LaMetric Time Wi-Fi Clock for Smart Home

Full Review Below

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This is one that is going back.

I read the many poor reviews of this item but decided to give the former Kickstarter project a try anyway since it seemed to have a lot to offer. In the end, I have to agree with the bulk of the reviewers that although this device has much potential in the end that even at the current reduced price of £152 it is just too expensive and does not offer enough to justify the outlay.

Basically, this is a programmable scrolling display unit that shows customisable information on a small but cleverly designed muted LED screen. Using a smartphone app you can display information from various smart home gadgets as well as the more usual weather, time, and internet radio. It also doubles as Bluetooth speaker and can stream audio from the internet and connected smartphones and other local sources. I wanted to get it because it can display in real time a connected subscriber count and other information from a linked YouTube channel and also environmental data from a Netatmo home weather station of the type I have. That was the plan anyway.

The device arrived nicely packaged and presented with a distinctly upmarket feel to it. Setting the device mirrored that used by many devices these days - connect the phone to a wifi hotspot generated by the device and input the login details for your home wifi network a subsequent reboot of the device allows it to connect automatically to that network. I was able to connect to the Lametric wifi but it refused to recognise the connection. Using several phones gave the same issue. I suspect the problem was that the phone would spontaneously connect to the open Lametric network before the LatMetric app started polling for it, which confused it. Eventually, I got it working and after then the connection to my wifi network was strong and stable and reconnected easily following reboots.

Build quality seems OK but rather more lightweight and flimsy than the price and packaging lead me to expect. The speakers for the built Bluetooth speaker are small, tinny and underpowered which is surprising bearing in mind the price and the fact that LaMetric seems to consider this a key function of the device. The diffused display is attractive ad glare-free with a coloured customisable icon on the left and scrolling data on the right. The display looks good but is distinctly smaller than I would expect for the price. There are buttons on the top of the display and sides for Power On/Off, audio volume and to confirm app functions.

Configuring the few built-in apps for weather, time, radio etc was easy enough. Further apps can be downloaded from the Latmetric app store, all of them free, but although there are a reasonable amount of them most are built by users and are very specific in nature. The apps can display singly, in rotation or on demand. I downloaded the Netatmo app and this was indeed simple and easy to set up and just required linking the Netatmo and LaMetric accounts and then selecting from within the app which metrics to display. The YouTube Subscriber count was another matter and although I was able to link the accounts I was never able to see my subscriber count. No doubt the fault was mine as others have done so successfully but it shows at least that the app is not idiot proof. An email to the developer got no reply. I should say that the device also connects with Google Home and Amazon Alexa and this works well. You can ask Alexa, for example, to display specific data on the LaMetric and this it does. However, there are not many things you would rather see on a limited character data display than have Alexa speak out loud.

In the end aside from the Netatmo data display which looked good and worked well, I was left with a rather tinny radio and a digital clock. No other apps on offer seemed worth the effort of setting up. Had I been able to get the YouTube link working I might have decided to hang on to it but without that, I decided to send it back.

The Good
Attractive Design
Works Well

The Bad
Expensive
Complex to fully Configure
No wall mount option
Lack of worthwhile apps
Poor Sound Quality