Lenovo Smart Display

After living with the Amazon’s Echo Show for seven months, and realizing its limitation (the fact that Amazon wants to sell you every service that should be free – like displaying your photos or playing your music), it was time I moved away from Alexa and to Google Assistant via Lenovo Smart Display (10” version).

So, why would you buy one over the other? Despite being much cheaper to buy, you end up paying more if you decide to go the Amazon route. If you own an Echo Show, you might end up buying a subscription to Amazon Music ($8 a month), a subscription to Amazon Drive (for your photos at $11.99 a year), a subscription to Amazon Prime (for watching some videos at $99 or more a year). As you can see, it can add up.

With Lenovo Smart Display, it’s pretty much free. If you want music, you can upload all your MP3s to Google Music and access them via the Smart Display. Of course, if you prefer, you can subscribe to Google Music, YouTube Music, Pandora, Deezer, or Spotify. You can access your movies via YouTube (which is not available on Amazon). You can access all your photos via the free Google Photos service.

To me, it’s really hard to argue free over paying for subscriptions, however, I can understand why some users won’t mind paying for ease of use.

Setting up the Smart Display was really hard. You have to download Google Home and sign in using a Google account. If you have a custom G-Suite Account, it won’t work unless you tweak the privacy settings (they should all work except for Google Calendar). If you sign in using different Google accounts on Google Home, it won’t work.

To get Google’s Duo to work, you must associate the app with your phone number and sign in using the same account that you use for Google Home (again, multiple accounts may cause problems).

If you have problems, you can’t simply delete and re-add in the software – you basically have to factory reset and start over from the beginning. Don’t feel bad, but I had to factory reset the display three or four times, to get everything to work. It definitely didn’t feel like the product was ready for primetime. It’s understandable, as the Smart Display is the very first of its kind.

Once you get it up and running, it’s very similar to the Echo Show. Everything the Echo can do, the Smart Display can do a little better.

With a bigger, beautiful HD screen, a beautiful bamboo-back design, and audio, it blows away the Echo Show. Fear not, Amazon will be coming back with a second generation Echo Show that promises to better compete with the Smart Display.

Breakdown below: