Every January bears the same hallmarks: a raging hangover, fresh resolutions and renewed zeal for this year to be your best one yet.
For the last 13-odd years, I’ve had another ritual - printing out an entire year’s calendar on a single sheet of A4, sticking it to my fridge and scrawling in important events, holidays and festivals onto it as they emerged.
Before you ask: yes, of course I have Google’s calendar. We are on excellent terms. I just enjoy having an analogue version to look at when I’m rushing around on weekday mornings, mulling over weekend plans or counting down to a big event, like Glastonbury or my birthday. I grew up in the age of a dial-up modem; I appreciate the antiquity of things on physical paper.
Plus, the old paper calendars served as a diary of sorts, only without the faff of sitting down to write my thoughts every day. Bridget Jones, but in brief.
This year, I didn’t get around to printing out that sheet of A4, and I’ve been missing seeing what the week and month ahead have in store at a glance.
Enter Skylight, a family calendar that can group events and activities for each member of the household. I wondered how useful it would be for a single-person household.
Here’s how I got on with it.
Skylight digital calendar key specs
- HD Smart Display size: 15 inches
- Dimensions: W25.2W x H3.6cm
- Format: Digital
- Wi-Fi enabled?: yes
- Wall-mounted or free-standing?: both
- Theme: Plain
- Material: Metal
- Sleep mode: yes
- Features: Some available via subscription
Set up
Pried out of the box and plugged into the mains to get it up to full power, setting up the Skylight is a simple enterprise. It involves following the on-screen commands to connect to your Wi-Fi and downloading the Skylight app.
From here, you can sync multiple calendars, including Google’s calendar, work and school calendars and more, meaning everything is displayed in one place. Depending on how much you’ve got to input, it can take a few minutes to sync everything up.
Design
It’s a chunky thing, with enough depth to get a proper grip on - it’s not going to slip out of your hands unless you’re a particularly clumsy sort. The device comes with a stand for setting up on a flat surface, although there are screws and rawl plugs provided should you wish to mount it to a wall.
Performance
This calendar does more than just show you days, weeks and months. It can also act as a chore chart, which feels useless in my one-person home where there’s only yours truly to do the work, but I can see it would be useful in houseshares or family households. Setting star rewards for completing chores is also a good way to gamify tasks that usually require varying degrees of nagging to get done, such as vacuuming, putting away the dishes, and cleaning the bathroom.
There's also a meal planning section where you can add ideas, so you no longer have to dither with what to make when you're ravenous.
Each member of the family or home can be allocated their own colours and chores, and you can set up the calendar to see only your profile, which is helpful if there's a lot to keep track of.
It is incredibly simple to use, although it does require some settings tweaking straight out of the box to have it run on UK time (it seems to default to LA). For a fee, you can also use Skylight as a digital photo frame and gain access to other features.
Price - is it worth the money?
While I can see why some British homes with multiple schedules might appreciate an aggregator that can display everything in one spot, similar models do much the same thing for far less than Skylight’s RRP.
I find it diabolical that, despite shelling out £290 on this calendar, customers must then pay to unlock extra features. For a king’s ransom, these should come part and parcel.
The concept is fine, but for this much money, I’d expect it to act like a tablet so I can stream, look up recipes and listen to music on it too.
If you really want it, wait for a sale to bring down the price a little.
Verdict
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Skylight digital calendar
Designed to track multiple activities, events and appointments, the Skylight calendar aggregates digital calendars across Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cozi so that everything shows up in one place.
Once set up, you can create colour-coded profiles for each member and assign chores and tasks to them. You can add meal planning ideas, so you’ll never have to answer (or ask) “what’s for dinner?” again. The Skylight gadget also works as a digital photo frame, but you’ll need to pay an additional fee if you wish to unlock this feature.
Big families may find this useful - especially with children who need coaxing to do their chores - but smaller households will be better off sticking to their phone’s calendar app or investing in a tablet that can stream and play music as well.
Buy now £290.00, Amazon
