Harman Kardon Allure

Amazon's echo range smart speakers have impressed on many counts, but their audio quality has left a lot to be desired. Enter the Harman Kardon Allure speaker. Pull it out of the packaging and straight off, the Allure will be quite likely be unlike any speaker you would have seen before – the transparent plastic top half, replete with the 360-degree red/white or blue light LEDs, sits atop an egg-like meshed bottom, the latter about the only indicator that this houses a speaker. This is a conversation piece in and of itself, and that is without invoking the Alexa digital assistant! At 8-inches tall and 2.5g heavy, this is best planted down on a firm surface and near a power outlet – no built-in battery. The set up is via the HK Alexa app, which is an added chore, but it does give you access to the capabilities specific to the Allure.

As an Alexa-powered speaker, the Allure works well – it manages all the regular tasks such as playing music, answering our queries and switching off the odd smart home light.  The usual caveats with Alexa apply – it is stricter in enforcing syntax for the voice commands, and it doesn’t handle contextual follow-on queries too well either. It is when you start listening to music that you realise what the smart speaker space has been missing all along! The Allure has three outward-firing drivers and a sizeable 90mm subwoofer that pushes out some serious bass below and out of the speaker in 360 degrees, so you can enjoy the music no matter where you are sitting. The output is a tad bass heavy, and tends to overpower softer vocals at higher volume levels. No distortion though, even when it gets loud!

But look, it is far pricier than the rest of the smart speaker class of 2018, and you could well pair one of the Echo range with a good Bluetooth speaker to achieve a similar result. The Allure also lacks wired connectivity options – streaming is only over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi – and the touch-sensitive zones atop the speaker are a bit unresponsive. But if you are looking for a smart speaker that is clearly much better sounding and better looking than the rest, this is the one to get.