Skylight’s Calendar 2 Review: Its Best Digital Calendar Yet

But what about a more physical option?

Rather than leaving all of our communication online, requiring phones out at dinner to check tomorrow's schedule and struggling to remember the dinner ideas listed in Discord, there's a new solution: a digital calendar you can set on the counter or hang on the wall.

Skylight's digital calendars have been gaining popularity over the past year, and today there's a new one: the Calendar 2.

The biggest change is the size, sitting now in the middle of Skylight's digital calendar lineup at 15 inches.

It promises faster performance and also has interchangeable snap frames like Skylight's digital picture frame, the Frame 2 , but otherwise it's the same device with the same set of tools and similar roadblocks.

The Calendar 2 connects to your Wi-Fi and can sit on a tabletop or be mounted on the wall, so long as there's an outlet nearby to plug it into.

However, you'll hit the same wall my colleague Chris Haslam did when he tested the Calendar Max , Skylight's largest digital calendar device that launched last year: Unless every member of your family is ready to fully commit to this device, its wide range of features will go unused.

But at half the price and nearly half the size of the Calendar Max, the Calendar 2 feels like a much more reasonable experiment and entry point for families.

The Skylight Calendar 2, like Skylight's other digital calendars, lets you log in to your calendar program of choice, such as Google Calendar or Apple's Calendar, and have it immediately display on the interface.

It was easy to sync my main Google calendar, and then the 2 showed me all the calendars that were synced to that one, in case I wanted to add them.

In a snap, I had my main personal calendar, my work calendar, my husband's calendar, and even my private calendar of my friends' and family's birthdays synced to the Calendar 2.

Your calendars is the default page Calendar 2 shows you, but it's not all this device can do.

There are several tabs you can click through: Lists, Tasks, Rewards, Meals, Recipes, and Photos, then Sleep and Settings.

Besides Sleep and Settings, which both relate to different settings on your device, these pages will take some work to become truly useful.

Some of these features are also blocked by a paywall.

You'll need a Plus Plan subscription , which costs $79 a year or $8 a month, to get access to Rewards, Meals, and Skylight's in-app AI tool, Sidekick.

The Tasks page also works fine if you want a list of tasks for each family member, but even for tasks I set a certain time for, I didn't see any alerts on the device or my phone.

Once I opened the Tasks page, I could see that I was two days late to “Bring Form to Dentist Appointment,” but I think these pages would be easy to ignore.

It's something you'd have to build as a habit and shouldn't be relied on for a timed task you'd like to complete.

Meanwhile, Rewards is linked to tasks, letting you set how many stars you need to earn by completing tasks to earn a reward you'll set for yourself or other members of your house, such as your kids.

You'll also lose out on the Meals tool, and the Rewards page.

These pages will still be visible, but functionality will be gone.

I was only able to test Rewards myself, and while it was fun to set tasks for myself to earn the Cherry Ripe bar sitting in my pantry, I think these would be best suited to households with older children who can read and interact with the Skylight.

My 3-year-old son will just want to tap buttons and swipe through pictures over and over.

The font isn't so large that you can read it across a room, either.

You'll need to be right next to the device to read the calendar and any other page, and the only way to interact with it is by touch.

Screenshot Sidekick via Nena Farrell
The Plus Plan also gives access to Skylight's AI tool, Sidekick.

Sidekick isn't on the device itself, but can be accessed in the app and can import events, lists, recipes, and fridge photos onto your Skylight.

It's honestly really useful.

It converted my favorite breakfast recipe from a website in just a handful of seconds and easily added my dad's fondue recipe from a text screenshot.

It was also able to add events to my calendar from screenshots I took on Instagram, but my preferred method was to record a voice note explaining what I wanted.

I'm a voice note fanatic, so having a quick voice option is usually my preferred route.

How useful the Calendar 2 is, or any other digital calendar device is, depends on how well your entire family adopts it.

Part of what made this calendar immediately useful for my husband and me is that we're already Google Calendar fanatics.

We're both good about adding things to our calendars and usually invite the other if we know we're the one who wrote it down.

My husband is usually the one remembering to add doctor and dentist appointments, while he's always getting a new invite from me about the next birthday party we've been invited to or playdate I've scheduled with a friend.

It's been nice to have a physical representation of that work nearby when we're in the kitchen discussing plans or sitting together around the counter planning out our meals.

The touch screen allows any family member to use it anytime, and I was able to invite my husband to download the Skylight app to control it that way too, if he wished.

(So far, he has ignored that text.)
Overall, I liked this device a lot more than I expected, and I think the Calendar 2 is the most ideal size Skylight has made yet.

The 15-inch screen fits nicely on my kitchen counter and has been convenient to reach for without taking up a ton of space.

It's just big enough to see four days at a time, and they could have even gone a little larger and I'd still be happy with it.

The larger Calendar Max is a nice size if you have the wall space for it, but I think the Calendar 2's price and size are a better fit for more families.