Amid increasing competition, Lenovo returns with a smaller Smart Display

In mid-2018, Lenovo entered the smart display race with Google Assistant-based 8-inch and 10-inch models. Today at IFA 2019, the company revealed plans to release a smaller and cheaper model, the Lenovo Smart Display 7.  This device is clearly meant to compete with the 7-inch Google Nest Hub and the more recently launched 5.5-inch Amazon Echo Show 5.

In addition to its smaller 7-inch 1,024 x 600 resolution touchscreen, the body of the Lenovo Smart Display 7 has been redesigned to place the speakers at the bottom of the product, rather than on the left side, as was the case with the older smart displays from the company. This will give the new product a more compact footprint that should allow it to be used in more spaces, such as your bedroom night table or work desktop. It also just looks better and more natural for a smart display, just from a design viewpoint.

The Lenovo Smart Display 7 also has a 2MP wide-angle camera on top, so you can use it to make video calls to family and friends. There are two 1.5-inch 5W stereo speakers on the bottom, and hopefully we will get an improvement in audio quality compared to the two early Lenovo Smart Display products. There’s also a dual-microphone array so you can use Google Assistant-based voice commands to bring up your schedule, today’s weather and much more.

Of course, you can also watch YouTube videos and check out your family images via Google Photos on the 7-inch display. Inside, there’s a MediaTek 8167S processor, running at 1.5GHz. The speaker only comes in a “Blizzard White” color, which is a bit of a shame as we would have appreciated more color variety.

The Lenovo Smart Display 7 will go on sale sometime in October 2019 for the price of $129.99. The price is the same as the normal cost of the Google Nest Hub, but the new Lenovo speaker is more expensive than the smaller Amazon Echo Show 5, which costs just $89.99. We will have to see if Lenovo’s change in design for its newest smart display will resonate with consumers.