Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition review: three pucks, one TV problem

Disclosure: I bought these with my own money. There are no affiliate links in this post. How I review

Short version: I’ve had these in my house for about a year, I talk to them every day, and I like them. Light control is where they earn their keep. The one real knock: every so often the TV says something close enough to “Hey Jarvis” and a puck lights up and starts listening. Would I buy them again? Yes.

What it is

The Voice Preview Edition is Home Assistant’s own voice satellite: a small puck you put in a room so you can talk to your Home Assistant setup instead of opening an app. The wake word runs on the device itself, and you pick from three: “Okay Nabu,” “Hey Jarvis,” or “Hey Mycroft.” It has two microphones with echo cancellation and noise removal, a small speaker, a 3.5 mm headphone jack if you want better sound, a dial for volume, a button, an LED ring, and a physical switch that cuts power to the mics. It lists for $69.

The “Preview” in the name matters. Nabu Casa sells this as hardware for people who are fine with voice control that’s still being built.

My setup

I bought one first. It impressed me enough that I went back for more.

• Three pucks: office, living room, bedroom.
• Wake word: “Hey Jarvis.” Yes, on purpose.
• Running since: about a year ago.
• Behind it: Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa) handles speech-to-text and the spoken replies. The wake word itself is detected on the puck. Home Assistant can also run speech fully locally if you have the hardware for it.

What I actually use it for

Lights. Almost entirely lights, every day.

I name lights by room, so the commands are as plain as they get: “Hey Jarvis, turn off the living room lights.” Single-bulb fixtures like the hallway and the porch stay as their own entities, so I can call them out by name without dragging a whole room along. Scenes keep the names they already had. None of this is clever. That’s the point: a voice assistant for lights works when you never have to remember how you named something.

The living room, and the TV

The living room puck has the hardest seat in the house. The room is open to the kitchen, there’s tile everywhere, and sound bounces around. I can’t move it somewhere better. It’s also the one closest to the TV, and it’s the puck with the most issues.

The issue is false wakes. Occasionally a puck decides the TV just said the wake word, the LED ring lights up, and it starts listening. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s the worst part of owning them, and the living room puck is the main offender.

If you’re thinking “turn down the sensitivity”: the firmware has a wake word sensitivity setting (Slightly, Moderately or Very sensitive), and all three of mine are already on Slightly sensitive, the strictest option and the default. So there’s no easy dial left to turn. Moving the puck farther from the TV would probably help, but in my living room that isn’t an option.

Who should buy it

Buy it if you already run Home Assistant, you mostly want voice for lights and simple controls, and you’d rather your wake word stay on a device in your house.

Skip it for now if you want an Alexa-style assistant that does a little of everything out of the box, or if you can’t put the puck somewhere away from the TV and an occasional false wake would drive you up a wall.

Verdict

I’ve used these every day for about a year, mostly for lights, and I like them. They aren’t perfect: the TV false wakes are real, and “Preview” is an honest name. But they do the job, and they do it through my own Home Assistant setup instead of a big-tech speaker. I’d buy them again.

My rating: 3.5 out of 5

Specs (from Home Assistant’s product page)

Price	$69 (MSRP)
Wake words	Okay Nabu, Hey Jarvis, Hey Mycroft (on-device)
Microphones	Dual-mic array, XMOS audio processing (echo cancellation, noise removal)
Audio out	Internal speaker plus 3.5 mm stereo jack
Controls	Dial, button, LED ring, hardware mic mute switch
Connectivity	2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C power (no cable or charger included)

Source: home-assistant.io/voice-pe