The Lenovo Smart Clock is the bedroom alarm clock we've been waiting for [hands-on]

With the smartphone’s rise, it pretty much killed off the bedroom alarm clock – one of many gadget casualties that occurred when more and more features were integrated into today’s modern smartphones. Well, Lenovo is aiming to bring them back from the dead! Armed with all of the fancy artificial intelligence technology that Google Assistant has been endowed with, they’ve taken many of it and forged its smart alarm clock in the Lenovo Smart Clock!

Now this is a more practical solution to having Google Assistant in the bedroom, primarily because it’s not as obtrusive as some other solutions! It's not simply a shrunken version of Lenovo’s own Smart Display, since it’s not as obtrusive and really emphasizes the alarm clock experience. Featuring a 4-inch IPS display, its brightness will adjust accordingly to the ambient lighting – making it easy on the eyes in bright and dim lighting situations. The dark mode dims the screen to as low as 0.3 nits, while the display gently wakes up by simulating a sun rise, covering the room in a soft yellow light.

Rather than trying to bombard users with more information on-screen, the Lenovo Smart Clock is more reactive and discrete. Being a Google Assistant device, it’ll automatically set alarms based on your habits, but you can also manually set them as well. The various cards also provide relevant information, like the weather, calendar appointments, commute conditions, and much more! Moreover, it can integrate with all Google Assistant devices, like the Nest camera, so you can ask to see what’s going on at the front door. On the back, there’s a full-sized USB port that allows you to charge your smartphone – without the need to rely on adding another power adapter.

Launching in the spring time frame with a price point of $80, the Lenovo Smart Clock is certainly yet another intriguing smart connected home device that seems like a natural fit for the bedroom. For once, we have something that’s practical enough to bring back the alarm clock into the bedroom – rather than just simply relying on our smartphones.