Review: Skylight Smart Calendar Max

I hate diary planning. When Sunday comes around I’ll do anything to avoid sitting down with the weekly paper planner. So when the chance came to test Skylight, a huge 27-inch digital diary that promises to revolutionize family life, I jumped at it. Anything to make diary day easier.

It’s not that I’m inherently disorganized (OK, maybe a bit), I just don’t like the finality of red-inking next week’s events. Yes, we have multiple digital diaries, both work and shared, all linked to various online calendars, but in our house, it’s not happening unless it’s on the paper planner. The real problem here is that, compared to my wife, I’m hopeless at digital diarizing. It’s like playing a Grand Master at chess, just with after-school club collections, meal planning, and entertaining. I try but invariably screw up something, probably double-book events, or get the time wrong … but maybe tech can save the day and bring peace and harmony to Sunday afternoons.

Skylight Calendar Max is a 27-inch wall-mountable touchscreen tablet designed to help with family planning. Well, not that sort of family planning, but hey, if it’s in the diary … ? The Calendar Max measures 27 x 16 x 1.5 inches, can be orientated landscape or portrait, and comes with a clip-on decorative frame and curved edges to give it an interior-friendly vibe. The display is an IPS touchscreen with a good but not brilliant 2560 × 1440 (QHD) resolution and 60-hertz refresh rate. There’s also an anti-glare screen and ambient light sensor that makes it visible in all conditions, boosting and reducing the brightness as suits the environment.

Skylight also sells a 15-inch version ($279), and while it’s not a massive industry—eclipsed somewhat by digital displays—they’re not alone in the digital calendar space. Amazon’s Fire TV-toting, Alexa-chatting Echo Show is available in 15- and 21-inch varieties. Cozyla also offers 15-, 24- and whopping 32-inch digital calendars (from $350), while the large, wooden-framed Hearth Display ($699) offers an alternative spin.

Dear Diary

Photograph: Chris Haslam

Setting up this massive touchscreen tablet and syncing calendars was a breeze, and compatibility is excellent, with Google, Outlook, Apple, Cozi, and Yahoo all catered for. It’s primed for Google, which is especially easy to get linked up, but I had no issues with Yahoo or Apple either. It was also simple enough to invite others to sync their calendars too.

Once all the various work and social calendars are linked, the Skylight floods with information, populating the display with color-coded events and notices based on each person, and whether they’re shared events. I was met with a frankly terrifying number of meetings and commitments, micro-managed to the minute. It was at this stage I thought it best to remove my wife’s terrifyingly organized work diary and stick to family plans.

Perched on the kitchen counter the Skylight Calendar Max is impossible to miss, and my 11-year-old daughter quickly took to reading out the reminders that popped up onscreen. That positive engagement sadly didn’t guarantee she would actually remember her science book/soccer kit/packed lunch, but it was a start. And I enjoyed being able to see what was happening at a glance rather than having to reach for my phone.

Naturally there is a Skylight smartphone app that mirrors the display, and makes tweaking dates, setting up alerts, tasks and generally managing the system remotely, nice and quick. I still instinctively open my Apple or Google calendar (and yes, I know I should consolidate, and they should work seamlessly, but they never do) but it’s handy for other features too.

AI Appointments

Courtesy of Skylight

The main feature I was keen to try was the Sidekick Smart Family Assistant. This AI tool requires a subscription—more on that below—but it allows me to forward emails, PDFs, or spreadsheets straight to Sidekick and have key information automatically turned into calendar events or even meal plans. To do this, you’re assigned a Skylight email address, which you then just forward anything on to, and hey presto, it appears in the calendar or on a to-do list.

The Skylight subscription to make this happen costs $79 per year, with your first month free, and if you sign up when you purchase the calendar, its price drops $20 to $599.99. It’s a fairly large investment, especially as the Echo Show looks better, has a sharper screen, and can stream content, all for $200 less. And you do need to spend the extra on the subscription, as it’s nowhere near as useful without the extra features.

I had hoped this AI tool would transform me into a scheduling behemoth with my own private secretary. For simple tasks it works well, and will skim an email and add diary dates without issue. However, it's not without issues. For example, it added every televised Arsenal game to my calendar with consummate ease, but failed to add specific flight numbers and times to a work trip; instead it just blocked out the entire day with no practical information. You do get a reminder email from Skylight confirming the details being added, with the chance to delete, but you might need to check your spam folder and mark it as “trusted” if you are keen to double-check things, which sort of takes away from the ease of it all.

The subscription also gives you the ability to take a picture of something with a date on it or upload an existing photo, and also leave a voice note with details of events. It’s a nice extra feature, but you can do this with Google, Alexa, and Siri already.

Courtesy of Skylight

From my Gmail account, forwarding on emails containing dates and appointments is easy, and once I was in the habit, I did it almost subconsciously. I used to do a similar thing with important dates, but by forwarding to my wife who would then action it like a proper grown-up. At least by using the Skylight Calendar Max it appears like I’m taking some responsibility.

Aside from the calendar there’s a good range of other time and task management widgets. You can set up, assign, and manage the household chores for instance, and even award stars for completion. I’ve yet to come home to witness my daughter vacuuming or cleaning her guinea pig’s cage—both chores listed—and yet they’re always marked as complete. Maybe she’s gamed the system, or maybe my AI secretary does it for her.

If you love tick lists, however, you’re well served with the Skylight UI. Groceries, packing lists, general to-dos are easy to create and interact with, and mirror instantly with the app, making supermarket trips easier. Add in the color coding for people and tasks and it’s easy to follow what’s going on and who should be doing it. There’s a lot of scope here, and it’s organized well.

The Skylight Calendar Max also has a meal planning section—though again, to get the best of this you need the subscription—that can suggest meals, generate recipes based on preferences, and add ingredients to grocery lists. It’s comprehensive, and if you can’t bear the idea of thinking about what to cook everyday it could be for you. For our family this was a step too far, and the AI-generated recipes were not really in line with what we eat, but some users will love it.

Date Night?

Over the past couple of months the Skylight Calendar has fallen in and out of favor in my household. The ability to upload and sync photos is a nice touch, and having a scrolling mix of my favorite pictures is a treat when I enter the kitchen. Oddly the AI assistant also pulls images from emails, so as well as cute memories from past birthday parties, I have a mix of product images from launch invites and the Swiss Air logo on rotation.

The date syncing isn’t always seamless, and you should expect to spend a bit of time working through the various menus. Naturally, the better order your existing diary is in, the better the Max will work. It’s also not quite clever enough to spot if multiple people add the same event to the calendar—school stuff emailed to both of us being the prime example—so there’s still a fair amount of editing required. One thing we all appreciate however is the big alert box that pops up reminding us of the day’s impending responsibilities. It’s such a simple cue, but it gets thing done.

The Skylight Calendar Max has certainly made my Sunday diary planning easier. It’s great for scrolling through and more interactive than a smartphone screen. Has it replaced the red ink on the paper planner? Absolutely not … yet.