Lenovo Smart Display 8 With the Google Assistant Reviews

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. Run across our ethics argument.

The bones idea behind the new Google-powered Smart Displays that are coming this summer is simple: take a Google Habitation smart speaker and put a screen on it, merely like Amazon's Echo Bear witness. Really if that's all you accept away from this review, you've got the basics.

The Lenovo Smart Display is the kickoff of these new devices on the market. LG, Sony, and JBL take too signed on to make them. Lenovo's version goes on sale July 27th, priced at $199 for a model with an 8-inch screen and $249 for the model I tested, which has a x-inch display.

There's something more going on hither than merely a screen for the Google Assistant, though. These Smart Displays run Android Things, a newish operating arrangement based on Android and designed for Cyberspace of Things devices. That ways Google has a new canvas for its virtual Assistant to work with, unencumbered with the need to support whatsoever of the cruft that would come up forth with running full Android or Chrome.

With that bare slate comes an opportunity for Google to make exactly the thing it wants to brand. And the result is something I wasn't really expecting: a Google appliance.

As a piece of hardware, Lenovo'due south take on the Smart Brandish is elegant — especially when compared to the Echo Show. It has a large, flat screen that sits to the right of a white speaker grille. It's thin across almost of the screen, with the back curving out behind the speaker. The larger, more expensive version has bamboo on the back, while the smaller one has a much more boring grayness plastic.

It's designed to work sitting horizontally, but Lenovo put rubber feet on the cease so it can sit down vertically. Well, the hardware tin, but the software hasn't been designed to work when the Smart Display is in portrait mode (except for Duo video calls), which is a bummer. This thing would be much more than likely to fit on my crowded kitchen counter if I could stand it upright.

Both versions of the Lenovo Smart Brandish have a 10-watt speaker with ii passive tweeters. I've simply tested the larger x-inch version and the audio quality is passable at best — about on par with the Google Home or entry-level Amazon Echo. It can get plenty loud at max volume, simply also plenty distorted. It's fine as a smart speaker for bones stuff, simply nowhere near as skilful every bit a Sonos I or HomePod.

The touchscreen display is visible even in directly sunlight but doesn't overwhelm the room in the dark — it has a large effulgence range, basically, and good auto-brightness settings. But oddly enough, my favorite feature isn't the screen, information technology's the little hardware switch that moves a shutter to block out the 5-megapixel wide-angle camera. It's true that Google Duo doesn't support the disconcerting "Drop In" feature like the Repeat Show and Spot, but I still feel more than comfortable putting a smart speaker in my sleeping accommodation or bath if I know the photographic camera is covered.

There are simply two microphones for recognizing your vocalization, but they seem to do their job quite well until you crank the music volume up to the max. Ane of the benefits of Google-based speakers is that they do a skilful chore of recognizing the sound of your specific voice and delivering your personal Google content to y'all. With this device, I found information technology seemed to have a slightly harder time identifying my vocalism than the Google Home did, but simply by a piddling.

If you've ever used a Google Domicile or Google Dwelling house Mini, the new Lenovo Smart Display will feel very similar. Setup works by using the Google Abode app on your phone, which will walk y'all through the standard steps of connecting to Wi-Fi and your Google account.

Once information technology'due south online, you tin can do all of the things you lot do on a regular smart speaker or through Google Assistant on your phone. Say "Hey Google," ask a question or result a command to control a smart home gadget, and it's done. Your core interactions with this device still happen with your voice. Touch is there for stuff similar follow-up taps when something's on the screen, similar a play/pause button or a map you want to zoom in on.

Because there'southward a screen now, many of those vox actions come with an optional visual component. When yous inquire information technology to turn on the lights, for case, a screen pops upwardly that lets you suit the brightness or colour temperature. If yous happen to take a video source in your daily news briefing, it will play that video before moving on to the audio updates. The atmospheric condition shows a chart and some cute animations.

Fifty-fifty timers are better with a screen. You tin prepare every bit many as you like (unlike on the Apple HomePod) and your about recent timers stay on the screen instead of the whole thing reverting to the home screen likewise apace, as happens on Amazon'southward Echo Show.

By default, a Smart Display sits in "ambient mode," which shows a rotating slideshow of photos. Y'all tin choose from Google-provided images (art and landscapes and the like) or albums from your Google Photos archive.

Tap the screen and you'll get a abode screen. On the left y'all'll find the local weather, which you tin can tap to expand. On the correct there are a series of cards which serve mainly as suggestions for things yous tin can enquire. You can tap on a YouTube video or your agenda entries there, of course, but that's not really the goal.

The card that shows up on the homescreen tin can change depending on context. If you were just watching a video or listening to music, the card for that activity will be offset. If you lot have an upcoming meeting, the calendar card might be shown outset. If you're worried near people in your household seeing your stuff, the phone app lets you lot not display that information past default.

As with other Google Dwelling house devices, you tin gear up it up to recognize dissimilar voices that are attached to dissimilar Google accounts, so people in your family can get their personal information. But the display will default to showing data from the primary account. And equally with other Google Home devices, getting it to piece of work with your piece of work information is a pain. You volition need to somehow become your work agenda synced over to your personal calendar, for example.

Swiping in from the left edge serves as a back push button if you lot don't want to say "Hey Google, go home" out loud. Swiping upwards from the lesser lets you accommodate the brightness. There are other nice functions: you can brand traditional phone calls, though when you punch out it shows upwards equally an unknown number to your recipient. Duo calls worked well in our test, though sometimes the Smart Display was a piffling aggressive almost calling via Duo when I just wanted to a obviously old phone call.

If you search for something locally, you'll go a swell Google Maps list that lets you swipe through photos of the location, get directions, and pan around a map. Y'all can as well ask follow-up questions about the location, including getting directions sent to your phone.

That's nearly it, honestly. Information technology's a far as the visual UI goes. But what really surprised me is how elegant the software pattern felt. Excepting a few stutters, animation was not just smooth and fluid, but also genuinely helpful in showing you what'southward going on. The fonts are clean, the drib shadows are consistent, and everything just coheres really well.

Granted, this is non a very complex UI arrangement, so it would be a pretty gigantic whiff if Google couldn't make this piece of work. Merely looking at the work that it'due south trying to do with Material theming across Android and Chrome, you can tell that the direction Google wants to go with blueprint is this exact arrangement. Information technology'south the clearest statement of what Google thinks software should look like that I've seen in recent memory.

Beyond the nuts, the most fascinating thing about calculation a display to the Google Banana is that Google is it taking that as an opportunity to evolve how it answers questions. To have the nigh obvious example: if y'all ask a how-to question like "How do I darn socks?" you're likely to get a YouTube video instead of a snippet from a website.

I really similar what happens when you lot ask for a recipe. Google returns a bunch of possible results pulled from the spider web, but then re-formats them for this display. Y'all become step-by-step instructions that stay on the screen until y'all're set for the next role of the instructions. Information technology's so clever that I immediately wished that I could import my own recipes into the system instead of just using what'due south out there on the web.

Here's another, more than illuminating example: I wanted to examination web image search, so I said "Hey Google, show me pictures of otters." Google came dorsum with a jigsaw puzzle of an otter I put together on a lazy cabin Sabbatum; I had taken a photo of the almost-finished work to decry the one missing piece. And so I asked "when was this photo taken" and Google knew the answer — considering it was stored in the metadata for my own picture show.

At that place are two themes to bespeak out in these examples. The first is that Google is trying to exist more artistic in how information technology delivers answers than earlier, pulling in multimedia sources both from the web and from my own personal information. You sort of never really know when you lot're going to get a response that's more immersive or personalized when you ask the question.

The second theme? Adept golly this thing is tightly integrated into the Google ecosystem. It grabs YouTube videos. Information technology uses Google's spider web snippets. It serves as an astonishing kitchen Television set if you're a YouTube TV subscriber. It knows what my reminders are and where my wedding was. It'south very much a device that aspires to give you answers instead of web links.

That doesn't mean that I think that this device is fundamentally creepier than other products. I just mean that the addition of the screen and the ways Google have taken advantage of it are ten times more than interesting if y'all alive fully within Googleworld.

That's not to say that it is completely a walled Google garden. Tertiary-party services do show upwardly hither. You can fix your default music thespian to Spotify or one of Google's music services; it besides straight supports some video services like HBO Now, CNN, and Fox News. If you want another video service however, you lot'll need to go to your phone and hunt downwards the Google Cast push. Unfortunately (and weirdly), not all video services can Bandage to this device — Android Central has a list of what does and doesn't work (Netflix doesn't). Information technology also supports the aforementioned suite of Google Deportment that the Google Abode does — and 3rd party developers will be able to create on-screen experiences in fourth dimension.

It's fitting that the Lenovo Smart Brandish is and so clearly designed to sit in the kitchen, because it actually is an appliance, a Google appliance. Though you could make the case that its connection to Google's powerful cloud and AI makes it a estimator, it's much more than like our thought of what an apparatus really is: simple, more often than not focused on a few simple tasks, and hopefully well designed.

The Smart Display platform is all of those things, and it is much more focused on enabling Google experiences than any other product I've seen. Whether that portends a new direction for the visitor or simply what it thought was the best manner to get this speaker out the door remains to exist seen.

Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more than information, encounter our ideals policy .

Updated 11:30am ET July 26 to clarify Google Cast support.

robertsonandeten73.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/26/17616560/lenovo-smart-display-review-google-assistant-smart-speaker-screen

Share this post