If you were an early adopter of a Google-based Smart Display from Lenovo, you may have felt a little shortchanged following the Made by Google event earlier this month.
Not only did Google announce its own Home Hub at a lower cost and running a slightly different operating system, it also included some new features that weren’t present on the Lenovo Smart Displays.
Thankfully, the Chinese manufacturer is issuing an update that will negate the latter of those problems. Many of the new features from the Home Hub are on the way, over the course of the next month.
Those include multi-room audio, live albums from Google Photos, integration with the Nest Doorbell and the Home View dashboard enabling centralised control of smart home devices.
Related: Google Home Hub vs Amazon Echo Show
Here’s the full change log for the update (via Droid-Life), which Lenovo is calling version 3.63.43:
- With multi-room audio, you can add your Smart Display to a speaker group and play music throughout the house.
- With Live Albums from Google Photos, your Ambient Mode will always show off the best photos of your favorite people and pets without you having to curate them. It will also make sure to pick your best photos, so that receipts, screenshots, duplicates, and blurry or sensitive photos will not appear on your Smart Display.
- With Nest Hello Doorbell, your Smart Display will now show who is at the door when someone rings, and allows you to send quick responses.
- With Home View, you can see and control all of your smart home devices in a single dashboard by swiping down from the top edge of your Smart Display.
- Your Google Assistant can now also control many popular media and entertainment devices, including TVs (Hisense, Philips, Sharp,Sony, Vizio, Xiaomi), set top boxes (Dish, Foxtel, nVidia Shield, Sling, Vodafone), speakers (Denon), smart remotes (Logitech Harmony) with many more coming soon from Caavo, LG, Panasonic, Roku®, Telus, and Telstra. Enjoy universal controls to power devices on and off, adjust playback/volume, and browse a visual channel guide—all by touch or by voice on your Smart Display.
Which smart display are you eyeing? Does the Lenovo device come out on top, or are you looking towards the Google Home Hub? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
