Skylight launches Cal Max, an oversized smart calendar to help keep your family organized

Smart Picture Frames Company skylight Launches a new version of Skylight Calendar, a smart family calendar. the Skylight Cal Max It functions similarly to the current model but has a sleeker, updated design as well as a massive 27-inch screen. It's available for pre-order today starting at $599 and will ship in June, according to the company.

Cal Max nearly doubles the size of the existing 15-inch Skylight Calendar, intended to display multiple calendars in a familiar layout and sync with online services to keep everything up to date. The improved 27-inch touchscreen with a higher resolution (2560 x 1440 QHD compared to 1920 x 1080 HD), provides more space and better quality to easily see everyone's schedules at a glance.

A new anti-glare etched display and interchangeable bezels are designed to help the device blend in better with your home decor. Options will include a classic white or black frame and an aluminum and charcoal shadow box frame. The frames can be swapped out if you want to change things up and will go on sale in June when the device ships. The shadow box option costs $629, plus an additional $30.

The current has been tested 15 inch version of the Skylight Calendar — which has the same features, just a smaller design and doesn't have an anti-glare screen — and I've found so far to be the best solution I've tested for having one place the whole family can see and manage all their schedules.

Over the years, I've tried a lot of solutions to this problem, including giant dry-erase wall calendars, digital calendars built into my refrigerator, smart speakers that read my kids' schedules for the day, and setting up notifications on their smartphones for each day. Events. But for various reasons (too much maintenance, lack of support for one calendar service or another, and being easy to ignore), none of them worked reliably.

However, since I place the Skylight Calendar on my breakfast table in full view of the family as they eat each morning, we have had much more success keeping our schedules straight. While smart displays like the Echo Show can show your calendar, the trick that works for us with the Skylight is that it Just Calendar shows – all the time.

This isn't a multi-purpose smart display, like the Echo Show or Nest Hub, which means no one can see it Teen Titans Go! Instead of reviewing the events of their day. It is a device dedicated to your calendar. There are a few other related features — chore planners, meal planning, and to-do lists — but the calendar is the main event. You can also get a photo screensaver if you want, although that requires a $39 annual subscription after the first year.

In addition to visibility, another feature I like about the Skylight Calendar is that you can edit and add events directly on the device's touchscreen. You can also scroll through the day and week and see everyone's calendars at once. The interface is very similar to the web interface of Google Calendar and similarly allows for color coding of different calendars.

Skylight works with most major services — I've successfully imported Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars into it (Yahoo and Cozi are also supported) — or you can create your own calendars using its service and also manage them on the Skylight smartphone app.

While the $300 15-inch model I tested can display time periods of five to seven days and about eight hours a day, I find the larger version useful for larger families or those who are still in that stage of multitasking after that. -School activities.

The sleeker look also appeals to me; I don't want to mount the model I'm testing on the wall. It's quite large, and the screen can be distracting (even with auto-brightness enabled). 27 inches would be too large for my kitchen counter. You can just mount it on the wall anyway, but when mounted vertically you'll be able to see the entire day at once, and the anti-glare screen can provide better framing for photos when not in use.

At $599, the Cal Max is expensive, and since there's a 10-inch version for $159.99 and a 15-inch version for $299.99 with the same functionality, you're paying a lot more for the larger screen and nicer looks. However, Skylight says the upgraded hardware will enable new software features later this year. This worries me a little. Based on my time with the original, its simplicity is its best feature – there's so much functionality, it might lose that excellent focus.

The Skylight Cal Max is available for pre-order now for $599 or $629 for the shadow box frame option. It will start shipping to customers in June.

Correction Tuesday, January 30 at 10:40 a.m.: A typo in an earlier version of this article misstated the price of the shadow box frame. We apologize for this error.