Newer designed inverters

There's no info here for a reader to make his own evaluation if there's really new/better technology or if it's just hype. As general statement, an inverter that has a DC input higher than the peak of its RMS AC output is a lot simpler than one with a lower voltage DC input that has to stepped up using either a big transformer, or a second inverter and a small transformer. The Honda inverter generators are a 15 year old design and so far there doesn't seem to be a newer competitor that outperforms. To the question of which companies build with newer technology, I don't have the answer, but the first place I'd look is the solar industry microinverters. They have an impressive array of features, high efficiency, good reliability, and reasonable cost in a fairly small package. I'd guess that a lot more than a million went into their design.