Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review: a slightly smarter clock radio
There is not any scarcity of gadgets that you may stick in your bedside desk to make use of as a voice-controlled alarm clock. You can, in fact, simply use your telephone, however you can even put a small good speaker, resembling Amazon’s Echo Dot, Google’s Nest Mini, or Apple’s new HomePod mini there and bark instructions at it to set an alarm, let you know the climate, or snooze for ten minutes. If you need one thing extra totally featured, gadgets just like the Echo Show 5, Lenovo Smart Clock, or Google’s Nest Hub have full-color touchscreen shows that may play video, present digicam feeds, or be used as a digital image body.
Lenovo’s newest entrant on this area, the $49.95 Smart Clock Essential, sits someplace in between all of that. It’s a voice-controlled, Google Assistant good speaker with a easy, black-and-white segmented LED show. It shows the present time, climate circumstances, day, and your presently set alarms. The show will robotically alter its brightness relying on the sunshine ranges of the room, so it’s not blinding you in the midst of the night time. But it’s not a touchscreen, doesn’t show images or video, and might’t be used for monitoring digicam feeds. It’s successfully what you’d get when you mixed a trendy good speaker with an old-school LED clock radio from the Eighties.
That mixture of concepts carries over into the Smart Clock Essential’s seems. From the entrance, the white numbers on black background make it appear to be a typical, fundamental alarm clock. Peer nearer and you’ll see two small holes for the microphones that decide up your voice instructions. On prime of the wedge-shaped machine are 4 buttons for managing alarms, play / pause, and quantity. Around again is a USB-A port that you should utilize to cost a telephone or smartwatch, in addition to a change to cease the microphones from listening.
The sides of the Smart Clock Essential are wrapped in grey cloth, as has change into the pattern with good audio system lately. A singular characteristic right here is the LED ring mild on the again of the machine that’s meant to be a nightlight of kinds. Lenovo claims it shouldn’t disturb your sleep, however I discovered it too shiny to make use of when the clock is a foot or two from my head as I sleep. You can alter the brightness utilizing voice instructions, however I want there was a button to take action or Lenovo simply made it alter robotically primarily based on how a lot mild is within the room. Or even higher, it might step by step come on as a get up mild simply earlier than my alarm is ready to go off.
As an alarm clock, the Smart Clock Essential is effectively geared up. You can set a number of alarms, both by way of the buttons on prime or by way of voice instructions (a a lot simpler methodology, when you ask me). It can play a normal alarm beep, or you possibly can simply say “STOP” as soon as the alarm goes to cancel it. You can even faucet on prime of the clock twice to snooze it. This faucet gesture takes some effort, although, and once I’m half awake and groggy, I discover I’ve to smack the highest fairly onerous to get it to snooze. Amazon’s comparable Echo Dot with Clock does this tap-to-snooze factor higher.
One observe— and this is applicable to each good speaker alarm clock I’ve examined— there’s no backup battery right here, so in case your energy goes out in a single day and doesn’t come again earlier than your alarm is ready to go off, you gained’t have an alarm within the morning.
As a good speaker, the Smart Clock Essential is ok, however don’t count on it to be your important music listening machine. The 3-watt speaker does get surprisingly loud, however as you’d count on, the bass is missing and the sound isn’t very nice at excessive volumes. For listening to climate experiences, information updates, or your most popular wake-up tune, it’s definitely sufficient.
The Smart Clock Essential could be summed up in two phrases: purposeful simplicity. It gives extra utility and alarm clock options than a screen-less Nest Mini or Echo Dot however doesn’t overwhelm you with the features of a full good show. At its common value of $50, it gives a good expertise. But these days, it’s been promoting for half that value or much less, which makes it an excellent higher deal when you’re seeking to improve your alarm clock expertise.