My Invoke experience so far

[Biff Henderson]

I love Invoke. I use it everyday. The sound quality is awesome and I have been surprised as to how well the microphone array works. I look forward to discovering new features in Cortana. Integration with Insteon is nice.

 

[TechKnow_IE]

The Invoke is an amazing speaker. I bought mine in the 5th Avenue MS Store and was flabbergasted that the music that was filling the ground and mezzanine floors was from a single Invoke - at about 30-40% volume.

The sound is amazingly clear, crisp and with a nice deep bass.

Would we recommend the Invoke? That would be a qualified 'Yes'.

The "Harman Kardon Invoke voice-activated speaker with Cortana by Microsoft", to give it it's full title, is a wonderful speaker and a great audio addition to any room. The design is made for the device to become invisible and blend into almost any environment - you don't want to see the speaker, you want to hear it. The Invoke fulfils that brief excellently well, the sound does the talking for this device.

As a Smart Speaker, the Invoke has some advantages over its competitors - the sound is crisper, louder and deeper than an Echo; the integration with Cortana on your other devices makes it easy to integrate into your life; the precise local knowledge in some aspects is better than Alexa, but the Echo and Google Home devices can be better for finding audio content.

Microsoft is updating Cortana at a frequent pace, adding skills and functions that were not there at launch for the Invoke, so it is possible that it can catch up on functionality available elsewhere.

Actually for Black Friday, Microsoft were offering this device for $99, as opposed to $199. At that price we would change this from a 'qualified yes' to a definite yes. As a quality Bluetooth speaker it would not be rivalled at that price - the Cortana part is a bonus on top of that (and if that Microsoft / Amazon AI partnership ever actually comes about, then you'll have Alexa on the device as well).

 

[TechKnow_IE]

We have been using the Invoke in Ireland and it is great, apart from a few glitches trying to get local stations up on TuneIn, and it doesn't have local news skills like Alexa on an Echo Dot.

The sound is amazing and fills a room. The 'Oirish' accent sometimes gives Cortana pause, as she occasionally takes some commands and makes a pigs breakfast of them - even though the same commands work on a Windows 10 PC or Phone.

 

[fdruid]

My experience with the Invoke is wanting one and not being able because it's not available for my country/language. An awful experience, mind you.

 

[dericslab]

I also bought one on Black Friday, but still waiting for delivery. Can't wait to play with it though! :excited:

 

[RonV42]

I am really enjoying my Invoke. I setup it up just fine from my windows 10 computer. I like that I can chose a primary music service (iHeart, Spotity, TuneIn) so I can say play Queen it will use that by default. But you can override by saying Play Christmas classics on iHeart radio.

I have used it for reminders and it worked great. I tested with remide me to pick up milk at Costco, remind me to take the trash out Thrusday at 6:00 pm. All worked great.

And then the additional skills: https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...en-us%2Fcortana%2Fskills%2Fall&token=2hS2AHD8

I like that it has "sleep sounds" so you can ask Cortana to play white noise, remote thunderstorm, etc. What I am missing though is direct access to my home automation system. They support Wink and SmartThings, but I use Vera. Hopefully a skill will come for that soon.

In summary my experience has been flawless and got it for $99 on black Friday and it showed up on my door Saturday. Sound is great.

 

[RonV42]

I am really enjoying my Invoke. I setup it up just fine from my windows 10 computer. I like that I can chose a primary music service (iHeart, Spotity, TuneIn) so I can say play Queen it will use that by default. But you can override by saying Play Christmas classics on iHeart radio.

I have used it for reminders and it worked great. I tested with remide me to pick up milk at Costco, remind me to take the trash out Thrusday at 6:00 pm. All worked great.

And then the additional skills: https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...en-us%2Fcortana%2Fskills%2Fall&token=nahRyPTq

I like that it has "sleep sounds" so you can ask Cortana to play white noise, remote thunderstorm, etc. What I am missing though is direct access to my home automation system. They support Wink and SmartThings, but I use Vera. Hopefully a skill will come for that soon.

In summary my experience has been flawless and got it for $99 on black Friday and it showed up on my door Saturday. Sound is great.

 

[Alexis Menard]

This is my feedback so far :
- Setup was a breeze, boot it up, headed down the Cortana app and it was smooth.
- The Invoke received a firmware update and didn't see any issue with the process.
- Sound quality is amazing and clearly a step up from Google Home.
- Mic sensitivity is a lot better than Google Home. I can talk to Cortana from very far, it feels that it has a better range than Google Home.
- The LED on top is cooler than Google Home.
- Cortana voice is really natural.
- Office 365 integration from my work is a definitive +1 comparing to Google Home. "What's my calendar today become a lot more useful"
- Speech recognition works pretty well, even with a foreign accent like mine.

What doesn't work so well :
- Unlike Google Home (not sure Alexa) if I say "Hey Cortana" it wakes up all the Cortana devices I have, which include my PCs and phones. Problem is that if I happen to be close to one and say "Add a reminder to do X" then the reminder gets added twice, or Cortana answers twice which is a bit annoying. Google Home used to be that way and they somewhat fixed it by always giving priority to one device (the first one submitting the request and some other logic with mic level to see if you were closer to one or the other). It's not perfect but it works.
- Spotify voice search is a bit inferior than say Google Home. Sometimes Cortana is unable to pick the context, for example if you say "Play *artist* from *country*, *country* is simply ignored and Cortana will match the first artist with a similar name. It's unfortunate because so many artists have similar names these days and she sometimes returns me totally unknown artists or old school ones rather than picking popular ones.
- Asking to play a song doesn't continue playback when the song is finished. On Google Home if I ask a song on Spotify it will play the song and then continue playing similar songs (whether style or artist). Invoke simply stop playing after the given song.
- Cortana is unable to learn my inner circle (like back in Windows Phone). That's not specific to Invoke though, Cortana on PC, Cortana on Android are unable to learn about who is my wife. My wife has a foreigner name so it's easier to ask about "my wife" than her name.
- Cortana is unable to learn how to pronounce names so Skype calling is finicky.
- No multi user support which is a bummer for calendar and Spotify
- No casting support whatsoever : no way to ask her to play videos on a Google Cast in the house, or even on the PC. Same for showing pictures. I can't say : "Show me the pictures of last week end in my office PC". Google Home can do that.
- Kids voice recognition is not as good as Google Home. My 6 years old daughter struggles a lot more to trigger Hey Cortana than Ok Google. And she says it correctly, the Invoke just doesn't pick it up.

Overall I'm happy with the device. I hope Microsoft will continue doing improvements on it, especially with the claim that they are better at speech than some competitors. They need data to improve their system so hopefully if they keep committing on the product and updates they'll get more users and more data.

 

[Scott McBurney]

So I've had an Invoke since they started the beta testing almost 6 months ago. The first one I got was a dud, it had hardware problems, and they quickly sent me a new one.

I loved it when it had integration with Groove music. But that got cancelled and removed. I don't have a Spotify subscription, so I don't use it for music much. You can, however, listen to streaming radio stations through tunein. The sound is GREAT on this thing. It also came with a skype subscription, which I already had one via my office 365 subscription. I've made one or two calls on it, but I always have my Lumia 950 on me, and usually use that.

Occasionally I have it put things on lists. Occasionally I will ask it questions. I don't have any smart devices it can control.

So for me, it mostly sits in my kitchen unused.

If it had multi-user support, it might be better, mostly for adding things to calendars.

If it could access my music collection in onedrive, it would be awesome!

 

[MxPxP86]

I bought one as a that "unnecessary Christmas gift to myself". No regrets here. The extra $$ for noticeably better audio from the speaker was worth it. Cortana is perfectly capable.
Negatives: The cable is embarrassingly short. Not a deal breaker, but, it's noticeably short. Cortana skills ("apps"?) needs bolstering. Not a deal breaker for me, but for others no doubt. Lastly: Bluetooth doesn't connect to my moto g5 plus. It has paired with multiple other devices, so it's something to do with the phone, but if it does it w mine (and my wife's) doubtless that same Bluetooth hardware/stack/what have you exists elsewhere, and someone needs to do something about it.

 

[Devan Hammack]

I got two, one for my bedroom and one for my kitchen... I love it so far, but I'm waiting on Pandora and multi-room listening.
Other than that, so much happier with this over google home and amazon echo. Those have more features, but the sound is/was crap and the devices are uglier.
Giving my google home away, took the echo to work...

 

[jonMT]

Does the Invoke have room to room ability?

 

[dandrayan]

Cortana is triggered very easily by words that sound remotely similar to "Hey, Cortana".

I'm not even sure that the "Hey" part is necessary. Mine seems to trigger when I say anything remotely close to "Cortana". I agree that it needs a way to "train" the device for a wake-up phrase like Windows Phone/Mobile has done for a long time.

 

[jbrown9100]

I hope the touch panel on top of Invoke is more sensitive. Sometimes, I feel I have to tap so hard on it to do the function, it even shakes the device. Maybe I just need some time to get used to it.

The touch area is actually a ring around the middle. Try simply tapping between the center and the edge.

 

[jbrown9100]

The touch area is a ring between the center and the edge. Try tapping lightly in that area.

 

[watchtower54]

I got one at the black Friday sale for use as a music speaker in my office while I work. My impressions of it thus far...

1) Sound quality is excellent. Very first time I fired it up, I actually had to lower the volume some as even at medium-high volume, they could hear it from the very back of my office.
2) Voice commands are excellent so far. As someone who uses a lot of Apple products, I am continually impressed by Cortana's speech recognition.
3) Connection to my Spotify and Office 365 accounts were incredibly easy and painless. Whole process took about 2 or 3 minutes.
4) Cortana and I have very different ideas of what "relaxing music" means. I asked her to play "something relaxing" and she gave me a country music playlist. Considering I'm a classical music/jazz kind of guy when I want to relax, this was not what I was expecting but it was amusing all the same
5) Bluetooth I've had mixed experiences with. Not when it's actually paired, then everything is great, but pushing and even holding the pair button didn't make it recognizable to my MacBook or my iPhone. Telling it to "Hey Cortana, pair Bluetooth" worked great though.

Overall I'm very pleased with it. It does everything it said it will do and it does it very well. I'm hoping Cortana adds Apple Music to its apps it can control once it comes to the Windows Store but we'll see.

 

[IdleMind]

I'm really liking my Invoke so far. I wish I could stream Deezer with it. But I have it playing everyday. I haven't tried using it for appointment reminders yet. I should do that because I set them on my phone all the time. Usually I'm out somewhere reminding myself to do something outside the house so I guess I haven't really had a need to use that feature on the invoke. Would be cool if it knew to give a special greeting on holidays. Like you wake up on Christmas and Cortana sings, I wish you a merry Christmas.

 

[unmorphed]

What phone did you use to set up your Invoke? I suspect that Microsoft treated us Windows Mobile users as second class citizen, and gave us incomplete features.

Essential PH-1

...Android.

I stopped torturing myself months ago when I bought the S8. Now my 950 is collecting dust with the rest of my Windows phones.

EDIT!!!!!!!!!
I forgot, I actually used my Surface Pro 3.

 

[unmorphed]

Would live a way to change the invoke word. Saying Hey Cortana also activates the PC and XBONE.

You can change the Xbox trigger back to "Xbox" like it used to be.

 

[DiesIrae512]

I own 2 Invokes and mostly use them with Spotify and home automation (Insteon). The sound is very good and the mics are very sensitive as it will hear commands while in other adjacent rooms. My only major disappointment, or wish, is the fact that I can't play my OneDrive music (I can using bluetooth of course, but that requires a PC). I also own an Echo Dot, and it's clear that Alexa has a leg up on Cortana in skills. I really hope MS continues expanding Cortana's capabilities and 3rd party skills, and doesn't, or hasn't thrown in the towel on her. But, for right now Cortana does almost everything I need/want so I end up using the Invokes much more than my Dot.

For $99 I think the Invoke is a great buy.