Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Lenovo made a great tiny home hub and Alexa tablet”.
Hey we’re at CES 2019, where Lenovo just introduced their new smart home products.. Now wait. I know smart home products can be cringy and not particularly interesting, but these two might just be okay.. We have a new new Google Assistant, Smart Clock and we have a new Echo Show device which also doubles as an Android tablet. ( chiming ).
These are essentially Google Home Minis, with a display on them.. That’S really what you’re looking at. Lenovo has co-designed these with Google and they’re doing the whole fabric-cover thing. Lenovo told me that they’re doing the fabric cover, so you get the full sense that this is a Google Home product., So anything that you can get from Google Home or Google Home Mini all the voice activated stuff you get in this thing..
You get these two large chunky buttons for volume, controls. Some of the physical features you get a USB output, so you can charge your phone and there’s a microphone switch.. The feature that is special and different from Google Home Mini is that it has a touch screen on the front where you can set your alarm, so you can look at things like weather and Google and Lenovo have programed a few routines into this.. Okay, Google, goodnight.
(, smooth music, ) And the lights go out. And then in the morning you have a morning routine.. So you can say: okay, Google, good morning., [ Clock, ], Hi Andrea.. It doesn’t seem to care that I’m not Andrea. Another option. If you have a compatible Nest, IQ Cam, you can ask the smart clock to take a look into that., There’s one active speaker up on the top and a couple of passive radiators on the side.
And actually, if you just have it sitting on a desk like This, the sound is better from the back from the back of the alarm clock, which sounds weird. But when you imagine your usual, your alarm, clock placement is placed up against a wall and Lenovo has designed it. So the sound bounces off the wall and back at you in front of the alarm clock.. I don’t know that it’s necessarily the best sound you’re ever going to get. But then you don’t get great sound off the Google Home Mini either.. The whole point of these devices is convenience..
This thing also plugs into Chromecast.. There’S a Bluetooth 5 chip in there. So if you want to Chromecast from this up to a better bigger speaker, you can.
There’s a whole bunch of compatibility.. So I haven’t myself been especially enthused about smart displays, such as the one that Lenovo introduced here at CES last year, but in this sort of diminutive size, and just this kind of snippet-sized information that you can get from this. You get a lot of the Google system functionality and it adds to what you can get with a Google Chrome Mini..
The only thing that really bugs me is it’s got this phone screen, but it doesn’t have the best viewing angles.. The pricing is $ 79.99 and this will be available in the spring 2019. ( upbeat, music, ), So Lenovo’s. Other smart home products here at CES is the new Smart Tab, which is a 10-inch Android tablet..
Now Android tablets haven’t had much of a history of success, but Lenovo’s willing to remix, and the idea is to give you an Android tablet, plus an Echo Show device, which is what happens when you dock it into this dock, which is included with the tablet.. You get the Smart Tab P10, which is the one docked down here and the Smart Tab M10, which is here the cheaper $ 199 M10.. It has a more basic utilitarian finish on the back.. It has two Dolby Atmos speakers at the top. Instead of four, as with the P10, that’s here at $ 299., But both of them have this really quite nice display., It’s 1920 by 1200., The Echo Show functionality is pretty much what you get on the Amazon Echo Show, but the docking’s also really quite nice..
I’Ve listened to it, I’ve tested it out., There’s one 3-way speaker in the front, one 3-way speaker on the back and then the two Dolby Atmos speakers at the top, and they all work in concert and they produce a really nice sound.. So both of these tablets are running on Android 8.1. A reload Lenovo is not promising by updates.. Just picking up the P10 out of it’s dock.. It’S fancy, it has a 7,000 mini amp battery versus the 4,800 mini amp powering the M10..
It has the gloss finish in the back. If you care for that kind of thing., There’s a fingerprint sensor in the front down here with the P10., It’s a bit of extra convenience., But honestly the display’s. The thing that is identical between the two and it’s the thing that I would care about. The most frankly.
And aside from the display they also have the same processor. They’re, both based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450, which you know it’s quite a low-end processor. But in terms of responsiveness, I have had no complaints, so fair enough.. You get a bit more RAM with this two or three gigabytes on the M10, four gigabytes on the P10, 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage, with the M10 up to 64 gigabytes of storage with the P10., Both charge wirelessly by these pogo pins down here..
So this is all quite promising these smart tabs., Both of them are available to pre-order straightaway from Lenovo and from Amazon, and you should be able to get then in January. For more videos like this and more smart devices for your home stay tuned to theverge.com and Youtube.Com/Verge .