The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is the ultimate smart clock for any room. With its big & bold display, you can check out the time from across the room. Talk to Google to ask questions, play music, control smart home devices, and more. This smart clock is here to help you be more productive and take back time. It also features a built-in nightlight, speaker, and microphones.
"was" being the most important word in your comment :P
i actually got that deal and clock is pretty cool and useful for the price
unfortunately $38 deal only lasted a couple hours and a lot of people missed out so this isn't such a bad deal and other deal wasn't free delivery, only free click and collect :)
How is your experience? Is the brigthness can be adjusted?
yes easy as
just say google adjust screen brightness to percent and can go from 0% to 100% brightness
also has night mode similar to mobiles where u can set brightness and volume to decrease between night hours you elect which is best way to control screen brightness automatically
Maybe can price beat at officeworks?
No, deal uses a coupon code
Ignoring price, how does this compare to the Lenovo Smart Clock? Is one better than the other?
the other has a full colour touch screen
In your opinion, is it worth having the colour touch screen over the essential smart clock?
From my experience with the Google Nest hub with a touch screen, i have probably interacted with the touch screen 5 times in the last 6 months. The majority of your time you will interact via voice, other main reason would be to display your photo album.
I had the Smart Clock. Ended up replacing with a Nest Hub.
Main use was as a bedside radio and the sound quality is pretty poor, worse than my Nest Mini, even Google Mini for that matter.
Display looks a bit nicer, customise the clock face a bit, you can display photos or see fancy weather animations, tap to toggle your smart lights in the same room (though usually use voice anyway) but apart from that the display doesn't have much other use.
But given the Smart Clock has been spotted on clearance for less than this makes it hard to recommend the Essential anyway.
If sound quality is a priority, definitely recommend grabbing the Nest Hub when it's under $90.
@Hamlet: Nah. It's clear and loud enough but pretty much no bottom end. Not something you want to listen to music on.
Personally, we use a centrally located Google Nest Hub Max and Nest Hub quite a lot to control our different speakers nearby, when voice commands would be tedious (especially if it's noisy, or as my wife has a somewhat soft voice). I'd say we use voice 55%, touch 45% esp for volume control.
That said, the Lenovo Smart Clock (both Gen 1 and 2) lack those smart home controls. No video or chromecasting either. So compared to the Essential, its only advantage is that you can show photos on its 4 inch screen, and that it's still smaller than a Nest Hub (though we found the latter fits fine in our bedhead shelf).
As others have mentioned, using a touch screen is great for speaker and general music, podcast, radio control. Change episodes, cast to different speakers at different volumes, select people to duo call, change light brightness and colour without using your phone or a dimmer or when you don't want to use voice for whatever reason. Also cast your Home Assistant screen if you're into that.
Personally I'd prefer more control via the screen than what's available vs voice control (as voice can be hit or miss for some features) but that's what we have at the moment.
Just an FYI this is actually pretty small and no one mentioned it before. I still like it but was just expecting it to be bigger.
You're right 4 inch screen, wow that's tiny.
Looks like it may stop working early 2022 with Google IoT being shut down?
I suspect it will keep doing what it does. I mean Android Things hasn't had an update since 2019 anyway so I don't see why existing devices should suddenly stop working.
Nevermind, found the answer on Lenovo website
does it have a radio?
Not OTA but can play internet radio streams.
I had issues with V1 of the Lenovo clock. It kept losing time and needed a boot to get it started again. That was replaced FOC. The replacement had a different method to control brightness (see MikeMelbourne's post above). The new device does not have the problem but is a little deaf compared to Home Mini speaker. Other than needing to be closer or talk louder, it works flawlessly.
If you need one to function as an alarm clock, forget it unless you don't mind turning up late for work saying, "sorry I'm late. My internet connection dropped out".
I didn't even realise there was a 2 being released.
By the looks of it they've improved the sound quality.
Hmm.. was $38 at Harvey Norman about a week ago - This was the deal
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/642258