It seems that we haven’t yet hit the limit on weird and novel implementations of Alexa, as Lenovo just announced what might be the neatest use of a charging station the smart home has to offer. Called Smart Tabs, the new pair of devices are 10-inch tablets with Alexa built in that, when docked into the charging station / smart speaker combo, go into Amazon’s Show Mode. That way, the device can display photo albums, play music, and accept standard Alexa voice requests as if it were an Echo Show.
It’s not entirely clear right now how effective the Smart Tabs will be as standard tablets. Both the M10 and pricier P10 model come packed with a Snapdragon 450 processor and run Android Oreo. That’s a good sign, considering they both could have...