Lenovo has officially released their Smart Clock gadget, which is one of the first smart appliance kind of devices that feature Google Assistant. Amazon beat everyone to the punch by putting Alexa on a host of other connected devices around the home, so naturally, Google had to get Assistant working on something besides speakers.

Out of all the things that you could apply a touch of digital assistant to, an alarm clock honestly makes a lot of sense. It can be intelligent with your alarms, it's a quick hub to toggling smart lights, and it can play music. So how well does Google Assistant work beside your bed? Let's find out.

Simple design

For better or worse, it's an alarm clock. It's clunky, but the shape is still about what you'd expect from an alarm clock.

Overall, though, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Google directly had a hand in making this little device. The 4-inch display is surrounded by rounded corners and the gray fabric that's synonymous with Google Homes, Pixel cases, and anything else Google touches these days. It'll blend in perfectly with the rest of your Google stuff, and generally looks good in just about any setting without drawing too much attention to itself.

There are two buttons on the top of the clock that control the volume, but otherwise you're just getting a touchscreen. The power cable comes out of the back of the clock where the screen tapers down into an edge, although the power cable is unfortunately not a USB-C cable or anything. There's also a microphone kill switch back there, plus a USB port for charging your other devices.

It might be boring for a smart device, but I think Lenovo gets points for understanding that you don't need to reinvent the wheel when you're dealing with something like an alarm clock.

Smart clock, smart features

The Smart Clock does do a lot of connected home stuff, but even as an alarm clock, it nails the basics. I never thought I'd be reviewing how well something works to wake me up in the morning, but Lenovo has made the experience less terrible.

The chimes for alarms are generally pretty pleasant, and just like on Android you can select times that only repeat on certain days. There's also a feature that gradually turns the brightness of the clock back up 30 minutes before your alarm is set to go off to make waking up a little bit easier, which is pretty cool. But if you're still not ready to get up, you can snooze the alarm by slapping the alarm clock just about anywhere. There's no dedicated snooze button, so Lenovo has made most of the clock's chassis sensitive to smacks. It's pretty cool and very satisfying, although I might be mixing that up with the feeling of getting 10 more minutes of sleep.

But here is where the smart side of things really comes into play. You know how you can set up Good Morning routines in the Google Home app? This thing will play very nicely with that. Once your alarm goes off you can start up your morning routine from what you've set up in your Home app, which can be anything from starting some music on other speakers, turning on your lights, telling you your morning briefing and the weather, or just about anything you can imagine. Google's routines are very powerful, and having a dedicated device for that takes them a step further.

Since it's tied into your smart home layout, it also knows which lights are in your bedroom and can quickly turn those on and off. Sure, you can just say “Hey Google, turn the bedroom lights off” but the pulldown menu from the clock has a quick shortcut to turning only the lights in the bedroom on and off. I think it'd be nice to optionally make this a “turn all the lights off” button instead of just in the bedroom, but I understand Lenovo's decision.

That pulldown also has a one-tap option for playing some music, starting your morning routine, and jumping to your alarms.

For those of you that are really into customization, Lenovo has included several different clock faces that even offer individual color options, and the clock will intelligently change to more monochrome colors when the lights in the room get dim, if you want to keep that option on. All in all it tries very hard to be a mostly seamless appliance beside your bed that you won't have to constantly fiddle with. It's available to answer questions and do things via voice if you need it, but otherwise it stays out of the way and handles everything with automation.

I will note that the auto-brightness setting on the clock seems really dim, which may be because it's designed as an alarm clock. At night it's fine, but during the day it can be too dim to really be useful. I personally don't use auto-brightness, but instead swipe left from the clock screen at night to go into the dimmed clock mode. You can also swipe all the way to the right to get to a weather screen that will display the temperature and current weather outside, but this one actually is too bright to use at night. Plus there's no time displayed anywhere, so it's not the most useful thing in the world, especially when the main display can have a temperature widget.

Internally the Smart Clock is listed as having 8GB of internal storage, which is super strange considering it doesn't actually do anything else besides all of this stuff. There's no YouTube, no Netflix, no app store, nothing. That might change in the future and Lenovo just wanted to future proof this thing, but as of right now you are literally only getting an alarm clock, not a small Nest Hub.

Worth the buy?

At $80 the Lenovo Smart Clock is a really expensive alarm clock. If you just need something to buzz you awake every morning, it's overkill and you are really not the target audience for this thing. But as someone who already had a Google Home on my night stand that gets used almost every night, having the same thing in a more compact design and with some bedroom-specific buttons and toggles is really cool.

I can still tell Google to turn my lights off, if I want, but now I have a button right beside the bed, which is great if I'm trying to be quiet to not wake someone else up. A quick jump to a morning routine is also great, because I'll be honest, sometimes I don't want to talk to Google first thing in the morning, especially if I'm up earlier than usual.

The speakers on it are good enough, too; not as good as the full Google Home, but for the bedroom I've got no complaints. I use other speakers for serious music listening in that room, anyway.

I think $80 is just a bit too expensive, but it is a cool device, and hopefully it's an indicator for how Google Assistant's foray into other devices will go. Alarm clocks are simple, but getting into things like amplifiers, microwaves, and whatever else is exciting.

On the other hand, though, you run the risk of a separate alarm clock duplicating what some of your other devices do. It didn't actually add anything to my bedroom; my phone was already an clock and alarm system, and my Google Home already played music. If you're a minimalist, you can handle all of that with just your phone, no extra devices needed. But there's something fun and nostalgic about having an old-fashioned alarm clock by your bed, and I hope that's enough to carve out a niche for Lenovo.

Buy it now: Lenovo