Harmon Kardon Allure Portable With Amazon Alexa Integration Launched at CES 2018: Price, Features

Bringing portability to the experience that came from the original Allure, Samsung-owned Harman Kardon at CES 2018 in Las Vegas has unveiled the Allure Portable speaker with an Amazon Alexa integration. The new speaker will be available starting Spring this year with a price tag of $199 (approximately Rs. 12,600). The original Harman Kardon Allure was unveiled at IFA 2017 and was launched in India last month at Rs. 22,490.

The Harman Kardon Allure Portable features two 20W full-range drivers that come in 1.75-inch size and two passive radiators. The company claims that the given setup is sufficient to fill any space, no matter it is your living room, office, or kitchen. Furthermore, the speaker has a steel speaker grille and a semi-transparent top cover.

In terms of wireless music playback experience, the Allure Portable supports up to 96kHz/24 bits of Wi-Fi audio streaming from the cloud to play your favourite tracks directly from a mobile device via Bluetooth. There is Harman Kardon's proprietary far-field voice recognition feature that works with the two embedded microphones and an advanced noise cancellation technology. This custom development allows you to pass your voice commands to Alexa from a far distance. Also, the speaker comes with a claim of delivering up to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. A charging cradle comes bundled with the speaker to make it easy for you to charge it ahead of going out for a party or picnic.

What majorly makes the Harman Kardon Allure Portable a distinct option in the market of portable Bluetooth speakers is the integration of Amazon Alexa. This allows you to leverage more than 20,000 Alexa skills and get a smarter music playback experience.

"With the Harman Kardon Allure Portable, we brought together everything our customers love about the Harman Kardon Allure-amazing sound quality, Amazon Alexa voice capabilities, beautiful design - and added portability," said Andy Tsui, Vice President, Smart Audio Business Unit, Harman, in a press statement.

Considering the features and the price of the Harman Kardon Allure Portable, it would make the competition tougher for Google Home and many other Alexa-powered portable speakers. The speaker also has the potential to grab some market ahead of the formal launch of Apple's HomePod.