On the surface, the smart speaker market is already pretty packed with competitors.  The two most well known of these, Google Home and Amazon Echo, dominate the market.  So why would someone like Harman Kardon and Microsoft team up to create what is arguably a late entry into this competitive landscape?

Simply put, because they know they have something that can truly compete.  The new Harman Kardon Invoke is a $199 smart speaker that is powered by Microsoft’s Cortana.  It is a stunningly beautiful design that has the audio quality that you would expect from Harman Kardon.  But is so much more.  Skype calls – free in the US, Canada and Mexico – are included, smart home device support is there and, then there is Cortana.  Microsoft’s personal assistant is no slouch and in accuracy, it is only behind Google Assistant on answering questions.  This combination of hardware and software works and it works well.

Recently I was sent the Harman Kardon Invoke (via Gear Diary) from the company and having used it in my office for these past few weeks, I have to say I’m sold.  If you are deep in the Microsoft ecosystem and leverage Cortana on your phone or on your Windows 10 PC, this is the smart speaker for you.

Specifications & Form Factor

When you open up the elegantly designed box for the Invoke, you are immediately struck by the beauty of the device.  It measures 4.2 x 9.5″ or 107 x 242mm in new money and it weighs a hefty 2.3 lbs (1kg).  Size wise, you are not looking at much more than the Amazon Echo but the Invoke is constructed of beautiful graphite aluminum mesh surrounding the speaker and microphone arrays.  This looks and feels like a well designed device.

Internally, there are six speakers and two passive radiators that give amazing sound quality.  The speakers consist of three 1.75″ woofers and three .5″ Tweeters with the two radiators allow for 360° sound.

From a connectivity perspective, you have Bluetooth 4.1 LE available to connect your phone or other device to the Invoke.  WiFi 802.11b/g/n/ac are also supported at 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Turning back to the exterior, the base of the Harman Kardon Invoke is black with the company’s name on it and a small white LED to let you know that it is powered up.  on the back side of the base is where you will find the Bluetooth activation button as well as the microphone mute button.  At the top of the Invoke is where you will find the LED indicator that Cortana has heard you or is working on your query.  This is very similar to the indicators provided on the Google Home or Amazon Echo.  Volume control can be adjusted thanks to ring dial at the top of the Invoke with the LED indictor showing a white circular pattern for how high or low the volume is set.

From a pure aesthetics perspective, you will not find a more beautiful smart speaker than the Invoke.  Period.  I’ve been a long time Google Home user but the looks of it are not exactly cutting edge.  The Invoke looks fantastic and this is not something you will want to try to hide away.

Setup & Configuration

As you would expect, the setting up and configuration of the Invoke is driven from the Cortana app on your PC, Android phone or iPhone.  When you power up the smart speaker, you will hear Cortana greet you and will be instructed to continue the setup from the app.

For this review I am using the Cortana app on my Pixel XL Android phone but the process is pretty much the same on your PC or iPhone.  In the app, you will need to go to the Devices tab in Cortana.  You will need to accept the terms & conditions and once done, the app will start looking for your Invoke.  Once found, you will confirm that it is the correct device by the matching light patterns at the top of the Invoke and within the Cortana app.  Invoke will then be connected to your WiFi network through the Cortana app and as a final step, you can link up your music service of choice.  Currently there are three options:  iHeartRadio and TuneIn which are both free while a premium Spotify account (remember, Spotify is replacing Microsoft’s Groove music service at the end of this year) can also be connected.

In all, the setup of the Invoke took about 10 minutes and that was including a software update which was required.  The setup is also very easy to follow.  Microsoft has done a great job with the Cortana app in making it clear what to do next and how to assure that everything is setup correctly.

Cortana Skills

Like Google Assistant with Google Home and Amazon Alexa with Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana with the Harman Kardon Invoke comes down to skills, or functions which can be performed.  The keyword to get Cortana to listen from your Invoke is “Hey Cortana”, the same command that you can use on your Windows 10 PC if you have it enabled or the Cortana app when it is open on your Android phone.  The list of skills that Cortana has is growing rapidly and you’ll find that there are many skills already available to give you news, information or to allow you to interact with services.  The complete list of skills can be found on the Cortana Skills site and I recommend readers bookmark it as it is constantly being expanded.

Like Google Assistant and  Amazon Alexa, in order for services to work where you are getting personalized data or making purchases, you will have to authorize those skills in the Cortana app on your phone or PC.  For example, one of my favorite skills is with Fitbit.  I can say, “Hey Cortana, ask Fitbit about my activity summary” and Cortana will read back to me my activity for the day from Fitbit.  For this to work, I have to sign in with my Fitbit account in the Cortana app and authorize it.

As you would expect, there are several service skills available like Fitbit, OpenTable, Expedia, Progressive Insurance and others as well as other productivity skills like HP Print, reminders of when you are at a location to complete a task (buy milk at the grocery store for example) and add things to your Outlook calendar.  Equally as important, you can order a pizza from Dominos!

When it comes to home automation, Cortana has a few skills but not the the extent that Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.  Phillips Hue lights are there as well as Nest and Samsung SmartThings.  I have several Wemo devices which work with Google and Amazon but are not available to me on Cortana – not yet at least.  If you have a lot of home automation, be sure to check the skills list prior to purchase to assure it will indeed work with the Invoke & Cortana.

General Performance

Having used the Invoke these past few weeks as my primary smart speaker over my Google Home, I have been very pleased with the general performance of it.  The microphones are excellent and even when speaking at a lower-than-normal voice, the Invoke easily picks me up and completes my Cortana command.  This is something that I am hit-or-miss with on the Google Home.  I generally don’t like to have to raise my voice to get one of these devices to respond to me.  I should be able to talk to it “normally” in my mind and with the Invoke, I can do just that.

When it comes to audio playback, the sound is crisp and clear.  Cortana information is easy to understand even when the volume is low.  Music playback is absolutely stunning.  I have played a wide range of music on the Invoke during the past two weeks – from Enigma, to Deadmau5 to Rammstein – and the high and low tones are exceptional.  It absolutely crushes the Google Home when it comes to music playback and Home isn’t a slouch.  But then again, this is what you would expect from a Harman Kardon product.

The single complaint I have about the Harman Kardon Invoke is Cortana’s Fault

My single biggest complaint with the Invoke is actually not its fault.  It’s Cortana or, more specifically, how Microsoft has enabled it across multiple devices.

With Google Assistant and Google Home, my main point of comparison, if I say “Hey Google, what is the weather outside?”, my phone (a Pixel XL) and my Google Home will light up to listen to me.  But, because the Home heard me, it is the default playback device and I hear nothing come from my phone.  This is how it should work because I don’t need both devices giving me the same information or the phone overriding the Home.

That, unfortunately, is not how Cortana works with the Invoke and your PC.  I have a Huawei Matebook with Windows 10 Pro.  If I say, “Hey Cortana, what is the weather outside?” Cortana will light up both on the Invoke and my PC.  That’s how it should work.  Unfortunately, both devices will read me back the information.  To make matters worse, the timings are off so it is like I have a Cortana echo going on in my office.

To get around this, I’ve disabled the voice enabled Cortana feature on my Matebook so that I have to actually open Cortana on my PC for it to respond.  Its a good work around but I shouldn’t have to do this frankly.  Microsoft needs to sort out how Cortana responds with multiple enabled devices present.  I suspect that this will only become a bigger issue as more Invoke units are sold so hopefully Harman Kardon and Microsoft can work on it together to get it figured out.

Conclusion

As you’ve probably figured out, I’m more than impressed with the Invoke.  It is a beautiful smart speaker with stunning audio performance and excellent far-field microphones.  It is a smart speaker that every Windows 10 users should seriously consider, especially if you leverage Cortana on your phones too.

To be sure, there is still a lot of room for Cortana skills to grow so it the Invoke can become even more useful.  Frankly, it reminds me of where Google Home and Google Assistant were a year ago.  Hopefully Microsoft will continue to work with the developer community to improve the functionality.

The Harman Kardon Invoke is $199 and available from Microsoft directly or on Amazon.

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Microsoft has rolled out another update to Microsoft Cortana, their personal assistant app & service, for Android.  The update is version 2.9.10 for those keeping score at home and should be hitting devices with the Assistant installed over the course of the next few days.

There are several improvements in this update, the most visible of which is and enhanced upcoming view for better calendar and missed reminders management.  Now calendar events are more discretely listed in the Upcoming page which makes it easier to find upcoming events and reminders.  There is also a new “Here’s what I can do” card at the top of the Upcoming tab to help you with some of the commands that you can give to Cortana.

Smart Suggestions for tasks have also been improved in this update.  These include the ability to have a reminder added or an event added.

What has commonly been referred to as the Fall Creators Update is now rolling out to Windows 10 PCs.  The update brings a lot of new features and refinements that reflects Microsoft’s direction for Windows 10 being the underlying platform for everything going forward on new technologies like Augmented Reality.

As you would expect, the Fall Creators Update has a massive number of improvements under-the-hood that in general, improves the overall performance of the Operating System.  Even if all of the new features don’t get you excited, the overall performance improvements will be welcomed.

But the real win with this update are the app improvements, new features and other general user experience additions.  If you compare Windows 10 when it was first released in July 2015 to this update, they are in many ways vastly different.  The Fall Creators Update adds a huge amount of polish to the platform and Windows 10 with it feels far more complete than any previous iteration.

If I tried to cover ever new facet of this update, this already long article would be even more TL;DR.  Instead, I’m going to highlight over a dozen of the top new features of functions in the update.   You’ll see that the updates cover a wide range of the elements of Windows 10, from Microsoft Edge to Photos to how you interact with Contacts.  It is a comprehensive update to the platform and one that I think the vast majority of users will want to upgrade to as soon as possible.

For the first time since 2015, I am writing a post here at ClintonFitch.com on a Windows PC.  It is not that I necessarily planned to move away from my MacBook and MacOS, far from it actually.  Nor does it mean that I’ve given up on Chrome OS.  My trusty Acer Chromebook 14 is sitting next to me as I write.  But the reality of my day-to-day job kept pushing me ever closer to this eventuality.  We are a pure Microsoft shop so while I could somewhat get away with it on MacOS, it was becoming increasingly difficult to leverage Chrome OS.

Add to this my general unhappiness with MacOS Sierra.  It was okay but it never really performed well on my 2016 MacBook Pro.  I had stability issues with it (even after a complete wipe of the system) and, going back to my point about my day-to-day job, Office apps were never really all that great.  Sure, Office 2016 is way, way better than 2011 for Mac but there was still a feature gap between it and the Windows version.  This was especially true of Outlook.

So I made the jump.  Having updated my wife’s Lenovo ThinkCentre to version 1703 several weeks ago and playing with it, I was impressed with how far Windows 10 had come along.  It was smooth, it was stable and it was usable.  My last experience with Windows was 8.1 and it was, in a word, disastrous.  It was everything that you didn’t want in an OS.  I assumed Windows 10 was more-or-less the same beast.  I was wrong, oh so very wrong.

Microsoft is in the process of rolling out a new integration between their personal assistant, Cortana, and the Skype messaging client.  The new integration essentially makes Cortana a chat-bot inside of Skype, allow it to give you suggestions for replies to messages, get weather and news information, as well as facts and other information.  In order for it to work, you have to give Cortana various permissions for Skype and since it is rolling out now, not everyone is seeing it just yet.

If this sounds familiar as an Android user, it should.  Essentially Microsoft is replicating what Google has done with Allo and Google Assistant which, for Windows 10 PC users and those who are heavily in the Microsoft ecosystem, this is great news.

A new and significant update to Microsoft Cortana for Android, Microsoft’s personal assistant for the platform, is now rolling out in the Google Play Store. The updated build is version 2.9.4 for those keeping score at home and brings handful of new features and improvements.

First, Microsoft has made it easier to sign in and to sign up to use Cortana in the app.  You can quickly sign up with your mobile number to get going in the app more quickly.  Second, you can now create a new list (think shopping list for example) and edit list items within the app.  This was a big miss for Windows 10 users as you had to create the list on your PC and then let it sync with Cortana.