I wouldn’t take the coil fork of jumps or anything, but the frame is aluminum and I’m currently using an SLX/XT drive train. I can’t see why the frame wouldn’t hold up?
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I have seen similar stuff before, but can’t say I have seen one on our bikes here in the US. We can thank lawyers for that garbage.
I am confident that a Marlin is a fine bike when ridden even to moderately solid XC riding. We have locals on them and I have played with them numerous times at the shop. It’s not something you can bash on big drops, but for the majority of average trail riders, it is a fine option at that price point.
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Trust me…there are no (intentional) big drops in my future 
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I see Marlin’s all over our XC trails. When the COVID supply chain dried up, it was one of the only bikes our local shops could get their hands on in volume. I’d guess it was probably the most purchased mtb in 2021 in my area.
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Ditto, we sold a TON of them. Great price point, but the fact that my boss stocked up on them vs the limited options from our other brands made them an easy sell. I built a dozen of them over a few weekends, just to keep our floor stocked.
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I think a MTB can make a great gravel bike for forest service roads with sustained steep climbs and chunky descents. Wouldn’t be a lot of fun on a mixed road/gravel/whatever kind of ride with friends who were all going faster on the paved sections but great just about anywhere else.
I don’t know that I would mess with adding a dropper to your current bike unless you are also planning to ride technical single track or just really want a dropper. They are great for getting the seat out of the way on very steep terrain but I don’t know that it would be much use on a typical gravel type of ride. Same thing with a suspension fork. Geometry can get weird on bikes that aren’t build with a suspension fork in mind and cheap suspension forks are pretty terrible in my experience. I think you’d get more fun out of fitting the largest tires you can and playing around with pressure to find the sweet spot. If you really like that set up, maybe look at a XC bike on down the road.
I have an old 29er MTB that is fully rigid, put a ton of miles on it as a single speed and then dusted it off and added a 1x11 set up to do some bike packing. Not optimized for the fastest gravel days or the most technical single track but capable of having a pretty good time on more or less everything.
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QR will work fine but I do notice the extra stiffness of through axles eg in cyclo-cross I immediately started riding corners I was talking to make before. The fork and frame could have been stiffer, of course, so it’s not real like for like but I can tell the difference.
That said, to get it and ride there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with QR
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A couple of comments that are hopefully supportive and additive:
First off, what @mcneese.chad said up top: your present bike is fine. I’ll add that your ride style will change as you get more fit, more comfortable on the terrain, and lose weight (which you seem to want to do). So, getting a new bike now – especially if you enjoy your current bike – is something to hit pause on because it seems to me you would benefit from learning more about the different ride options and save your money for a big change, not an incremental change.
Second, it is really clear that gravel means different things to different people, largely based on their location. This is evident in this thread as much as @Jonathan’s comment on a recent (not too recent at this point?) podcast denigrating 
gravel as simply riding on poor quality roads. You describe 1000’ per 10 miles as your normal, which isn’t normal to a lot of people (it’s also normal to me… my quickie gravel 1hr ride is just over 1k’, my 37mi ride this morning was 5.1k, my 59mi ride last Saturday was 8k). You’ll need a ride that matches your terrain, which could vary and since you have two bikes, maybe you switch it up.
Third, to the comments of MTB riders dusting gravel rides, well, that will depend on the course. I actually ride a bit here with MTB riders, or rather I encounter MTB riders on the same trail at the same time sometimes. In general, unless they are a lean human that looks like they are well over 4w/kg, I catch them on climbs (technical or otherwise), flats, and generally as quick on the not technical unpaved and paved descents (provided they are sane and considerate of the potential of people, horses, even vehicles around blind corners, whether “jeep trail” width or single track). However, once it gets to be a technical descent (could be just -2% 
) then they just roll over the stumps, rocks, roots with their shocks and (usually) giant knobs. So again, you decide on how you want to roll. You can roll with an MTB on a gravel ride if you want… go for it (and who says it is a “gravel” ride… plus I’ve often wished I had shocks when riding my gravel bike!). I often ride my gravel bike like a drop-bar MTB from the late 1980s (when I last raced MTB… when John Tomac was experimenting with front shocks). For my terrain, I love my 47mm / 1.85 tires and I upgraded to an Eagle cassette (on my 1x this gives me 42x50), which makes it easier to get up steeper stuff, and yet it’s still great on the pavement between / getting to trails. I never see skinny tire gravel bikes (or their treads) on the really fun stuff. It’s really your style PLUS your terrain. (The same goes for your tire choice.)
Fourth, going back to the original question of the value of sinking money into a $700 bike, I’d recommend you save the money for a new (or new to you) frame and consider moving parts over to that bike and upgrading components later (or as necessary, as the case may be).
Enjoy the ride.
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@davel75 Thanks! I’m my case, I have 32 spoke gravel wheels with White Industries CLD hubs. Luckily, j can swap the axles to use the same wheels on both my 12mm thru axle gravel and QR Marlin. I think quality hubs and that spoke count should be plenty stiff.
@mountainrunner Thanks so much for the thoughtful reply!! The consensus seems to be to ride the Marlin but not go crazy with upgrades (perhaps save for a better bike). I was lucky to find a deal on an open box/unused Rockshox Judy Gold fork. I think that and swapping the axles in the gravel wheels should make the Marlin a solid bike for now with pretty minimal additional expense. I can to the upgrades myself and really enjoy that part. I’m going to keep working on the weight/fitness while still being able to have fun on the Marlin for now…if I can drop 20-30 lbs over the winter and add 20-30W, I’ll be cruising next summer 
Frank, I have a Lynskey 260 and had similar concerns for gravel races that were more mtb-ish. I swapped out the drop bars for a flat bar and also put a 10-50 cassette on as am an old guy. The handling is now so much better and steep climbs are so much easier. I’m never doing to podium so I’m not worried about spinning out on the flats. I also run 700x44 tires if the course calls for them. All that being said, I’ve often thought a hardtail.
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Ive really enjoyed reading through this thread, as I’m in a very similar situation to the OP! The bikes in question aren’t quite as nice, but for me it’s a 2019 Raleigh Willard 3 gravel bike (sram apex and mechanical disc brakes) vs. a 2014 cannondale trail 4 that has had wheels and drivetrain upgrades over the year (stans arch wheels and shimano SLX 1x10). I, too, hate riding drop bars off-road, and in fact have a chronic work-related hand injury that makes it especially problematic, but flat bars are ok. Up until recently, that hardtail was my only mountain bike, but i treated myself to a new epic evo last month, so im set for proper mtb rides and I need to reduce the stable (n-1 
) for financial and storage reasons.
I was going to do the flat bar conversion from the hardtail onto the gravel frame, as a previous commenter suggested, but I wrote in to the Just Riding Along podcast (highly recommend for mtb/outdoorsy folks with good sense of humor), and that crew was unanimous in convincing me that the reach/geo would be weird, and I’d be better off gravelifying the hardtail.
My plan now is to put a Schwalbe G-One Ultrabite 2.0 tire up front, a WTB resolute 42 in the rear (because I have them), a rigid carbon fork (working on that—harder to find a straight steerer with qr and disc tabs than you’d think!) and a dropper (I’ll take the added weight for the confidence on trails). Will it be as fast as a proper gravel bike on mellower terrain and roads? No, but I’m at 4 w/kg which isn’t fast enough to win races anyway, but hopefully enough to put down a little extra power to stick
with most groups I’d be likely to be with anyway.
Been a few months— curious what route you ended up going?
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If you haven’t been able to find a fork yet, I highly recommend Exotic Forks I’ve had one on my Bontrager Ti-Lite in all of its various configurations (1x9 rigid flat bar MTB, singlespeed rigid MTB, singlespeed rigid 96er, 1x9 rigid flat bar bike, current 1x11 drop bar gravel bike with 26er and 96er wheelsets), and it’s been great - lightweight, works well, bombproof.
Thanks for the tip! I ended up gettinf a cheap Chinese carbon fork on eBay. Seemed sketchy at first but lots of good reviews. Working well for me. I’ll keep Exotic in mind though
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