The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential: A Simple Yet Effective Bedside Companion?
The humble bedside alarm clock is a timeless concept, offering a quick and convenient way to see the essential information you need as soon as you wake up. It’s a familiar object in many homes, and it’s now evolving to embrace the power of the internet. Lenovo is one of the few manufacturers venturing into this exciting space, and their latest offering, the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential, priced at Rs. 4,499, aims to be the perfect blend of simplicity and smart technology. While it’s a toned-down version of the Lenovo Smart Clock, focusing on affordability and a minimalist display, the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential cuts down the features, bringing the price down considerably. But does it offer enough to justify its place on your bedside table or countertop? Let’s dive into this review and find out.
Lenovo Smart Clock Essential: Design and Specifications
The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential embraces a minimalist approach with its 4-inch monochrome LED non-touch display. This display contrasts with the colorful screen of its predecessor, the Lenovo Smart Clock. It displays the time, day of the week, and a weather report (temperature and conditions) for your chosen location, which you set using the Google Home app. Active alarms are indicated by symbols on the screen, offering a clear visual confirmation. The screen gently tilts upwards, allowing for easy visibility both by your bedside or on a table top.
It’s a visually appealing device, with its slim profile narrowing towards the back and a fabric-wrapped exterior. The bottom of the device boasts rubber grips, ensuring it stays securely in place on flat surfaces.
On the back, you’ll find the power socket for the included adapter, a physical switch to mute the microphones for privacy, and a practical USB Type-A port. This port allows you to connect a charging cable and utilize the device as a charging hub for other gadgets. Two microphones are positioned above the screen for capturing voice commands, while the top houses physical buttons for volume, playback control, and setting alarms. However, all of these functionalities can also be controlled via voice commands, adding to the convenience factor.
Powering the device is an Amlogic processor, along with 4GB of RAM, dual-band Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5 for connectivity. Interestingly, it also features a night light integrated around the back of the device, boasting a maximum brightness of 31 lumens.
Lenovo Smart Clock Essential: Features and Performance
The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential, at its core, is a Google Assistant-powered smart speaker. It functions like other Google Assistant-enabled smart devices, with always-on microphones awaiting the wake phrases. It can perform various tasks, including answering queries, operating smart home devices, and playing audio content. The display adds to this base functionality, showcasing basic information like time, weather, and the day of the week.
While the display is simple, it does what it’s meant to do effectively. It provides essential information without overwhelming users with unnecessary bells and whistles. The brightness of the display can be adjusted using voice commands, ensuring it doesn’t disturb you in a dark room.
The device lacks a touch screen, so it relies on physical buttons for certain controls. While the volume and playback controls are intuitive, setting alarms using the buttons can be quite complicated and prone to errors. Personally, I found setting alarms using voice commands far more convenient and quicker.
The night light feature, accessible via voice commands, is a welcome addition. It provides a subtle and calming illumination, acting as a small nightlight.
However, I did encounter a few minor quirks. Voice commands sometimes clashed with the commands I used to operate other smart lights in my home. The command "Hey Google, turn on the light" would trigger both the smart light in the same room as the device and the night light on the Smart Clock Essential. This required a separate "Hey Google, turn off the night light" command to rectify the situation.
The sound quality of the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is a significant drawback. The speaker’s odd angle, size, and output rating result in a shrill sound that I found less than pleasing. While it wasn’t a major issue for voice responses and podcasts, it struggled with music playback.
During a test of a Postmodern Jukebox cover of Maroon 5’s Maps, the highs and mid-range were piercing, with the cymbals, high-hats, and vocals sounding unpleasantly sharp. Reducing the volume could minimize this, but it compromised the purpose of using it as a speaker for anything beyond occasional, limited-setting usage. Although voice commands allow for customization of alarm tones and setting specific tracks or playlists for wake-up calls, accurately executing these commands can be challenging.
Another small but noteworthy issue involves the microphones. While they did a good job picking up wake phrases and voice commands from close range, I occasionally experienced my Google Nest Audio (located in a different room) responding to commands instead, even when I was closer to the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential. Speaking softly and moving closer to the device seemed to resolve this, but better microphones could have prevented this issue entirely.
Verdict: Worth Adding to Your Bedside?
The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential shares many similarities with the Smart Clock, but their primary difference lies in the display. The monochrome LED display makes the Smart Clock Essential a more effective bedside or table-top device than its colorful counterpart, and the lower price makes it a more appealing purchase. Besides a few minor quirks with the microphones and night light functionalities, the device operates smoothly.
However, its weak sound quality is a considerable drawback for a device marketed as a smart speaker (even in a limited sense). While Google Assistant and other associated functions work well, the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential’s sound quality makes it less than ideal for enjoying music.
Ultimately, it’s a device worth considering for its compact design, features, and ability to function as a bedside alarm clock. But if sound quality is a priority, the Rs. 3,499 Mi Smart Speaker might be a better choice for those invested in the Google Assistant ecosystem.
