We've had our Google Assistant smart clock made by Lenovo
for over six months now so in this review I'm going to go over the top
features of the device, how its held up over the past six months, some downsides
we've had with the device, and some recommendations if you're stuck picking
between this device a Nest Mini or a Nest Hub. Let's dive in. Released midway
through 2019, the Lenovo Google Assistant smart clock is a small speaker device
with a screen that's made to sit on your nightstand. The device has a nice fabric
design that fits well within Google's other speaker products the screen is a 4
inch 480 by 800 IPS touchscreen that displays the time and other text as well
on top of the smart clock are plus and minus buttons to control the volume the
microphones for the Google assistant are right above the screen on the top and at
the back you'll find a power jack mute switch and USB a port so you can plug in
your phone or watch charger so that's the design of the smart clock but now I
want to dive into the user experience and some of my favorite features now one
of the main reasons you'd get a device like this is because it's a Google
assistant speaker with a display that shows the time and the weather and the
UI reflects that you swipe to the left to go through the main screens in the UI
which include the main screen that shows the time the alarm screen where you can
set multiple alarm schedules for different situations in your life a
music playlist page and a calendar event screen which shows you events coming up
from your Google Calendar you can swipe to the right to get out of whatever
screen you're on and back to a previous screen swiping up from the bottom shows
you your typical Google assisted display settings including volume controls
brightness settings do not disturb mode and further system settings do note that
the smart clock does have an ambient brightness setting but it does not
change the color temperature of the display like it does on the nest hub
swiping down from the top shows you your smart home controls like turning off
your smart lights in the room that your Google assistant smart clock is located
a shortcut to a routine like goodnight an alarm settings button and a shortcut
to play some music in the past six months the screen I've used the most
with this device is the alarm screen now here at six months later reviews the
reason why we do long term reviews is so we can show you how well a product has
integrated into our daily routines and what the overall impact of that product
has been on our lives over an extended period of time now for the lenovo smart
clock i can say that the alarm screen is one of the major things that has had an
impact on my life using this device and it's one of the things i use the most in
fact if you're choosing between the smart clock and a nest mini
i think one of the main reasons you would likely choose the smart clock over
the nest mini is the alarm screen the reason for this is the UI simplifies
creating specific multi-day or single day alarms that are easy to toggle on
and off which is not as easy to do on the nest hub and is certainly much
harder to do when you're just using your voice with a google assistant speaker
often I wake up at different times throughout the week because I'll either
have an early morning call or I'll be working from home one day and will sleep
in an extra thirty minutes or so so I love the ability to toggle on and off
different alarms for the workweek now you also have other settings that are
easily available like the alarm tones and even the ability for Google AI to
choose a different alarm for you every morning now if you want to wake up to a
specific song or playlist unfortunately you can't do that from the alarms screen
on the device however you can set up one of these alarms by using your voice for
example create a music alarm got it 1 4 4 7:30 a.m. got it and what would you
like me to play high hopes by panic at the disco ok I'll play the song high
hopes for tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. you can also create weekday or weekend alarms
with music by using voice commands as like create a weekday Music Alarm if
you're like me and dislike waking up you can actually pound the smart clock when
the alarm goes off which will then trigger it to either snooze or shut off
the alarm entirely another big impact that I found with this device is how
effective it displays the temperature and current weather conditions now part
of this has to do with its placement on my nightstand when you think about it
the nightstand is actually a pretty valuable piece of real estate for a tech
product in your home with this device out of all of my other Google devices
with screens I found that I pay attention to the weather information the
most with the Lenovo smart clock on my nightstand and that's because I'm
looking at the screen and when I'm going to bed at night as well as looking at it
when I get up in the morning there's a clock face you can set that will show
you the current weather conditions by displaying different graphics in the
background which is pretty cool speaking of clock faces you also have some
options here and changing the clock faces is easy just tap and hold the
current clock face on the screen then you'll be able to choose a different
clock face and customize it a bit from changing the color of the clock to
toggling on or off an info ticker or weather information one clock face can
even display photos from various photo albums that you have in Google Photos
just like the nest hub can now if you're deciding between this device and a
device like a nest hub or a nest emoni another key factor in your decision is
likely going to be sound quality so here's a sound comparison between all
three devices
personally I think the Nesta money actually has the best sound overall
Google improved the bass over the original Google home Mini and it does
show the Lenovo smart clock does have a clear sound to it
it just doesn't quite have as much bass now for my set up I already had a Google
home max on my nightstand so what I did is I enable the setting with my smart
clock to where any sound that would normally come out of the smart clock
will actually come out of the Google home max now the last main feature of
the Google assisted smart clock is the Google assistant itself the Google
assistant on this device can do the same things as the assistant on other devices
like the nest hub though the screen on this device is smaller you can still see
items on your lists calendar invites graphics for routines and even
dictionary word spell outs in the six months I've been living with the Google
assistant smart clock I haven't had any reliability issues and I've only found
one downside which is that the Lenovo smart clock can not automatically turn
off its display in low-light situations now let me go into detail here and
explain exactly what I mean with the nest hub and nest hub max
there's a setting that you can enable where the display will turn all the way
off when the device detects the lights have turned off around it for a smart
clock on my nightstand whose screen faces my bed I really wish it had a
setting through the Google home app to enable this for those times where I like
many of you out there perhaps wake up in the middle of the night and don't really
want to know what time it is because often at least in my experience and I
know other people are like this as well you'll wake up in the middle of the
night you'll see what time it is and then you will either worry about work in
the morning or something you have to do and it just causes more thoughts to go
through your head that make it harder to actually get back to sleep for now
there's a workaround to do this just tell the Google assistant smart clock to
turn off the screen and the screen will turn off overall though I've quite
enjoyed using the Google assistant smart clock made by Lenovo I found that for
certain use cases it actually outshines the nest many
the nest hub now if you're someone trying to decide between which of these
devices to get here are some recommendations based on certain
scenarios for a device that you want on your nightstand that you don't primarily
care about being a photo frame I'd say go for the Lenovo smart clock if you
want more of a photo frame then go for the nest hub and if you're more price
conscious in general and just want a google assistant speaker then the nest
mini is going to be the no-brainer well that's it for our review of the Google
assistant smart clock made by Lenovo if you liked this video and found it
helpful make sure you hit that thumbs up button below and subscribe to the
channel for more google assistant related videos like this one. For 6
Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.