Lenovo's smart display is built on the same talk/touch interface as Google's Home Hub, meaning the differences basically come down to hardware.

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When the screen isn't illustrating the answers to your queries, it displays the time, date, current temperature and weather forecast along with details of your upcoming calendar appointments.

Ask about tomorrow's weather and along with a spoken answer from Google Assistant you're also shown the week's forecast. Enquire about your shopping list and it appears on the screen. Check on your daily commute time and you'll also see a map.

Lenovo's larger screen is naturally much easier to read from across the room than the Google Home Hub, which might win you over depending on where it will live in your home.

Pitting the iPad-sized 10-inch Lenovo against Google's 7-inch Home Hub, the screens are on par in terms of brightness, colours, contrast and viewing angles. The Lenovo offers a higher resolution to make the most of the screen size. This all helps bring your photo library to life, with intelligent photo frame options which automatically pull images from your Google Photos library.

That extra screen real estate and higher resolution comes in handy in the kitchen if you're trying to read a recipe but you don't want to place your precious screen too close to the cook top. Not only is the text larger, you can also see more on the screen at once.

Listen up

Along with a larger screen the Lenovo also features a larger speaker, which delivers more full-bodied sound with a lot more bass than the Home Hub, but it still hears your commands clearly even at full volume.

The Hub is better suited for up-close listening, perhaps living alongside the cook top, on your bedside table or on the bathroom sink. Meanwhile the Lenovo is a better choice for a speaker that needs to be seen from further away and fill the room with music, perhaps living at the end of the kitchen bench, in the corner of the room or on the coffee table.

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That said, Lenovo still falls short of the Amazon Echo Show's audio quality, which in return is roundly beaten by the Apple HomePod, Google Home Max or anything from the Sonos range. It doesn't help that the Lenovo lacks stereo and only features a single speaker. It's also a shame that the Lenovo's large speaker grill makes it look a lot less elegant than its rivals if you want something that will blend in to your living space.

Google Assistant's comprehension skills put Amazon's Alexa to shame. For example good luck asking Amazon's Echo Show to play the Violent Femmes' album "Hallowed Ground", as even with a fake US accent she hears "Helloed Ground". Meanwhile, the Google-powered Lenovo Smart Display nails it first try, likely thanks to the benefits of Google's machine learning.

Look closer

When it comes to entertainment, the Lenovo can access the same streaming audio and video services as any Google Home speaker.

You can tap into YouTube and Stan (co-owned by Fairfax Media) but there are no other built-in subscription video or catch up TV apps. Thankfully you can stream Chromecast audio and video from your handheld devices, with the disappointing exceptions of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

In return for the larger screen, the Lenovo naturally has a much larger footprint, with a big triangular stand extending from the back of the screen behind the speaker. As with competing smart displays, the design of the stand prevents you from wall-mounting it.

The Lenovo's bulk makes it much less practical than the Home Hub or Echo Show if you're looking for a compact screen to squeeze into a tight space, although it's handy that Lenovo offers the choice of sizes rather than taking Google's one-size-fits-all approach.

The other key difference to Google's smart screen is that the Lenovo features a front-facing camera which allows you to make Google Duo video calls, whereas the Home Hub is limited to Duo voice calls.

To address privacy concerns, the Lenovo lets you disable the camera with a switch on the side which slides a physical cover over the camera lens. Plus you'll find the standard microphone mute switch on top.

When you make a Duo video call you can turn the screen on its side to stand upright, resting on the speaker, which is handy if the person on the other end is holding their phone in portrait mode.

So what's the verdict?

If the Home Hub left you wanting more, but you want to stick with the Google ecosystem, then the Lenovo Smart Display might be the device you're looking for.

Even if you won't take advantage of Duo video calls, the Lenovo could win you over if you're chasing a bigger screen with better sound; assuming you've got room for its hefty footprint and don't mind its less-elegant design.