This right here is the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential.
Coming with features like a built-in Google assistant, a night light, easy to set alarms and local weather, this clock comes at a very reasonable price point.
This is a hands-on unbiased unrequested review.
Let's get started!
Inside of the box of course you're going to get the smart clock itself. You get one wall outlet power plug. You also get a quick start guide and an instruction booklet.
The clock itself is quite small and as you can see it fits quite easily into my hands.
For the clock dimensions, the face of the clock is 12cm long and around 6cm high. The top of the clock is 8cm deep and the back of the clock is 6.5cm by 2.5cm.
In terms of weight, the clock weighs around 234 grams.
As you can see, the front of the clock is made out of a glossy black plastic.
This looks good but it's prone to fingerprints or smudging; not that you'd have any reason to touch this screen since it's not a touch screen, it's just an old-school LCD display.
It tells you the time and it does a pretty good job of it.
The numbers are large and clear and the writing is bright so you can easily see it at night but it's not too bright.
There are also two microphones at the front which picks up your voice if you wanted to use the Google assistant features.
These microphones are advertised to work at a range of up to five meters which is actually much less than other smart speakers,
but it should be more than enough in a bedroom which is typically how you would use this.
To set up the clock, you'll just need to use the Google home app and add a smart speaker like you're going to add any other Google speaker like the Nest Mini.
Once added, this clock will automatically tell you the time and the local weather so you don't have to set the clock which is really handy.
The body of this clock is surrounded by this mesh-like material. It looks good and at the bottom here there are two long rubber feet to keep the device firmly in place.
The build quality in terms of the looks and the feel of the device does actually seem to be quite good.
If you do want to know about the quality of the sound from the speaker, I'm going to do an audio test for you a little bit later on in this video, so keep watching.
At the top of the clock, you have the logo right here and then you have four buttons; minus, plus, play and alarm.
The plus and minus buttons can be used to adjust the volume.
Also, if you hold down the minus button, it will toggle on and off the night light.
You can adjust the brightness of this night light by using voice commands.
I think it's really good that you can adjust this to your personal preferences. It depends on how you want to use the night light.
It's definitely bright enough to be able to see, to easily be able to get in and out of bed, but in my opinion it's not bright enough or in the right position to use for reading.
Now this play button over here can be used to play and pause music from the speaker.
If your alarm is going off, you can disable the alarm by pressing the alarm button directly or you can snooze it by pressing any of the other three available buttons.
The easiest way to set an alarm on this alarm clock and the only way that I would recommend doing it, is using voice commands; it's really quick and easy.
Set an alarm for 6.30am tomorrow. Done. Your alarm set for tomorrow at 6.30am.
You can set as many alarms as you like using the voice commands and then you can cycle through the alarms that you've set by using the alarm button.
If you've set a whole bunch of alarms and want to cancel them all in one go, it's really easy.
Just say "OK Google. Cancel all my alarms".
"Got it. I cancelled all of them".
And that's it. You've got all the alarms cancelled.
Another way you can use this clock is just as a regular Google assistant speaker which is great.
You can do things like solve complex maths problems or you can ask Google to tell you a joke.
Using this clock on your bedside table can free up another Google speaker if you have one to be used in another location around your home.
The weather on this clock is presented with small symbols indicating different types of weather like rain, sunshine or storms and the current temperature outside is also displayed.
Now this temperature is for the outdoor temperature; it's not going to tell you the temperature inside the room, just the temperature from a local weather station for your area.
A couple more features you should be aware of; at the back of the clock you have a switch right here.
This is the mute switch and should turn the microphone off.
If you're worried about Google listening to every conversation in your house, you can switch this switch off and then the microphone will not work at all.
There is also a USB port at the back here.
You can't use this port to transfer data or anything like that. You can use this to charge a mobile phone or any other device that you can charge using a USB port.
This is just one extra feature that this clock has which could come in handy depending on your use.
One negative that I do want to mention about this clock that you should be aware is that if there is a power outage at your house,
this alarm clock isn't going to work at all which wouldn't be great at waking you up in the morning.
Also, it's very reliant on using the internet so if your internet was disconnected, this clock is also unlikely to work at all.
So that's definitely a weakness in terms of this clock.
But these days if you've got reliable power in your area and your internet is also reliable 99.99 percent of the time, that's not going to be a problem for you.
But if it is, it'd be a pretty big problem.
Now let's talk about the quality of the speaker on this Lenovo smart clock.
In fact, I'll just show you. To help with the audio test, I'm going to compare the audio of this smart speaker to the Google Nest Mini.
Now the Nest Mini is actually a pretty good speaker for its size, so let's see how the Lenovo smart clock compares with the Google Nest Mini. Have a listen.
Okay, let's be honest. When compared with the Google Nest Mini, this clock sounds like a tin can.
The audio has no bass at all and it has no depth to the sound; the overall quality was just poor.
I wouldn't recommend this clock as a high quality speaker, but to be honest that's probably not why you would buy this clock anyway.
It's good that it has a speaker but nine times out of ten if you want to play music from a speaker, you're going to use a larger and better speaker than either of these two anyway.
I'm not sure how much the poor quality of the speaker will impact on a buying decision for this one because there are many other good things.
But it is important for you to know that probably the biggest weakness on this clock is the quality of sound from the speaker.
And you know I'm not here to tell you whether or not you should buy this smart speaker / clock.
I'm just here to help you decide if this is the right purchase for you.
I can tell you definitely that this clock is packed with features for the price.
All of the features are basic but they work as advertised.
You're getting an effective, functional Google speaker, a smart alarm clock, a night light, USB charging port at the back.
For such a small and compact device, there are quite a lot of different features that you get.
The main negatives are there's no backup battery and the speaker quality is definitely questionable.
That's pretty much it.
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