The world of smart speakers is beginning to fan out. A year or two ago, Google Home and Amazon’s Echo were your only choices. Now, there are more than a dozen competitors, and they're growing more diverse all the time. Every major voice assistant has a speaker now. Even Siri has the HomePod and Cortana has the Invoke. Amazon is still the alpha of this pack, though, inside more devices than any other voice assistant. Harman Kardon’s Allure is the latest, and possibly strangest, Alexa speaker yet.
If you’re unfamiliar with some of Harman Kardon’s offbeat speaker designs, the Allure may look more like an alien humidifier than a speaker. It has a somewhat bulbous, egg-like shape to it and is quite large, standing close to 8 inches tall and more than 6 inches in diameter. The bottom is covered in metal with hundreds of notches carved out for sound travel, which may be the only hint that it’s a speaker at all. The entire top half is clear plastic with a circular, 360-degree LED light cylinder inside it that shines blue, white, and red. It’s the kind of speaker that’s begging for quizzical glances at every turn.
This eggy shape isn’t new for Harman. Its Aura Studio 2 Bluetooth speaker has an even more out-there look to it, and you’ve likely seen someone with H/K’s clear SoundSticks computer speakers sometime in the last two decades. Harman loves this look, and it’s sticking with it. It’s a testament to the design (for better or worse) that the Allure still looks unique among speakers today.
It sounds unique, too. The Allure puts out more bass than almost any other speaker in its class. If you want more thump in your Icky Thump, or feel compelled to go even deeper when you’re Rolling in the Deep, this is the Alexa speaker for you. It has a 3.5-inch downward-facing subwoofer that thuds bass right onto your table and out in all 360 degrees. Those low frequencies are balanced out by three 1.5-inch drivers, spaced evenly around the sides of the speaker.
I liked this added bass much of the time, which can add a lot of depth to some songs, but it does weigh down the overall sound profile. It can also sound a little messy (and vibrate too much), depending on what kind of table you place it on. I found it distracting on my desk during some tunes. On the other hand, the Allure can belt out sound at loud volumes without much distortion, which is nice.
To control volume, there is a touch-sensitive rubber area up top that almost resembles a speaker driver. (It’s not.) The bright 360-degree LED lights will light up to show you what percent volume you’re at. They’ll also turn red if you hold down the microphone icon on that same bar, boldly displaying its muted status. It would be fun if the lights in the Allure changed to the beat of different songs, or were more interactive. (Aren’t all speakers these days supposed to perform rainbow light shows?) Sadly, there isn’t much you can do with them. Mostly, they’re there to light up blue when you say “Alexa” or tap on the top of the speaker (also to activate Alexa).
Speaking of Alexa, Amazon's assistant can hear thanks to an array of four microphones. Whether she’ll understand you or respond is a crapshoot, as always. Alexa isn’t as good at recognizing some requests or answering questions as Google’s Assistant, but it is compatible with far more smart home devices. If you already have smart thermostats, coffee makers, light bulbs, or appliances, chances are they will connect to Alexa. She can also give you the weather, flash news briefings, and connect to a growing number of apps with its Skills. Like some Alexa speakers, the Harmon Kardon Allure cannot yet make phone calls.
Personally, I tend to use smart speakers to play music. Thankfully, the Allure works well with Spotify, which is my service of choice, but it also works with Pandora, Amazon, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and SiriusXM. If you want to use anything else, you’ll need to connect to your phone via Bluetooth. You’ll have to really give the Bluetooth button on the back a whack to get it to work. I tried gently touching it in a myriad of ways for an embarrassingly long time before I figured out that I had to actually make the speaker move a little before the button would respond to touch. But once it does, it pairs with your phone just fine.
The biggest challenge with the Allure is something I've run into with other Alexa speakers—none of them like to play nice with each other. The Allure repeatedly lost the ability to play Spotify if I used another Alexa speaker in the house Why? I don't know. I'd gladly get upset with Harman about it, but I’ve had similar issues in the past with other Alexa speakers, like the Sonos One. Amazon still has some work to do. Like other Alexa speakers, the Allure also had to have its own custom setup app to connect to Alexa, which is silly. Google-enabled speakers hook up directly to Google’s app in a much more seamless way. Multiple apps complicate things.
The Harman Kardon Allure’s design may or may not speak to you, but it’s nice to see companies toying around with what a smart speaker should look like. For $250, it will cost you more than a standard Amazon Echo, but sounds a lot better. The $300 UE Megablast is probably nicer overall, because it has a battery, and the $200 Sonos One has a more balanced sound profile, but if it’s bass you want, Harman Kardon’s Allure will give it to you. And, you know, it does have all those funky lights.
