Google’s Smart Displays Powered by Assistant Now Available
- Mehedi Hassan
- Jul 26, 2018
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Google is officially launching its Smart Displays platform today. The firm announced its Smart Displays platform back in January of this year, and it’s now making the platform officially available — starting with Lenovo’s new Smart Displays.
Lenovo’s smart assistant comes with a minimalistic design that’s available in two different sizes: an 8-inch HD variant that sits vertically and only comes in grey, while a 10-inch FHD variant that can be placed horizontally and comes in a natural bamboo finish. Hardware wise, there isn’t a lot of interesting things going on here — there’s a fairly basic 720p camera for video calls, and the whole thing is powered by Qualcomm’s Home Hub platform and runs on the custom Snapdragon 624 processor. The UI of the systems don’t work when you are using the device in a vertical orientation, but that’s coming with a future update.
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But Google’s Smart Displays are more than just about Lenovo’s Smart Displays. The company is working with other partners, including LG, JBL, and Sony to bring more Smart Displays to the market. These smart displays are powered by the Google Assistant, which means you can do a lot here. You can use to play music from Spotify, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, and even Pandora. YouTube is heavily integrated into the experience, so when you ask for things like how to do a certain task, it will pull up a tutorial video from YouTube. You can also use these smart displays to watch live TV using YouTube TV.
Google’s Smart Displays also come with the ability to make video calls via Google Duo, and you can even choose to make normal audio calls. Other basic features like being able to control your smart home devices via Assistant, using the smart display as a digital photo album via Google Photos, and more are possible, too.
Google isn’t saying when other Smart Display products from its partners will be available — but the Lenovo Smart Displays are available today, with the 8-inch HD version going for $199.99, and the $10-inch FHD variant going for $249.99. You can get one from Amazon, Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, SamsClub, or Lenovo.
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Stooks
<p>Thurrott dot com, the place to go for Google news.</p>
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Stooks
<blockquote><em><a href="#295975">In reply to PeteB:</a></em></blockquote><p>Far from a "Microsoft fan" but NOT a Google fan at all. I do come here to see Microsoft news….since that has been Paul's gig for 20+ years?</p><p><br></p><p>Then again Paul is a consumer and outside of the Xbox Microsoft has very little consumer products left these days…so I need to re-evaluate my time spent here.???</p>