The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is a device that has been added to my collection of smart home devices. It's a clock with a built-in speaker, night light, and USB port, making it a convenient addition to any room. The first thing I noticed about this device was how easy it was to set up. Simply plug it in, pair it with your Google account, and you're ready to go.

One of the features that caught my attention was the ability to adjust the screen brightness as well as the night light on the back of the device. These are some really nice features that have been included in this device. The last thing to test out was the speaker comparison to other speakers of its size. This device has a 1.5W speaker built inside, and I decided to do a test by playing some music and comparing it to other speakers.

The sound quality on this device is decent, but not spectacular. It's good enough for making phone calls or listening to music in a small room, but it doesn't blow you away. The new smart clock, on the other hand, has a much more louder and full sound than the essential model. The Nest Mini also has a better overall sound compared to these two devices, with much more bass and clearer treble clarity.

One of my favorite features about this device is the option to quickly set an alarm. It's incredibly easy to do, and you can even set multiple alarms if you need to. You can choose from different tones, including a new "Media Alarms" feature that allows you to select music from your preferred service to play as your alarm tone.

Another great feature of this device is the ability to quickly adjust your alarm settings. You can scroll through your available alarms and set the time and repeat schedule for each one. It's also worth noting that this device comes with a radio, which is something that some of my other devices don't have.

One thing I did notice about this device was that it doesn't support fast charging, unlike some of my other devices. However, it does come with two USB ports on the back, one of which can be used to charge your phone. This is a great feature for anyone who needs to top off their battery throughout the day.

Finally, I wanted to test out how this device compared to its predecessor, the original smart clock. While both devices share some similarities, there are also some key differences between them. For one, the new smart clock has a more modern design and comes with more features, including voice control through Google Assistant.

The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is a solid addition to any room in your home. Its ability to quickly set alarms, play music, and adjust brightness make it a convenient device to have around. While it may not blow you away with its sound quality or feature set, it's definitely worth considering if you're looking for a simple clock device that can also serve as an alarm clock and entertainment system.

Now, let's talk about how this device compares to some of my other smart home devices. One thing I noticed was that it automatically sets the time, which is something that some of my other devices don't do. However, if the power ever goes out, you'll need to reset it manually. This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but it's worth noting nonetheless.

If you're in the market for a new smart clock device, I would recommend considering this one. It's a solid choice for anyone who wants a simple clock device that can also serve as an alarm clock and entertainment system. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of some other devices, it gets the job done.

Overall, I'm really happy with my experience with the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential. Its ability to quickly set alarms, play music, and adjust brightness make it a convenient device to have around. If you're looking for a simple clock device that can also serve as an alarm clock and entertainment system, this is definitely worth considering.

To give you a better idea of how this device works, I decided to test out some of its features. I started by testing out the speaker, which has a 1.5W speaker built inside. I played some music and compared it to other speakers in my collection. The sound quality on this device is decent, but not spectacular.

Next, I tested out the night light feature, which is located on the back of the device. This feature is really nice, as it can be adjusted to different brightness levels and even comes with a color option. It's a small touch that makes this device stand out from some of my other smart home devices.

Finally, I decided to test out the alarm setting feature, which allows you to quickly set multiple alarms with ease. This feature is incredibly easy to use, and it's one of the reasons why I'm happy with this device. It's also worth noting that this device comes with a radio, which is something that some of my other devices don't have.

In conclusion, the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is a solid addition to any room in your home. Its ability to quickly set alarms, play music, and adjust brightness make it a convenient device to have around. While it may not blow you away with its sound quality or feature set, it's definitely worth considering if you're looking for a simple clock device that can also serve as an alarm clock and entertainment system.

As I continue to use this device, I'm starting to appreciate its simplicity and ease of use. It's a great reminder that sometimes, less is more. This device may not have all the bells and whistles of some other smart home devices, but it gets the job done in a straightforward and efficient way.

Overall, I'm really happy with my experience with the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential. Its ability to quickly set alarms, play music, and adjust brightness make it a convenient device to have around. If you're looking for a simple clock device that can also serve as an alarm clock and entertainment system, this is definitely worth considering.

The final thing I want to talk about is how this device compares to some of my other smart home devices. One thing I noticed was that it automatically sets the time, which is something that some of my other devices don't do. However, if the power ever goes out, you'll need to reset it manually. This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but it's worth noting nonetheless.

In terms of its design, this device has a modern and sleek look that I really like. The display is easy to read, even in bright sunlight, and the buttons are responsive and intuitive.

Overall, I'm happy with my experience with the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential. It's a solid choice for anyone who wants a simple clock device that can also serve as an alarm clock and entertainment system.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enover the last four years we have seen all kinds of different google assistant compatible devices we have little ones we have little screens we have big screens and much more well in today's video we're going to check out one that has a different purpose this is the lenovo smart clock essential let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you so i previously reviewed the lenovo smart clock which is a cool little smart display um compared to other smart displays it doesn't have the option to play videos but it's really cool that you have the screen you can have different little uh pictures show up and it's nice to see the clock and to see if google assistant is interacting with you well this brand new lenovo smart clock essential has many of those same features except for it doesn't have the screen it essentially is just an alarm clock with the time right on there shows you if you have an alarm set and if the google assistant is listening to you and so on so here on the box really doesn't tell us much other than the name and show off a little bit of the product and over here it does have youtube music spotify it has chromecast built in pandora works with thousands and thousands of different smart home devices so let's go ahead unbox it and see what else it can do so there we have the smart clock essential then it comes with a lenovo power adapter kind of similar to their style it is a little bit smaller and it also comes with a little instruction manual here and in here it has a just start with and so then here's a bunch of different things that you can ask and so on and then a warranty and quick start guide so like every other google assistant speaker we're just going to be using the google home app to get this set up that's on there pretty good so right here you'll notice on the screen those are two different microphones so it's not an imperfection or anything on the bottom here it has some nice pads so that would stay in place and then here we have a few more buttons than we saw on the previous model so there you had volume up and down here we have volume down i'll look at it this way volume down up a play button and then an alarm clock button and then back here very similar on the very back where you have the power cable you have the microphone mute button and then you are able to charge a device but one other unique part about the alarm clock essential is it has a night light right here on the back that we will be testing out so let's go ahead and plug this in okay so first it's showing everything right here so it looks like we need to set it up before it will properly display what is available so let's head into the google home app now right here it's giving me a prompt to set it up so i'm just going to tap right there here i'm going to add it into my home and then we're going to choose a room to add it into all right here it asks if we heard the sound yes we did do we want to send improvement report sure and then here we're going to add this into our office and we're going to give it a name i'm going to call it smart clock and then we're going to choose the wi-fi we added to and now like other google assistant speakers here it's giving us some info about the speaker what it's going to be sharing with other google partners and so on now we want to enable voice match that's so it knows who you are then we agree and now it's asking what music service you want to use we use youtube music you could link a radio service like siriusxm i'm going to select knock now and then you have the option to link different video services so that you could play this over on a chromecast device you don't have a screen on here so you can't play videos on here and now the smart clock is ready and as you can see here it automatically set the time and it is telling me the local temperature so that's one of the best parts about this is it's automatically connected to the internet it's always going to have the correct time one of the downsides it's plugged in so if the power goes out you wouldn't know what time it is unless you have a phone or another clock nearby so here in the google home app it's telling us some other things you you can do so just like any other google assistant speaker you would be able to ask it the weather or your calendar set reminders and everything that other google assistant devices can do this is able to do so let's select finish setup now before we go into the settings let's take a look at what it can do so it did say it has volume so when we push the volume you can see the volume change right there on the top it can go up and down here we have the play button if i push play that's not going to do anything because i don't have anything playing hey google play my new jams playlist from youtube music all right playing the youtube music playlist called new jams so then right there on the top i have the option to adjust the volume or i can simply push the play button to pause it and then i can play it again so it's nice that you do have that button on there if sometimes you don't want to use your voice to pause or play and then next we have the alarm clock button so if i just push the alarm clock here it's showing that we have no alarm clock set so let's go ahead and set an alarm for every day this week hey google set a weekday alarm at 7 30 a.m weekdays at 7 30 a.m set let's go ahead and set one more alarm set an alarm in one minute 3 36 pm set now if i push the clock button it's going to show that first alarm that i have set and here you can see it's showing that it's set on weekdays so monday through friday at 7 30 a.m so if i push that again it's going to go to the second alarm that is set at 3 36 and that's just for today now when alarm goes off you have a few ways to dismiss the alarm one of them is to simply tap the smart clock essential and that will dismiss the alarm the other one is to say stop and that will dismiss it as well or you can activate google assistant and you can dismiss it so here the alarm goes off i just tap it a little bit of a tap and there it dismissed the alarm now if we head into the google home app and right here we're going to go to smart clock and then in the settings we then have the option for alarms and timers right here at the top so here you can see those alarms and timers that you have set and so if i want to add say another timer set a 30 second timer sure 30 seconds starting now so that's then going to appear over here you can see we got the timer right there let's see if it shows up as one of the alarms nope so only alarms will show up under the clock button and now let's see what happens when the timer goes off stop so without me having to activate google assistant or touch the device i then was able to stop the alarm and so now it's not going to continue on now you can also set alarms a few other ways you could set a weekend alarm or you could set a daily alarm and you can also cancel those by voice cancel my thursday 3 46 p.m alarm okay your alarm for 3 36 p.m is cancelled so there you can see it removed that alarm from the google home app now you do have the option to manually set the alarm clock right here by just holding down the alarm clock button for two seconds now it is in alarm clock set mode so here i can choose what days i want it to run so if i push the plus here we'll go through we have the weekdays weekends we have a single day and then here it's going to go back to all days and then if we push minus it's going to go the reverse way and then when we find the one we want so let's say we want a weekend alarm i can push the alarm clock button and then here it's giving me the option to set the time so i can then go to 9 am and then you could set the minutes and once you push the alarm clock it's then going to save that alarm and then give you an option to set a second alarm now if you don't want to continue to save more alarms all you need to do is hold down the alarm clock button for two seconds and then it will take you back to here so now if we push alarm we can see that we have our weekend alarm set now again you can cancel this all by voice or create all these by voice now when you're in the alarm clock menu it will stay on for eight seconds and then it will go back to the main clock now if you want to cancel your alarm you just jump into the alarm clock menu find the alarm you want to cancel so let's cancel this 8am one and then push volume down and the alarm clock button at the same time there you can see it removed that one and now the 905 alarm clock is the only one that's there cancel my weekend alarm no problem cancelled your alarm weekends at 905 a.m and there you can see the alarm indicator did go away so that's the alarm function that you have here on the alarm clock essential now down here at the very bottom you can actually see the weather so right now it's showing a sun with clouds so it's a cloudy day and then over here you can see the weather so it's showing 47 degrees fahrenheit so that will just show what the current weather for your location is outside here are the different icons you'll see for whether you have sun wind rain fog cloudy snow thunderstorms and bad weather now there is no touch screen or anything on this it is essentially just an alarm clock just like the name states and the good part about that is it's going to cost a little less than something that has a screen like the original smart clock now if we head into the google home app and right here we're going to go to smart clock i do have a few options first up here at the settings i can change the base and the treble right now it does sound a little too trebly so i'm going to put the bass there and then in the settings so you can change the name you can change your home it's in the room it's in next you have groups so if we want to create a group let's go ahead and create a new group called alarm clocks so then we can go back to the main page scroll down and see alarm clocks and heading into here we can then add more devices so let's go ahead and add this clock and then we're also going to add the nest mini to do a little bit of sound comparison in just a bit so there you have a group just like we have on other devices next you have your wi-fi here we have digital well-being so if you have this in a kid's room maybe there's certain music you don't want them listening to and you have this link to your youtube music under digital well-being you have the option to turn on different filters so a certain music won't play and then also you have the option where it can't cast videos to a tv so if you have a chromecast in the same room or in your home they wouldn't be able to play certain videos on that chromecast so that is how you set that up next you have some options where you can turn on a sound at the beginning of your request or at the end so when i ask it something right now what's your favorite color i like blue red yellow and green google's colors when it heard me all it did was light up the lights but if we come in here and turn on the start sound how many days till easter easter and aurum is in 66 days not only did it light up it also gave a little chime indicating that it heard me so that i know it was listening when i gave my request so that's how you can turn that on and off i'm gonna go ahead and turn that back off here you have night mode night mode allows you to have a lower sound at night and it can also decrease the brightness of the leds here so if at night we want those uh google assistant leds to change we can do that it's not changing the other clock interface and then here you have the maximum volume at night and you can have the schedule set there when it turns on and when it turns off next you have lower volume when you're listening so if you're watching a chromecast and you activate this it would turn down the chromecast and then so that this could hear you better i'm not going to use this in a room with a chromecast so i'm going to keep that off and then here it's asking if you want to allow others to cast media to it so this can be used as a cast device so typically when you hear casting you think of playing movies on the tv well this works as a cast speaker so if i go in here to youtube music i push the cast icon down here it's showing my smart clock so now my phone is going to connect to this and whatever i play is going to then come through this speaker so if you don't want others in your home that have android devices to see that pop up when you're casting music you would want to turn that off as well next you have bluetooth paired devices so you can actually use this to pair your phone to it so let's say you're listening to an audible audio book and you want to listen to this as the speaker you could pair your phone and do that or if you have another speaker that you want to pair this to a bigger bluetooth speaker in the room you would be able to do that by going into the default music speaker and here you can pair bluetooth speaker to it so instead of coming out of this small speaker it's coming out of the big speaker that you have in the room and then if you have another cast speaker that you want it to play music on instead of this speaker you have all of those cast options right there i have quite a few uh different that show up here and here you have the default tv so if you do have a chromecast device and you want the videos to always play on that chromecast device you can adjust that right here and then here you have that equalizer where you can adjust the bass and the treble now going down here you have a few more things where you can allow for the personalized results so that means it knows the difference between you and other people in your home if you turn that off certain features are not going to work so i always have it on next we have google sensitivity so sometimes when you activate a google speaker the one in the other room heard you and not the one you were talking to so this feature allows you to go in and say i don't want this one to hear me as much because it's not the big speaker i want the one in the other room to hear me so if you wanted this one to hear you more you would turn this to most sensitive so we're going to turn this down just a little bit and i could go and adjust the other devices there here you have notifications so if you do have a reminder set and you receive a notification it will show one little white dot for about 15 minutes when you have that notification coming up showing that you do have something that needs to be addressed remind me to take out the trash in 15 minutes got it i'll remind you at 401 pm and then when that notification is ready here you will see the light pop up on the smart clock i have a reminder for red now here our reminder is ready so that's what that dot is indicating so if you only see one dot all you need to do is say hey google what's my reminder you have one reminder today at 401 pm take out the trash in trashion i need to do that now once you ask for the reminder it will then make that little dot go away or it will go away 10 minutes after the reminder goes off and then if you do know you have a reminder you can just ask what's my reminder and it will let you know next you have youtube settings and restricted mode so again if you want to filter content that's playing on youtube on a nearby tv or something you would want to come in here and turn these on so that it does filter those next you have duo calling so a dual calling you can now call other speakers in your home or you can call other people that use google duo so if you want this device to be added to that you would go through the setup here so that this links to your google duo account but that also means that if anyone calls you over google duo it will also ring on any of the smart displays or smart clocks that you have linked in your home so you may want to turn that off if this isn't your main device if you're using this in a kid's room or something like that next you have group delay so if you have these in a group you can come in there and adjust that here under privacy i have the option to turn off those crash reports that would be sent to google i can remove a voice match i can remove the device and then i can also change from a 12 hour to a 24 hour format so there you can see it quickly adjusts over there just like that so those are all the settings that you have here in the lenovo smart clock essential so just like other google assistant speakers all of those settings were pretty much the same now this does have one different feature which the other ones don't which is the built-in night light now before we turn on the night light we do need to turn off the lights in the room and this will control any of the smart home devices that you do have turn off the lights now that we have the lights off let's turn it on turn on night light and there you can see the night light now in my camera it's flashing but it's not doing that in real life so this is 31 lumens it's not drastically bright but i think it's enough that it would help you be able to wander around the room a little bit and then you have the options to control that brightness set night light brightness to 10. set night light brightness to 50 set night light brightness to 100 and so there you can see that brightness changed now if you want to manually turn on the night light all you need to do is hold down the volume down and there the night light does turn on so you don't need to activate it by voice now you can also change the brightness of the clock here so here you can see it looks really good at night but let's go ahead and adjust its brightness set screen brightness to 50 percent got it setting the screen's brightness to fifty percent set screen brightness to one percent sure setting the screen's brightness to one percent and there you go it does get pretty dim so at night that's not going to be too bright to fall asleep set screen brightness to zero sure setting the screen's brightness to zero percent and if you do want to turn off the display you are able to do that so let's go ahead turn back on the lights so during the day at zero percent here you can see it a tiny bit set screen brightness to one percent sure setting the screen's brightness to one percent so i didn't see much change there set screen brightness to 50 percent sure setting the screen's brightness to 50 percent much easier to read set screen brightness to 100 percent sure setting the screen's brightness to 100 so there you go that is how you can adjust the screen brightness as well as the night light on the back i think those are some really nice features that have been included now the last thing to test out is the speaker comparison to other speakers of its size so this has a 1.5 3 watt speaker built inside not sure exactly what these have but let's go ahead and do a test i'm going to play some music and go through the different speakers to see how they sound my and so that is the sound quality on these speakers the new smart clock essential had a much more louder and full sound than the original smart clock the nest mini has a much better overall sound compared to these two with much more bass and just better treble clarity the smart clock essential has some pretty good sound it gets really loud but not as crisp as i would like it to be compared to google's speakers now here we didn't test to see if it will charge let's do that real quick now here we do have the usb port on the back let's go ahead and do a test to make sure it charges your phone now my daughter does use this for charging her fitbit which is nice that it has and here it does show that it is charging it's not showing fast charging or anything like that but it's nice that you do have another plug here that you could use to plug in your device to charge it up one thing the essential is missing that the smart clock does have is the option to change the alarm so in here we can select set an alarm we can set the time and then we can scroll down choose when it's going to repeat and then right here we have the alarm tone so i can easily adjust what tone i want it to be and so on now there's not a ton of alarm sounds but you do have the option where here you don't have the option to change the alarm tone there is another option though where you can actually change what type of alarm you have so you have the regular alarm or you can set what are called media alarms with media alarms it can then pull from different music sources to play music as your alarm tone set a media alarm at 4 15. okay and what would you like me to play moana soundtrack done i'll play the album moana original motion picture soundtrack deluxe edition for 4 16 pm and there it set my media alarm now i do pay for youtube music so it's going to play exactly what i want if you don't pay for a music service it would then just play a radio of that type of music that you asked it to play so here at 416 the media alarm is now going and you would dismiss it like any other alarm where you can tap on it stop or you can say stop and that will dismiss that alarm as well and when we flip the switch on the back to mute google assistant the mic is muted and then here it's showing that the mic is currently mute so that you know that it's not going to listen to you hey google what's the weather tomorrow oh the mic's back on make me a sandwich poof you're a sandwich that was fast and now to give it a permanent home here we're going to be replacing an original google home and this old style alarm clock with the lenovo smart clock essential now the good news the smart clock essential automatically sets the time here you can see the old alarm clock the time isn't set if the power ever goes out you would have to reset it and comparing the features the alarm clock does have a radio and a speaker and you can set wake times and turn it on and off and different things but i would say the new style alarm clock being able to have it fully voice activated and have the radio wake up to whatever radio station you want in clear sound works really great and the option to quickly create and see the alarms you have set is definitely worth the upgrade and that is the lenovo smart clock essential so compared to a device with the screen it just depends on what you want i like that my daughter has this she can easily see pictures on here and it kind of makes it fun where over here you don't get all of that you just get the simple clock weather and so on where maybe that's all you need i do like how they added controls for the alarm button and you have the play and pause and then i like on the back how you do have the new night light which is kind of cool to have and so it really just depends on what you're looking for in your device if you have any further questions about this device and how it works please let me know in the comments below and if you would like to see the review of the lenovo smart clock you can check out that video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next oneover the last four years we have seen all kinds of different google assistant compatible devices we have little ones we have little screens we have big screens and much more well in today's video we're going to check out one that has a different purpose this is the lenovo smart clock essential let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you so i previously reviewed the lenovo smart clock which is a cool little smart display um compared to other smart displays it doesn't have the option to play videos but it's really cool that you have the screen you can have different little uh pictures show up and it's nice to see the clock and to see if google assistant is interacting with you well this brand new lenovo smart clock essential has many of those same features except for it doesn't have the screen it essentially is just an alarm clock with the time right on there shows you if you have an alarm set and if the google assistant is listening to you and so on so here on the box really doesn't tell us much other than the name and show off a little bit of the product and over here it does have youtube music spotify it has chromecast built in pandora works with thousands and thousands of different smart home devices so let's go ahead unbox it and see what else it can do so there we have the smart clock essential then it comes with a lenovo power adapter kind of similar to their style it is a little bit smaller and it also comes with a little instruction manual here and in here it has a just start with and so then here's a bunch of different things that you can ask and so on and then a warranty and quick start guide so like every other google assistant speaker we're just going to be using the google home app to get this set up that's on there pretty good so right here you'll notice on the screen those are two different microphones so it's not an imperfection or anything on the bottom here it has some nice pads so that would stay in place and then here we have a few more buttons than we saw on the previous model so there you had volume up and down here we have volume down i'll look at it this way volume down up a play button and then an alarm clock button and then back here very similar on the very back where you have the power cable you have the microphone mute button and then you are able to charge a device but one other unique part about the alarm clock essential is it has a night light right here on the back that we will be testing out so let's go ahead and plug this in okay so first it's showing everything right here so it looks like we need to set it up before it will properly display what is available so let's head into the google home app now right here it's giving me a prompt to set it up so i'm just going to tap right there here i'm going to add it into my home and then we're going to choose a room to add it into all right here it asks if we heard the sound yes we did do we want to send improvement report sure and then here we're going to add this into our office and we're going to give it a name i'm going to call it smart clock and then we're going to choose the wi-fi we added to and now like other google assistant speakers here it's giving us some info about the speaker what it's going to be sharing with other google partners and so on now we want to enable voice match that's so it knows who you are then we agree and now it's asking what music service you want to use we use youtube music you could link a radio service like siriusxm i'm going to select knock now and then you have the option to link different video services so that you could play this over on a chromecast device you don't have a screen on here so you can't play videos on here and now the smart clock is ready and as you can see here it automatically set the time and it is telling me the local temperature so that's one of the best parts about this is it's automatically connected to the internet it's always going to have the correct time one of the downsides it's plugged in so if the power goes out you wouldn't know what time it is unless you have a phone or another clock nearby so here in the google home app it's telling us some other things you you can do so just like any other google assistant speaker you would be able to ask it the weather or your calendar set reminders and everything that other google assistant devices can do this is able to do so let's select finish setup now before we go into the settings let's take a look at what it can do so it did say it has volume so when we push the volume you can see the volume change right there on the top it can go up and down here we have the play button if i push play that's not going to do anything because i don't have anything playing hey google play my new jams playlist from youtube music all right playing the youtube music playlist called new jams so then right there on the top i have the option to adjust the volume or i can simply push the play button to pause it and then i can play it again so it's nice that you do have that button on there if sometimes you don't want to use your voice to pause or play and then next we have the alarm clock button so if i just push the alarm clock here it's showing that we have no alarm clock set so let's go ahead and set an alarm for every day this week hey google set a weekday alarm at 7 30 a.m weekdays at 7 30 a.m set let's go ahead and set one more alarm set an alarm in one minute 3 36 pm set now if i push the clock button it's going to show that first alarm that i have set and here you can see it's showing that it's set on weekdays so monday through friday at 7 30 a.m so if i push that again it's going to go to the second alarm that is set at 3 36 and that's just for today now when alarm goes off you have a few ways to dismiss the alarm one of them is to simply tap the smart clock essential and that will dismiss the alarm the other one is to say stop and that will dismiss it as well or you can activate google assistant and you can dismiss it so here the alarm goes off i just tap it a little bit of a tap and there it dismissed the alarm now if we head into the google home app and right here we're going to go to smart clock and then in the settings we then have the option for alarms and timers right here at the top so here you can see those alarms and timers that you have set and so if i want to add say another timer set a 30 second timer sure 30 seconds starting now so that's then going to appear over here you can see we got the timer right there let's see if it shows up as one of the alarms nope so only alarms will show up under the clock button and now let's see what happens when the timer goes off stop so without me having to activate google assistant or touch the device i then was able to stop the alarm and so now it's not going to continue on now you can also set alarms a few other ways you could set a weekend alarm or you could set a daily alarm and you can also cancel those by voice cancel my thursday 3 46 p.m alarm okay your alarm for 3 36 p.m is cancelled so there you can see it removed that alarm from the google home app now you do have the option to manually set the alarm clock right here by just holding down the alarm clock button for two seconds now it is in alarm clock set mode so here i can choose what days i want it to run so if i push the plus here we'll go through we have the weekdays weekends we have a single day and then here it's going to go back to all days and then if we push minus it's going to go the reverse way and then when we find the one we want so let's say we want a weekend alarm i can push the alarm clock button and then here it's giving me the option to set the time so i can then go to 9 am and then you could set the minutes and once you push the alarm clock it's then going to save that alarm and then give you an option to set a second alarm now if you don't want to continue to save more alarms all you need to do is hold down the alarm clock button for two seconds and then it will take you back to here so now if we push alarm we can see that we have our weekend alarm set now again you can cancel this all by voice or create all these by voice now when you're in the alarm clock menu it will stay on for eight seconds and then it will go back to the main clock now if you want to cancel your alarm you just jump into the alarm clock menu find the alarm you want to cancel so let's cancel this 8am one and then push volume down and the alarm clock button at the same time there you can see it removed that one and now the 905 alarm clock is the only one that's there cancel my weekend alarm no problem cancelled your alarm weekends at 905 a.m and there you can see the alarm indicator did go away so that's the alarm function that you have here on the alarm clock essential now down here at the very bottom you can actually see the weather so right now it's showing a sun with clouds so it's a cloudy day and then over here you can see the weather so it's showing 47 degrees fahrenheit so that will just show what the current weather for your location is outside here are the different icons you'll see for whether you have sun wind rain fog cloudy snow thunderstorms and bad weather now there is no touch screen or anything on this it is essentially just an alarm clock just like the name states and the good part about that is it's going to cost a little less than something that has a screen like the original smart clock now if we head into the google home app and right here we're going to go to smart clock i do have a few options first up here at the settings i can change the base and the treble right now it does sound a little too trebly so i'm going to put the bass there and then in the settings so you can change the name you can change your home it's in the room it's in next you have groups so if we want to create a group let's go ahead and create a new group called alarm clocks so then we can go back to the main page scroll down and see alarm clocks and heading into here we can then add more devices so let's go ahead and add this clock and then we're also going to add the nest mini to do a little bit of sound comparison in just a bit so there you have a group just like we have on other devices next you have your wi-fi here we have digital well-being so if you have this in a kid's room maybe there's certain music you don't want them listening to and you have this link to your youtube music under digital well-being you have the option to turn on different filters so a certain music won't play and then also you have the option where it can't cast videos to a tv so if you have a chromecast in the same room or in your home they wouldn't be able to play certain videos on that chromecast so that is how you set that up next you have some options where you can turn on a sound at the beginning of your request or at the end so when i ask it something right now what's your favorite color i like blue red yellow and green google's colors when it heard me all it did was light up the lights but if we come in here and turn on the start sound how many days till easter easter and aurum is in 66 days not only did it light up it also gave a little chime indicating that it heard me so that i know it was listening when i gave my request so that's how you can turn that on and off i'm gonna go ahead and turn that back off here you have night mode night mode allows you to have a lower sound at night and it can also decrease the brightness of the leds here so if at night we want those uh google assistant leds to change we can do that it's not changing the other clock interface and then here you have the maximum volume at night and you can have the schedule set there when it turns on and when it turns off next you have lower volume when you're listening so if you're watching a chromecast and you activate this it would turn down the chromecast and then so that this could hear you better i'm not going to use this in a room with a chromecast so i'm going to keep that off and then here it's asking if you want to allow others to cast media to it so this can be used as a cast device so typically when you hear casting you think of playing movies on the tv well this works as a cast speaker so if i go in here to youtube music i push the cast icon down here it's showing my smart clock so now my phone is going to connect to this and whatever i play is going to then come through this speaker so if you don't want others in your home that have android devices to see that pop up when you're casting music you would want to turn that off as well next you have bluetooth paired devices so you can actually use this to pair your phone to it so let's say you're listening to an audible audio book and you want to listen to this as the speaker you could pair your phone and do that or if you have another speaker that you want to pair this to a bigger bluetooth speaker in the room you would be able to do that by going into the default music speaker and here you can pair bluetooth speaker to it so instead of coming out of this small speaker it's coming out of the big speaker that you have in the room and then if you have another cast speaker that you want it to play music on instead of this speaker you have all of those cast options right there i have quite a few uh different that show up here and here you have the default tv so if you do have a chromecast device and you want the videos to always play on that chromecast device you can adjust that right here and then here you have that equalizer where you can adjust the bass and the treble now going down here you have a few more things where you can allow for the personalized results so that means it knows the difference between you and other people in your home if you turn that off certain features are not going to work so i always have it on next we have google sensitivity so sometimes when you activate a google speaker the one in the other room heard you and not the one you were talking to so this feature allows you to go in and say i don't want this one to hear me as much because it's not the big speaker i want the one in the other room to hear me so if you wanted this one to hear you more you would turn this to most sensitive so we're going to turn this down just a little bit and i could go and adjust the other devices there here you have notifications so if you do have a reminder set and you receive a notification it will show one little white dot for about 15 minutes when you have that notification coming up showing that you do have something that needs to be addressed remind me to take out the trash in 15 minutes got it i'll remind you at 401 pm and then when that notification is ready here you will see the light pop up on the smart clock i have a reminder for red now here our reminder is ready so that's what that dot is indicating so if you only see one dot all you need to do is say hey google what's my reminder you have one reminder today at 401 pm take out the trash in trashion i need to do that now once you ask for the reminder it will then make that little dot go away or it will go away 10 minutes after the reminder goes off and then if you do know you have a reminder you can just ask what's my reminder and it will let you know next you have youtube settings and restricted mode so again if you want to filter content that's playing on youtube on a nearby tv or something you would want to come in here and turn these on so that it does filter those next you have duo calling so a dual calling you can now call other speakers in your home or you can call other people that use google duo so if you want this device to be added to that you would go through the setup here so that this links to your google duo account but that also means that if anyone calls you over google duo it will also ring on any of the smart displays or smart clocks that you have linked in your home so you may want to turn that off if this isn't your main device if you're using this in a kid's room or something like that next you have group delay so if you have these in a group you can come in there and adjust that here under privacy i have the option to turn off those crash reports that would be sent to google i can remove a voice match i can remove the device and then i can also change from a 12 hour to a 24 hour format so there you can see it quickly adjusts over there just like that so those are all the settings that you have here in the lenovo smart clock essential so just like other google assistant speakers all of those settings were pretty much the same now this does have one different feature which the other ones don't which is the built-in night light now before we turn on the night light we do need to turn off the lights in the room and this will control any of the smart home devices that you do have turn off the lights now that we have the lights off let's turn it on turn on night light and there you can see the night light now in my camera it's flashing but it's not doing that in real life so this is 31 lumens it's not drastically bright but i think it's enough that it would help you be able to wander around the room a little bit and then you have the options to control that brightness set night light brightness to 10. set night light brightness to 50 set night light brightness to 100 and so there you can see that brightness changed now if you want to manually turn on the night light all you need to do is hold down the volume down and there the night light does turn on so you don't need to activate it by voice now you can also change the brightness of the clock here so here you can see it looks really good at night but let's go ahead and adjust its brightness set screen brightness to 50 percent got it setting the screen's brightness to fifty percent set screen brightness to one percent sure setting the screen's brightness to one percent and there you go it does get pretty dim so at night that's not going to be too bright to fall asleep set screen brightness to zero sure setting the screen's brightness to zero percent and if you do want to turn off the display you are able to do that so let's go ahead turn back on the lights so during the day at zero percent here you can see it a tiny bit set screen brightness to one percent sure setting the screen's brightness to one percent so i didn't see much change there set screen brightness to 50 percent sure setting the screen's brightness to 50 percent much easier to read set screen brightness to 100 percent sure setting the screen's brightness to 100 so there you go that is how you can adjust the screen brightness as well as the night light on the back i think those are some really nice features that have been included now the last thing to test out is the speaker comparison to other speakers of its size so this has a 1.5 3 watt speaker built inside not sure exactly what these have but let's go ahead and do a test i'm going to play some music and go through the different speakers to see how they sound my and so that is the sound quality on these speakers the new smart clock essential had a much more louder and full sound than the original smart clock the nest mini has a much better overall sound compared to these two with much more bass and just better treble clarity the smart clock essential has some pretty good sound it gets really loud but not as crisp as i would like it to be compared to google's speakers now here we didn't test to see if it will charge let's do that real quick now here we do have the usb port on the back let's go ahead and do a test to make sure it charges your phone now my daughter does use this for charging her fitbit which is nice that it has and here it does show that it is charging it's not showing fast charging or anything like that but it's nice that you do have another plug here that you could use to plug in your device to charge it up one thing the essential is missing that the smart clock does have is the option to change the alarm so in here we can select set an alarm we can set the time and then we can scroll down choose when it's going to repeat and then right here we have the alarm tone so i can easily adjust what tone i want it to be and so on now there's not a ton of alarm sounds but you do have the option where here you don't have the option to change the alarm tone there is another option though where you can actually change what type of alarm you have so you have the regular alarm or you can set what are called media alarms with media alarms it can then pull from different music sources to play music as your alarm tone set a media alarm at 4 15. okay and what would you like me to play moana soundtrack done i'll play the album moana original motion picture soundtrack deluxe edition for 4 16 pm and there it set my media alarm now i do pay for youtube music so it's going to play exactly what i want if you don't pay for a music service it would then just play a radio of that type of music that you asked it to play so here at 416 the media alarm is now going and you would dismiss it like any other alarm where you can tap on it stop or you can say stop and that will dismiss that alarm as well and when we flip the switch on the back to mute google assistant the mic is muted and then here it's showing that the mic is currently mute so that you know that it's not going to listen to you hey google what's the weather tomorrow oh the mic's back on make me a sandwich poof you're a sandwich that was fast and now to give it a permanent home here we're going to be replacing an original google home and this old style alarm clock with the lenovo smart clock essential now the good news the smart clock essential automatically sets the time here you can see the old alarm clock the time isn't set if the power ever goes out you would have to reset it and comparing the features the alarm clock does have a radio and a speaker and you can set wake times and turn it on and off and different things but i would say the new style alarm clock being able to have it fully voice activated and have the radio wake up to whatever radio station you want in clear sound works really great and the option to quickly create and see the alarms you have set is definitely worth the upgrade and that is the lenovo smart clock essential so compared to a device with the screen it just depends on what you want i like that my daughter has this she can easily see pictures on here and it kind of makes it fun where over here you don't get all of that you just get the simple clock weather and so on where maybe that's all you need i do like how they added controls for the alarm button and you have the play and pause and then i like on the back how you do have the new night light which is kind of cool to have and so it really just depends on what you're looking for in your device if you have any further questions about this device and how it works please let me know in the comments below and if you would like to see the review of the lenovo smart clock you can check out that video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one\n"