I use hangouts on a daily basis for our remote team and also found the desktop app to be terrible to the point of avoidance when doing video calls. Many times

I use hangouts on a daily basis for our remote team and also found the desktop app to be terrible to the point of avoidance when doing video calls. Many times at least one person invited via desktop app doesn't receive the invite, but do receive if we send via gmail. Confusing UI, lack of error messages, and several major UI bugs (press button, nothing happens) have been cause for hours of accumulated wasted time. I'm glad you'be had a better experience. It's been very unreliable for us.