Lenovo Smart Clock
This superb Google Assistant-powered alarm clock is a brilliant bedside companion
“The sunrise alarm feature means you can set the speaker to wake you up gradually with increasingly bright light from its display”
SCORE ★★★★★ PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from lenovo.com/uk
Lenovo’s Smart Clock is a tiny smart display designed to sit atop your bedside table. In many ways, it’s the perfect introduction to Google’s Home ecosystem; it can do practically anything its larger stablemates can, but at £80 it’s firmly within impulse purchase territory.
Dominated by its 4in screen when viewed from the front, Lenovo’s Smart Clock is a small, cute and boxy thing. Unlike Google’s Nest Hub, which resembles a tablet stuck to a pumice stone, the Lenovo speaker is a single, cohesive unit covered entirely in fabric – and it looks all the better for it.
Two buttons on the top let you control the speaker’s volume, while the Smart Clock’s rectangular rear houses a USB-A port alongside a power input and the mute switch for the microphone. To stop it from sliding around on your bedside table, the Smart Clock has two grippy rubber strips on its underside – one at the front and one at the rear.
You can use that USB-A slot to charge your phone, and there are some neat alarm clock features you won’t find on other Google Assistant smart speakers. The sunrise alarm, for instance, means you can set the speaker to wake you up gradually with increasingly bright light from its display, rather than the usual harsh alarm tone.
That 4in display contains 800 x 480 pixels. That may seem low, but it’s not a problem because the Smart Clock isn’t intended for looking at photos or video – there’s no Ambient mode, as seen on larger Google smart displays, for showing off your photo collection. However, this vibrant screen is more than adequate for reading the time and viewing calendar entries. It helps that an ambient light sensor adjusts the brightness to your surroundings. By swiping up from the bottom of the screen and opening Display Settings, you can also set the Smart Clock to use a monochrome clock and a “darker” minimum brightness at night so it never wakes you up.
Otherwise, practically everything about the Smart Clock works in
the same way as the Lenovo Smart Display. You can use the card-based system to check the weather and events and, crucially, ask Google Assistant for help with anything from measurement conversions to travel info. Or simply cast music to it from your Android phone or connect via Bluetooth to use it as a speaker.
By default, the Smart Clock shows a large clock on its homescreen. Swiping right reveals a card not found on its larger siblings: an alarm menu. From here, you can toggle existing alarms on and off and set new ones, and decide whether you want them to repeat. There are also options to enable the sunrise alarm feature and activate your “Good morning routine”.
Routines are one of the most powerful tools in Google Home’s arsenal and they can be used to do just about anything – from adjusting your thermostats to telling you about your upcoming calendar entries. But there’s no simple option to be woken by your favourite radio station or Spotify playlist. Instead, you’ll have to set up a routine from the Home app that wakes you in the same way at the same time on the same days every week, or you’ll have to make do with the “Good morning routine” starting only after you’ve silenced the alarm set from the Smart Clock.
Lenovo has at least made it easy to silence the speaker: when the alarm sounds, you can tap its top to silence (or snooze) it and there’s also the option to say “Stop!” without giving the “OK Google” wake command.
Such a tiny device is unlikely to reproduce music in a way that excites audiophiles, but I was pleasantly surprised by the Smart Clock’s 3W speaker and dual passive radiators. Indeed, mid-range and treble frequencies are noticeably clearer and more refined than on the larger Google Nest Hub, although it doesn’t have quite the same presence. This makes it suited to listening to spoken word and music, so long as you’re sitting nearby. If you’re looking to fill your bedroom with sound, you’re better off choosing the more powerful JBL Link View ( see issue 292, p68). There’s nothing quite like the Lenovo Smart Clock in the smart speaker market – even Amazon’s recently announced Echo Show 5 doesn’t feel quite right next to your bed due to its front-facing camera. Thanks to its small build, natty design and well-thought-out interface, the Smart Clock would appeal even if it were a dumb clock. When it packs in all of the powerful features of Google Assistant into such an attractive and competitively priced package, it would be an injustice not to give it a Recommended award.
SPECIFICATIONS 4in 800 x 480 touchscreen IPS display 1.5in 3W speaker 2 x passive radiators 1.5GHz MediaTek 8167S processor 1GB RAM 8GB storage 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 USB-A port 113.9 x 79.2 x 79.8mm (WDH) 328g 1yr warranty