Review: LaMetric Time is a Bluetooth speaker, smart clock, and so much more

When the founders of LaMetric worked together at a digital agency, they dealt with all sorts of information. Appointments, marketing stats, web analytics, and more. It was here the idea for LaMetric Time was born. A product that would take a simple clock, and make it so much more for the home, for creators, and for business.

The smart watch took a watch face, and turned it into a way to display your notifications, your schedule, control your home, and so much more. LaMetric knew that you needed a similar device, for the home.

As usual, I create a video to show off the LaMetric Time in person, so check it our if you’d like a better idea how it works. Then read on for my in depth analysis.

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Before we get into everything LaMetric can do, we should first look at the hardware itself.

Hardware

The LaMetric Time is an elongated plastic rectangle, with a screen on the front. Each side has a speaker, with one housing the power button, the other the volume controls. Around back is an audio output and a Micro USB port. It gets powered over USB, which will even work if you connect it to your Mac. This is handy if you have it near your desk and want to avoid another brick in your surge protector.

The top has three buttons, which lets you shift between the different apps, as well as control them.

Apps

The Time has something for everyone. It’s core uses are for home users, businesses, and creators. Let’s look at what apps you can use, then how each of these users can utilize the Time.

There are a few basic apps installed by default. Things like the clock, weather, radio, stopwatch, timer, etc. Weather, I thought, was particularly well done. It rotates through different metrics like chance of rain, temperature, cloud coverage, and wind speed. The little glyphs that accompany the metric also animate, and can even show information like how much sun is showing.

You can also add new apps from their mini “App Store”.  Some are other apps from LaMetric, others are from third-party developers. There are what seems like hundreds of apps available to install. If you’ve got the know how, you can actually use their API to create your own apps for the Time as well.

Home users

Home users are probably the most vague category of users. Everyone is going to be different, but there are many options that users can enjoy. Here are a few common use cases:

  • Smart home control: You can connect to different smart home products like Netatmo, Hue, and SmartThings to control them from your smart clock.
  • News feed: You can customize by topic and region in the default app, or subscribe to your favorite RSS feed for tailored news.
  • Weather: Know what it is like before heading out, including chance of rain.
  • Music streaming: You can stream straight to your phone, or through the radio.
  • Message Board: Write messages and create images for family members.

Business users

Business users have a plethora of uses. This can be individual for on your desk, displayed for the whole team, or even customer facing for messages and other info. Some possible uses include:

  • Social analytics: This can be video views, social followers, website analytics, etc.
  • Slack: Get your slack messages, or specific streams up on your LaMetric Time.
  • Email & Calendar: See email notifications, or upcoming appointments.
  • Stock prices: See a series of selected stocks and their current prices.
  • Shop owners: See inventory or daily sales totals right on your smart clock.
  • Github: See followers of your GitHub repo.
  • IFTTT: Utilize the IFTTT network to program your own macros.

Creators

Creators can create their own uses for the Time. You can create a button effect to perform an action like order a pizza, call a cab, or control your home. There are three types of apps you can create; a button app, a notification app, and an indicator app. There are endless options and even a useful tool to help create your interface, custom icons, and more.

Wrapping it up

The LaMetric Time is an interesting device. It is something that has nearly unlimited uses, but still hard to pin down exactly how you would use it. Personally, I keep it up on my desk. There I can use it to control my Hue lights, stream music, get notified of Slack messages, and view my YouTube and Twitter followers.

If you’d like to try out the LaMetric Time, and I think you should, you can find it over on Amazon for $169. While the price is high, considering it is a Bluetooth speaker with all of the Wi-Fi connect capabilities, I think it is fair compared to what else is on the market. Let me know what you think, down below in the comments.