Digital wall calendars have grown in popularity this year, largely on the strength of the Skylight Calendar. The devices pull together calendars from services such as Google Calendar, iCalendar and Outlook and display them on a single screen in the home. For one reviewer who tested several models, the one thing consistently missing was a voice assistant. Greenlight's Family Hub is the first device they have tried that includes one.
Beyond scheduling, these gadgets often work as household management tools. Common extras include meal planning, chore trackers, to-do lists and photo screen savers that turn the display into a digital frame. The Greenlight Family Hub goes further by adding financial management for children, reflecting the company's origins as a banking tool for parents and teens.
The hub also offers family location tracking. It relies on the Greenlight app on a family member's phone, or on a separately purchased GPS tracker for younger children. The voice assistant sits behind a $10-a-month membership, along with location sharing.
Greenlight says the absence of voice support among competitors was a deliberate gap to fill. "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," said Sushil Sharma, the company's chief product officer. He said the aim was an all-in-one command center that limits the number of devices families need. Sharma added that not all children can read and type fluently, so voice makes the device more accessible to them.
The assistant is powered by AI, which draws comparisons to the newer versions of Alexa and Google's assistant. Greenlight says it uses frontier large language models combined with its own proprietary safety tools designed with families in mind. The assistant is meant to steer clear of sensitive or inappropriate topics, set timers and answer everyday questions. A conversation appears on the right side of the screen, similar to the Alexa+ experience on an Echo Show.
In testing, the reviewer found the hub, which is supposed to respond only to "Hey Greenlight," somewhat over-sensitive and prone to waking at random. It also keeps listening after an answer, so it can pick up questions from ordinary family chatter and respond unprompted. The reviewer noted that a Gemini-powered smart speaker at home behaves the same way, calling it a wider issue with AI voice assistants.
The breadth of features led the reviewer's editor to describe the product as a "Big Brother machine." Setup also caused trouble: the reviewer became stuck on the financial pathway in the app and needed support staff to clear their information so the hub could be set up without adding a bank card for a child. Greenlight says it is fixing the issue. The hub has a microphone but no camera, which the reviewer finds less intrusive than many smart displays.
Most features do not require the premium plan. The photo screen saver is free on the Greenlight hub, whereas Skylight charges for it; the reviewer notes that Skylight's business model has centered on charging for storage across its calendars and photo frames. Users who care less about voice would be well served without the subscription.
The reviewer hopes more wall calendars will add voice assistance and some smart home control, and wants smart displays to offer a calendar mode. Amazon and Skylight both declined to comment when asked why they have not released such products. The reviewer speculated that cost and the need to add a microphone could be factors for Skylight, while Amazon appears well placed to act, given that Alexa+ is already paywalled.
