Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review

Our Verdict

The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is an affordable Google Assistant speaker and useful bedside timepiece.

For

Good audio quality for size
USB charging port
Soft night light

Confronting

Brandish collects dust

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is an affordable Google Assistant speaker and useful bedside timepiece.

Pros

+
Skilful audio quality for size
+
USB charging port
+
Soft nighttime light

Cons

-
Brandish collects grit

Don't snooze on the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential. Even if it does wait similar a retro bedside gadget that's been boxed away in your parent's basement, this $50 Google Assistant speaker is one of the least complicated — and most useful — smart dwelling devices you'll discover right at present.

With its humble four-inch LCD brandish and sparse controls, the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is even simpler than the $80 Lenovo Smart Clock, which also packs Google Assistant simply offers a small touchscreen display. While the touchscreen comes in handy for customizing your clock face, a fingerprint-gratis timepiece is simply as tempting (if not more than.)

Merely can it eclipse the orb-shaped Amazon Repeat Dot with Clock? This Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review reckons whether a no-frills bedside gadget can keep upward with the all-time smart speakers.

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential toll and availability

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential costs $49.99, which is $30 less than the touchscreen Lenovo Smart Clock and $10 less than the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock. You lot can purchase the Smart Clock Essential now at All-time Buy and other major retailers.

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review: Design

Like the Lenovo Smart Clock, the Smart Clock Essential features a trapezoidal design. Its monochrome face measures a charming 4.7 inches by two.5 inches, while the fabric-covered speaker base is iii.3 inches deep. This compact size should work for any nightstand.

It tin can be a bit of a dust magnet, but the display itself is a breeze to read in both well-lit and dark settings. Plus the clock's built-in lite sensors automatically adjust the LCD screen based on room brightness. That way y'all can encounter fourth dimension, weather, and a few other, ahem, essential pieces of data at a glance. Different the Smart Clock, which can show you lot directions and feeds from some of the all-time home security cameras, you lot're getting just the basics hither. However, y'all can come across more at once than on the LED-equipped Amazon Echo Dot with Clock, which can only testify the time, temperature or timer condition.

The top of the device has concrete controls for music much like Echo speakers, as well as an warning push. On the back, you lot'll find a USB port, which can be used to charge the device of your option, and a switch to plough off the Smart Clock Essential'southward microphones if you'd adopt some privacy.

Some other pleasant improver to the rear is an LED nightlight that encircles the dorsum, and casts a soft glow (it's rated at 31 lumens). You can plow the light ring on past property the volume down button, but I prefer asking the banana for some assistance and then I don't have to bollix around in the dark.

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review: Google Assistant

Although the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential might non look all that smart, it benefits from many of the all-time Google Banana commands and best Google Home commands. It can't brand calls like Google Nest Audio or launch a YouTube video like the Google Nest Hub Max, but it can reply questions, adjust the clock settings and control your music hands-gratuitous.

I appreciate having a voice assistant by my bedside for several reasons. Although I live in a mixed ecosystem of Alexa, Google Home and HomeKit gadgets, my living room's C by GE smart lights bulbs and lightstrips are all paired to Google's banana. Before I autumn asleep I can inquire Google Assistant via the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential to plow all the lights off, and so enquire for them to exist turned on if I demand to grab some water from the fridge in the middle of the night. Mumbling to Google Assistant to fix an alarm for the forenoon as I drift into snoozeland is excellent, too.

You can also sync the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential with some of the other all-time Google Dwelling speakers, like the Google Nest Mini, for synched playback. This way your tunes from Spotify, YouTube Music and more play on multiple devices, which I discover handy when I'm moving betwixt rooms while cleaning upwards my apartment.

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review: Audio quality

The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential packs a single i-inch, iii-Watt speaker. I didn't expect information technology to be the best-sounding speaker (that title is held past the $199 Sonos Ane,) but I was surprised past how well it keeps up with other devices in its price range.

Adjacent to both Amazon and Google's $50 speakers, the Lenovo Smart Essential sounded most like the first-generation Google Dwelling house Mini. The infectious bassline of "Come up On Eileen," didn't audio as full equally information technology does on the Google Nest MIni or even the new spherical Repeat Dot with Clock, just the clarity of the vocals impressed.

Still, I don't remember I'd rely on the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential as my master music source, merely I have taken to listening to podcasts or morning newscasts on this corking bedside clock. The audio profile complements narration well, especially Michael Barbaro's exaggerated tempo in episodes of The Daily.

Lenovo Smart Clock Essential review: Verdict

Simple-to-utilize tech wins every fourth dimension. That'south how the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock came to be one the best smart domicile devices overall. At present, at that place's a worthy alternative for Google Domicile users in the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential.

Although it'southward $ten more than, I still adopt the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock because of its updated design and superior sound. Alexa is besides ahead of Google Banana in terms of helpful dwelling house skills, like Alexa Baby-sit — a microphone-based security feature that doesn't require a photographic camera organisation.

That said, the fact that the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential lets you see more than just one detail of information at once arguably makes it more useful than the Dot with Clock. The perks of an easy-access USB port shouldn't be slept on, either.

Kate Kozuch is a senior writer at Tom's Guide roofing wearables, TVs and everything smart-home related. When she's non in cyborg mode, you can observe her on an practise wheel or channeling her inner celebrity chef. She and her robot army volition rule the world 1 solar day, simply until then, attain her at kate.kozuch@futurenet.com.