Lenovo Smart Alarm Clock 2 Review

Design

The Lenovo Smart Alarm Clock 2 features a fabric exterior with a 4-inch display on the front. This particular model includes a wireless charging base that you can set the clock on top of to provide power to the wireless Qi charging pad on the base. This way, you can wirelessly charge your smartphone beside the Smart Alarm Clock.

There is no camera on the device, providing a bit of peace of mind when placing it in the bedroom. There is a mute switch for the microphone located on the back of the unit.

The Qi charging base also has a simple LED night light that glows around the base of the alarm clock. This can be enabled by saying, “hey Google, turn on the night light.”

Setup

The setup process is done through the Google Home app, so thankfully there is not yet another app to install specifically for this clock. In the Google Home app, you simply hit the + symbol to add a device, and your phone should automatically detect the Lenovo Smart Alarm Clock and walk you through the steps of joining it to your WiFi and customizing your music services.

Oddly, although I’m a YouTube TV subscriber, it did not show up as one of the Live TV choices and the clock doesn’t allow me to play anything on its built-in screen. Sure, I wouldn’t sit down to watch a 2-hour movie on the tiny screen, but it would be nice to have the news on while getting ready in the morning.

At the end of the setup process, the Smart Alarm Clock installed a firmware update and was then ready to use.

Performance

While the screen is small, I’m able to clearly see the time from across the room. There are different clock faces available that you can swipe through on the device. I like the weather clock face as it shows a subtle image in the background of the current conditions along with the temperature. I also like the option to use a Google Photos album that cycles throughout the day. Oddly, the display settings cannot be accessed in the Google Home app and must be done through the small touch screen interface. Hopefully, this is corrected in the future.

The Smart Alarm Clock 2 also seems to do a good job of picking up my voice from across the room and it responds to queries very quickly, similar to a regular Google Nest Hub.

The Smart Alarm Clock 2 doesn’t seem to support streaming video as it does not even show as an option to Chromecast video content from my phone. It works fine with my Pandora and my free Spotify account, but my requests to play content from Apple Music come back with a, “sorry, I can’t do that right now,” which is odd because Apple Music works fine on my Google Nest Hub. Hopefully, Lenovo can address this in a future update as well.

The sound quality is surprisingly good on this little device! Music comes through clear and doesn’t sound “tinny” as you would expect on a small speaker.

At night, the unit can be set to show a simple black and white clock face. The screen gets very dim making it ideal for a dark bedroom.