The Essential is both less capable and harder to use than the original Smart Clock.
That’s about it in terms of its physical features.
There’s one new feature for the Essential: a built-in night light.
you’re free to activate this via voice or with a long-press of one of the hardware buttons.
You set it up with the Google Home app on your phone.
With my poor eyesight, it’s sometimes hard to see the time on the screen at a glance.
The Essential solves this problem with its old-fashioned clock display.
Unfortunately, it creates a new problem: it’s insanely bright.
This is a problem that’s easily solved with an auto-brightness feature.
And the Smart Clock Essential has one … but on this review unit, it doesn’t work.
But this behavior wasn’t consistent, and it would often fail to adjust the brightness automatically.
That’s a massive failure for the core design of this gadget.
More Headaches
There are other issues with the clock as well.
Lenovo has made this process much more complex than it ever was on an old-fashioned alarm clock.
But I was hoping to be able to set one alarm quickly without using a voice command.
The night light feature is similarly frustrating.
It’s possible that Lenovo could fix these issues with a software update.
Or perhaps I should say, the original Lenovo Smart Clock is too cheap.
The smaller, cheaper Smart Clock Essential is far from Essential.
Go for the Smart Clock, or a regular alarm clock, instead.
