Gadgetory

so this little guy is the Lenovo smart clock and initially I thought I was gonna have a lot of the same functionality as this the Lenovo smart display just sort of shrunk down and that's kind of true it's cute it's got a four inch display and it does have the Google assistant built-in so you can issue all the same voice commands you'd issue to a Google home and you go home mini but a lot of the functionality has been streamlined specifically for your nightstand so first off there's no smart home control panel here you can't watch videos there's no photos it's that all the things are gonna see are the ones that you might want to prioritize first thing in the morning like the weather or your calendar or your commute to work this thing's smart enough to actually suggest alarm times for you based on that calendar and then it really starts shining once you set that alarm when it's getting close to going off the screen is gonna get brighter and then the alarm rings and what's cool is if you tap the top you'll snooze it if you tap it twice you'll dismiss the alarm and then that can immediately kick off your good morning routine so Google allows grouped commands called routines that can trigger your smart home devices and things like that your good morning routine can be tied directly to this and tell you the weather and what's on your calendar and then play your customized news feed for the day all from giving this a double tap in the morning when the alarm is sounding so Google and Lenovo are thinking of smart clocks as an entirely different category of product from smart displays but it's still based on Android things and there's still a lot of familiarity here you can still pull down for a similar control panel you'd see on smart displays you can still group the device with Google cast devices so it should still be pretty familiar if you're used to the Google assistant ecosystem but really Google and Lenovo want this to feel right at home on your nightstand there's no camera and a lot of the smarts are based on setting the right alarm for your schedule and gradually waking you up in the morning so I'm interested to see the Lenovo smart clock in action and fortunately I won't have to wait that long it's due out this spring and it's gonna cost 80 bucks and I'm excited to see what this can add to my nightstand