinforcing passive radiators to — just like all the best portable speakers — pump out surprisingly deep bass.

This is classic Bluetooth speaker design, but what old models don’t get you is the Emberton III’s super-long battery life. It lasts “32+” hours according to Marshall’s specs. It has a microphone for handsfree calls too.

We’ve only been told this particular speaker is dust and water resistant, but the standard Emberton III is rated at IP67. That means it can take full submersion in water up to 1m depth.

This special edition is just a little more expensive than the standard black-look version, at £179/$199. You can pre-order one now, with speakers shipping out from January 10, a few weeks ahead of Chinese New Year.

• 2024 Christmas movies — what's coming to cinemas and streaming?