Lenovo had a pretty good showing at CES this year, and it didn’t seem to be taking sides. It teamed up with Google on the Lenovo Smart Clock, a neat little smart display for your nightstand, and then it teamed up with Amazon for the Lenovo Smart Tab, a 2-in-1 smart display and full Android tablet.
The Smart Tab functions are almost identical to Amazon’s own Echo Show speaker. It has Alexa built-in, so you can use voice commands to play music, ask queries, control your smart home and play your favorite movies or TV shows (so long as they’re on Prime Video). But the neat thing about the Smart Tab, which also makes Amazon’s own Echo Show feel very one dimensional, is that you can remove the tablet from the base station (also the speaker) and use it to watch Netflix or YouTube, or answer emails — the same way you would use any other Android tablet. Then, you snap the tablet back into the base station and it’ll go back to working like an Alexa-enabled smart display.
The idea behind the Lenovo Smart Clock is actually pretty simple. Most smart displays are great, but they’re fairly limited. And since they’re not portable, most people aren’t using them as much as they could be. By making the screen detachable and then making it function as a full-on tablet, Lenovo is hoping that people will be way more hands-on with the Lenovo Smart Tab. A unique feature of this system, compared to the Echo Show, for example, is that if you place the tablet back on the dock while playing a video, whatever you’re watching will continue playing without any interruption.
The Lenovo Smart Tab will be available in two models — the M10 and the P10 — though they’re actually pretty similar. They’re the same size and have the same Alexa functionality. The have the same Snapdragon 450 processor and the same 10.1-inch Full HD screen. The difference is that the P10, which is the more premium model, has more high-end hardware and specs. It has a slightly bigger battery and more storage, and its camera system is superior. The biggest difference to me, though, has to do with the speakers. The P10 has four front-facing Dolby Atmos speakers, while the M10 only has two.
You can order both the M10 and the P10 right now. The M10 starts at $199 and the P10 starts at $299. For reference, the Amazon Echo Show costs $230.
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