I set up a digital wall calendar at a friend’s house a couple of months ago. Her first question was one I’ve constantly asked myself as I test these devices in my own home: “Does it have a voice assistant?”
It feels like the one thing missing from these devices. Digital wall calendars have been on the rise in popularity this year, driven by the popularity of the Skylight Calendar. After testing multiple models in my own home, I can see why. These devices take any and all of the digital calendars you already have (Google Calendar, iCalendar, Outlook Calendar—you name it) and put them onto a single device in your home.
It’s great if you’re like my husband and me, who live by our Google Calendars but don’t want to be tied to our phones when discussing plans. These devices can also double as household management tools with meal planning, chore trackers, to-do lists, photo screen savers that double as a digital photo frame, and even financial management for your kids if you go with the Greenlight Family Hub.
The Greenlight Family Hub has been an interesting device in the world of digital calendars because of how many features it offers. It not only adds financial management, as the company was originally a banking tool for parents and their teens, but family location tracking, which uses the Greenlight app on a family member’s phone to show their location, or a GPS tracker that you can separately purchase for younger children.
But there’s one feature behind the paywall (a $10-a-month membership) that finally satisfies the thing I’ve always wanted: a voice assistant.
Greenlight’s proprietary voice assistant has been both easy to use and has given smart, thoughtful answers. So why isn’t there a voice assistant in every digital wall calendar? And conversely, why haven’t smart displays that do have smart voice assistants gained features like full-page calendars and chore charts?
Not Just a Calendar
Part of what makes Greenlight’s hub different from other digital calendars is that the company is using the calendar as a starting point for the offerings it already has. That’s also why it’s called the Family Hub instead of just a calendar like most other devices I’ve tested. Greenlight grew from a banking tool to a way to manage chores and money for kids and teens, and has now become a full family management platform where you can track your family’s calendars, chores, kids’ spending, and even family locations.
Greenlight says it noticed the lack of voice support among competitors’ offerings and baked that into its hub intentionally. “Voice assistants have been around for over a decade, yet when building the specs for Family Hub, we noticed that voice support was absent in the digital calendar market,” says Sushil Sharma, chief product officer at Greenlight. “Our goal with Hub was to create an all-in-one command center for busy families to engage with technology in a way that feels natural and seamless. By combining a voice assistant feature with a centralized home display, we are able to limit the number of devices families need in their home.”
It’s also smart for families with younger children—Sharma pointed out that not all kids can read and type fluently, and voice support makes it more accessible for them and the rest of the family. But it’s also a way people are expecting to interact with their home devices after years of smart speakers and smartphones offering voice support.
Voice Report
Photograph: Nena Farrell
Greenlight’s assistant reminds me of the modern, AI-powered iterations of Alexa and Google because it’s also powered by AI. Greenlight says its family AI assistant uses frontier large language models with Greenlight’s own proprietary safety tools that it designed with family safety in mind. That means the assistant shouldn’t get into sensitive or inappropriate topics (or accidentally tell your child Santa isn’t real) but will both schedule a timer and answer day-to-day questions. You’ll also see a conversation appear on the right-hand side, reminding me a lot of the Alexa+ experience on an Echo Show device.