Lenovo Smart Clock Review: A Near-Perfect Smarthome Bedroom Companion

Michael Crider

Last year Google impressed the tech world with the Home Hub, an excellent smarthome management tool and miniature entertainment center. Lenovo’s Smart Clock, despite the disparate branding, is a smaller sequel. And it’s every bit as good.

Sporting a 4-inch screen, a 6-watt speaker, an understated cloth-covered design, and excellent integration with Google’s Assistant and Home systems, the Smart Clock is a fantastic add-on to any compatible smarthome setup. But what surprised me is that, thanks to some smart design choices, it makes a great little bedside alarm clock in its own right. And at $80, only a bit over half the price of the Home Hub and a reasonable $30 more than the Home Mini, it’s also an excellent value.

The Smart Clock is a great product that gets an unreserved recommendation. It’s a nearly perfect gadget if you want a Home Mini with a display, or just an alarm clock with a few web-enabled tools and audio options.

Smart, Understated Physical Design

The Smart Clock looks at first glance like a miniaturized Google Home Hub. The understated grey cloth covering means it will fit into almost any home decor. And it’s small enough to fit anywhere, too: about the size of a soda can. In terms of absolute volume, it’s only a little bigger than the Home Mini.

The Lenovo Smart Clock with the smaller Google Home Mini and larger Home Hub. Michael Crider

But where the Home Mini is designed for voice commands only, with touch controls thrown in as an afterthought, the Smart Clock expects you to interact with it in a much more tactile fashion. Only two physical buttons are on top, volume up and down, with an invisible sensor between it for touch. (More on that later.)

The screen is unblemished with any physical controls, though if you look closely you can spot two microphones straddling a light sensor on the top bezel. There’s no camera to be found. In the rear, you have a proprietary power cable (no internal battery), a microphone on-off switch, and a full-sized USB port for easily charging any phone.

All the controls and inputs, aside from the screen: volume, power, USB charging, mic switch. Michael Crider

And that’s it. The slanted body and cloth covering are reminiscent of Google’s home products instead of the original bamboo-covered Lenovo Smart Speaker. But with its size and tactility, I’m reminded of the Chumby, a nifty web-powered, small-screened gadget from 2008. It was also positioned as a connected alarm clock, among other things. Chumby is long dead, but I think its unique design (if not its independent, hack-friendly spirit) lives on in the Smart Clock.

A Perfect “Goldilocks” Gadget

The original Google Home speaker is ostensibly the product between the Home Hub, with its seven-inch screen and decent speaker, and the Home Mini, a tiny screen-free, USB-powered booster point for smarthome voice commands. Lenovo appears to have built the Smart Clock as both a replacement for the original Home (in terms of price) and a midpoint between the Home Mini and the Home Hub (in terms of features).

Setup via the standard Google Home app is quick and easy. Michael Crider

The Smart Clock nails this midpoint, giving users the screen interactions of the Home Hub with the size and accessibility of the Home Mini. Standard Google Assistant voice commands are easy to use, as expected, and the usual lights, music, and pre-programmed smarthome routines are accessible from the screen if you want more fine control. Actual management is best left to the Home app on your phone, but accessing anything you’ve already installed and set up from the Smart Clock is a breeze.