Hearth Display Review

Hearth Display is a digital display that you can hang on your wall. It comes with a calendar, to-do lists, and other useful tools.

It’s designed to be an alternative to the traditional calendar and sticky notes you might currently have on your fridge. From streamlining everyone’s chores to helping people stay up to date on the weather and their upcoming appointments, Hearth Display has many useful features.

However, is Hearth Display worth the exorbitant price? Today, I will be reviewing Hearth Display.

I will be going over its features and discussing its pros and cons. Read on to learn whether a Hearth Display is right for you.

Hearth Display: An Overview

Digital displays are becoming popular alternatives to physical calendars. They allow you to sync a digital wall calendar with third-party calendar apps such as Google or Outlook.

Many of them also have accompanying mobile apps which allow you to view your calendar on the go or add events from your phone.

Hearth Display is one such product.

It has its own unique hardware – you can’t install it on any random tablet. Instead, to use the Hearth Display software, you must purchase the Hearth Display wall display, which comes with the software built in.

Hearth Display Features

Calendar

Of course, the calendar is the #1 feature of Hearth Display. It allows you to display events, appointments, and other important tasks for everyone in the family, all in one central location.

It integrates with various third-party calendars. So, if you already have appointments in Google Calendar, for example, it will automatically be added to your Hearth Display calendar.

Not only that, but Hearth Display allows you to create recurring appointments for your Hearth Display calendar. For example, you can set up a monthly extended family meetup or a weekly scheduled movie night for the family.

The calendar view is customizable; you can display a daily, weekly, or monthly view.

Everyone in the family will get their own profile, along with their own color. Events added to the calendar will automatically be color-coded.

For example, if your color is purple, any event in which you are marked as an attendee will be purple. That allows you to easily identify which events are relevant to you.

If multiple people in the family will be attending a single event, you can create a shared event, and small previews of each attendee’s profile picture will appear next to the event on the calendar. A separate color will be used for such events, so you can easily identify shared events.

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To-Do Lists

In addition, everyone in the family can be assigned tasks on a sort of Kanban board. You can set up one-time tasks or recurring tasks.

For example, perhaps your son is tasked with walking the dog every evening or cleaning the garage once a month. These recurring tasks will show up automatically as per your set schedule.

Your kid can easily mark a task as complete. The Streaks feature helps motivate kids to complete tasks on schedule by tracking how many times a task has been completed.

The Routines feature is also useful; it allows you to create routines for every child.

For example, evening routines can consist of doing homework, washing the dishes, taking a bath, etc. A morning routine might consist of taking a shower, brushing one’s teeth, eating breakfast, getting dressed, etc.

Unlike recurring to-do tasks, routines consist of a series of multiple tasks that usually occur at least once a day.

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Weather

The weather widget is a useful widget that can be overlaid on your calendar to display the upcoming forecast. It doesn’t have that much information, but it does display the highs and lows for the upcoming days, along with icons that show whether it will be sunny, cloudy, etc.

It also gives you real-time information of the current temperature and weather conditions in your area.

Sleep and Privacy Modes

If you have some friends over, you might not want them to see the events you have planned. That’s totally normal, and Hearth Display has a solution for that called Privacy Mode.

With Privacy Mode, you can activate a custom wallpaper instead of your calendar to be displayed.

You can also set up Sleep Mode, which will make your Hearth Display’s screen dim at a certain time to conserve energy and keep the room dark. You can also change the brightness of the screen at any time.

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Integrations

Hearth Display integrates with the following calendars: Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and Apple iCal.

If you have appointments or events marked on those calendars, they will be synced automatically to your Hearth Display.

There are many benefits to this. For example, when you book a flight and get a Gmail confirmation of the booking, Google usually adds it automatically to your Google Calendar.

This means that it will be synced to your Hearth Display calendar as well.

Still, I would have liked a broader range of integrations. Hopefully, others will be added in the future.

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There is another useful feature, though, that sort of makes up for the lack of wider integrations. It’s called Hearth Helper, and it’s an SMS AI assistant that allows you to add physical events to your calendar.

If your child brings home a paper calendar or flyer from school, you can take a picture of it and send the picture to a special Hearth Display SMS number. With the power of AI, the appointments will be synced to your Hearth Display calendar.

Web App

The web app allows you to stay up to date on your tasks, calendars, and more on the go. Wherever you are, you can open the app and see your synced Hearth Calendar.

Not only that, but you can assign tasks to your children on the go. It’s a great way to add tasks to your calendar without having to go to the physical wall display itself.

Note that this is a web app, and although it is mobile friendly, it is not available from the app stores. You can access it in your browser on your mobile phone, though.

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Pricing

The Hearth Display itself – the physical hardware – comes at a one-time fee of $599 (down from $699). See this page for updated pricing.

However, you may have to wait several months before you can get it, depending on availability. As of this publication, you can only order it to be shipped months in advance.

The good news is that this is a single fee, after which you can use the Hearth Display for free for life. Once you buy the hardware, it is not a must to purchase a monthly subscription.

The bad news is that the free version is limited. For the full version, you will need to pay for the Family Membership.

The Family Membership costs $9/month if billed monthly and $7.20/month if you pay annually.

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With the free plan, you only get the calendar, unlimited profiles, and syncing with Apple, Google, Outlook, and any future supported calendars.

Here is what you don’t get when you don’t pay for the Family Membership:

• To-dos
• Routines
• SMS AI assistant
• Weather
• Privacy and Sleep modes
• Future software releases

The last one is pretty big. You are stuck with the current software version of the Hearth Display software if you don’t upgrade.

That means that if future software releases add new functionality other than new calendar integrations, you will be missing out.

Hearth Display Pros

It Increases Productivity

One of the best things about Hearth Display is that it lets you focus on the important things. It doesn’t have distractions, allowing you to focus your attention on your calendar, to-do lists, and appointments.

It can really help your family increase its overall productivity and run the house smoothly. If you feel like your house is disorganized and nothing is getting done, it can be a fun way to encourage productivity in the household.

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It Is Easy to Use

Hearth Display doesn’t have a big learning curve. It is easy to use, and it has a touchscreen, making it easy to enter new tasks.

Of course, you can also enter new tasks in the web app from your phone. Additionally, the ability to snap pictures and send them to the SMS AI assistant is a very useful feature.

Hearth Display Cons

Very Limited Features for Such a High Price

There’s no way around it: Hearth Display is extremely expensive for what it offers.

You can get an Amazon Echo Show display for $100 or less on Amazon. It will give you a calendar, to-do notes, video streaming, music streaming, audiobook streaming, a smart assistant, a camera for video calls, a smart home hub, and more.

Even if you want a wall-mounted Amazon Echo, there is an option available for less than $300.

Meanwhile, the Hearth Display costs almost $600 (and that’s on sale!) and pretty much only offers a calendar, to-do tasks, and basic weather information.

It is really hard for me to justify the price, especially considering the next con: the limited features you will get if you don’t pay the premium membership subscription.

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Requires Subscription for Many Features and for Updates

If you don’t pay the membership subscription, you will be even more limited in what you can get. You won’t even be able to get weather forecasts, nor will you be eligible for software updates.

An Amazon Echo – and many other smart displays – won’t require a monthly subscription. Since the Hearth Display can only run Hearth software, you are pretty much locking yourself into a monthly subscription if you want updates.

That is a major disadvantage.

You Are Locked Into Proprietary Software

That brings us to our next con.

It’s not just about needing to pay a monthly fee. What if Hearth Display goes out of business?

It is not a large company like Amazon. It’s barely begun sales, and it seems to have very limited stock.

If it goes out of business, you will be stuck with a device that never gets updates.

It’s much better to purchase a smart display from a reputable company like Amazon, which has an almost zero chance of going out of business anytime soon.

It Requires an Internet and Power Connection

Not only does the device do very little, but it requires an internet connection at all times. In addition, your Wi-Fi network must be operating on the 2.4 GHz radio band or be compatible with smart home devices.

Moreover, it is a wall-mounted display, not a tabletop display.

In addition, you must have your Hearth Display plugged in at all times, so you can only really mount it near a power outlet.

As you can see, not only is the Hearth Display limited in what it can do, but you are limited in where you can put it.

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No Access to the Web

Despite requiring Wi-Fi connectivity, you can’t actually access the internet on your Hearth Display. You can’t browse the web, access social media, or do anything other than look at your calendar, to-do lists, and the weather.

There are no downloadable apps; for example, you can’t download YouTube. You also can’t use your Hearth Display as a digital photo display.

No Mobile App

There is a web app, but there is no mobile app. So, you can’t even download an app to your phone with which you can view your calendar and add tasks.

Yes, you can use the web app on your mobile browser, but it’s not nearly as convenient.

Conclusion: Is Hearth Display Worth It?

No, I won’t Hearth Display. It is extremely overpriced for what it offers.

It offers very limited functionality at a very high price, and it attempts to lock you into a lifelong, recurring subscription by limiting functionality and barring you from software updates if you decide not to pay for the Family Membership.

Compared to multi-functional devices such as the Echo Show, it is extremely lacking in features. It must also be plugged into the wall at all times, doesn’t have an offline mode, and can’t access the web.

You’re simply better off saving your money and searching for an alternative.