I asked the Assistant to show me the local weather, time at home in New York (because I cannot do timezone math to save my life) and pull up videos about Bachelor in Paradise on YouTube. The device responded without delay to all my requests, which assuaged my concerns about the MediaTek 8167S chipset inside.

One other slightly concerning difference between the Lenovo and Google displays is the former's built-in 2-megapixel camera. Those who are more careful about privacy might prefer not to have one, but for people who want to make video calls over Duo, this is a helpful addition. Lenovo at least offers a shutter here so you can block the camera when you're done using it.

The other potential benefit of having a camera on board is being able to use gestures that Google introduced with the Nest Hub Max in May. These allow you to pause and play media by raising your hand in front of the device, which is super helpful for when your hands are dirty and you don't want to touch your screen, or if your surroundings are too noisy for Assistant to hear you. Like the Nest Hub Max, the Lenovo Smart Display's camera might also enable face recognition and surface personalized alerts and information when it sees you're in the room. But these are all absent from the Lenovo system for now -- at the moment the camera only serves to facilitate video chats.

Because the Lenovo display doesn't support Google's Cast protocol, you can't stream videos to it like you can with the Home Hub. I generally haven't found a need to cast clips to my kitchen display, so this omission isn't a big deal to me.

As for the two new tablets, the one that sparks my interest more is the $249 Yoga Smart Tab. Like previous Yoga tablets, this has a built-in kickstand that folds out to prop the slate up for easy viewing. On the new device, though, when you've completely opened the kickstand, the tablet automatically switches over to Google's charging UI that's also used in the Pixel stand. This shows the time, weather and other pertinent information based on your calendar and preferences. This UI also kicks in on the Smart Tab M8 when you slide the tablet into the accompanying charging dock.