All About Interwebz: The Lenovo Smart Clock Essential is like an Echo Dot for Android owners

For smart home owners, it's been a busy few weeks of announcements: last month, Amazon unveiled its slate of new smart assistant-equipped speakers and displays then, in early October, Google revealed its new Google Nest Audio device. Now it’s time for another manufacturer to follow suit: Lenovo.

Meet the new Lenovo Smart Clock Essential.

Lenovo’s latest smart product uses Google Assistant like the new Google Nest Audio but it’s also a smart display that can show you the time, the day, the outside temperature and a small icon for the weather.

Not only is it pretty practical, it's also fairly cheap – it's just $50 (£50, AU$99), which is actually a bit cheaper than the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock.

Invite Google Assistant into your bedroom

While you could feasibly put the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential in any room of your home, its intended place is on your bedside table. With a built-in nightlight and a USB port for charging another device, it's like a really fancy alarm clock that knows everything about you.

Of course, this isn't Lenovo's first bedroom device – there's the original Lenovo Smart Clock that's still, according to Google, pretty popular.

What separates it from the original Lenovo Smart Clock is that the Essential uses a black-and-white alarm clock display while the original has an HD color display.

The original Smart Clock will remain on sale for $79.99 / £79.99 / AU$129, but you can expect to see the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential in stores soon.