Family is the foundation of systematic discipline. This is where healthy habits and progressive routines start. This is where being respectful and responsible is first practiced. To most families, especially the larger or extended ones, an organized set of rules and regulations is given to exercise obedience and rewards or vice versa. The expected family occasions or events like birthdays and anniversaries are being jotted down to remind everyone, requiring their presence to gather. Often, these reminders are mixed or gone, leading to being forgotten or needing clarification. Hence, this article will tackle a digital family calendar and chore chart, which could help your family amid hectic days.
Best Digital Family Calendar: Transition, Organization, and Connection
DAKboard Digital Family Calendar
DAKboard was my initial choice when I began exploring digital family calendar options. It offers free and paid versions, allowing users to customize and display a calendar on a TV or device. Initially, I considered mounting a small TV on the wall to showcase our Calendar. I experimented with the platform after creating a free account and syncing our Google Calendar. However, I realized that to access the desired features, I would need to upgrade to a monthly subscription, which I wasn’t prepared to do. Additionally, since the screen functions as a TV, it needs more interactivity, simplifying switching views to a different month or expanding entries on specific days.
DAKboard offers a customizable display featuring photos, calendars, news, weather updates, and more! With DAKboard, staying organized becomes effortless, ensuring you get all the important events and updates.
DAKboard is a digital wall calendar that allows seamless syncing with various online calendar services, including Google Calendar, iCloud Calendar, and Facebook. Users can opt for an agenda style to view upcoming events over the next few days or a complete monthly calendar display. With customizable calendar colors, DAKboard becomes an ideal digital family planner.
The Amazon Echo Show 15 Digital Family Calendar
The Echo Show is a tablet-like device known for its TV and movie streaming capabilities and widget options for creating a custom Home Screen. However, upon initial examination, I found the Echo Show overwhelming with its numerous features. My primary goal was a simple month-at-a-glance view of our Calendar and the weather forecast. I had no interest in using it for TV streaming. It needed to be made clear how customizable the device was, and I wondered whether I could make the Calendar the main focus. With a price tag of $250 or more, I wasn’t willing to take a chance, considering that Amazon tends to emphasize interaction, entertainment, and shopping features.
Adding an Amazon Echo Show smart display enhances the living space for those integrated into the Alexa smart home network. These devices, resembling specialized tablets with improved speakers and streamlined access to essential apps, are valuable additions to any home. Particularly potent when coupled with numerous Alexa-compatible smart devices, Echo Shows excel in homes relying on Amazon’s voice assistant ecosystem.
Amazon’s latest addition to its intelligent display lineup, the Echo Show 15, stands out as the largest and most recent model. Despite its resemblance to a digital photo frame, it offers many functionalities. Its built-in camera automatically identifies users and displays their personalized schedules, chores, shopping lists, etc. Featuring a 15.6-inch, 1080p screen, it offers enhanced clarity and brightness, ensuring visibility from afar. Leveraging the extra screen space, Amazon has introduced a selection of widgets to import helpful information like weather updates and top news stories. Moreover, its sleek design makes it an attractive addition to any space, doubling as a versatile digital picture frame when not in active use.
Comprehensive Smart Display
Introducing the Amazon Echo Show 15, Amazon’s latest and most extensive bright display offering a spacious 15.6-inch, 1080p screen that ensures visibility from a distance. This intelligent display comes packed with convenient widgets and seamless Fire TV streaming interface integration. While it may be oversized for countertops, it seamlessly blends into wall installations.
Pros
- Exceptionally versatile
- Large, high-definition display
- Visual face recognition
Cons
- Average sound quality
- Relatively high price tag
- Imperfect camera functionality
Skylight Digital Family Calendar
The All-In-One Skylight Digital Family Calendar organizes the entire household with chore charts, meal planning, and customizable lists—all accessible on one display for the whole family to utilize.
Skylight Calendar offers a 10- or 15-inch digital touchscreen mounted on the wall or placed on your counter. It seamlessly syncs with your Google, Outlook, Apple, Cozi, and Yahoo calendars while offering various calendar views. Additionally, it comes with a built-in chore chart, list, and meal-planning functions.
Unlike many products in today’s market that offer low prices but require subscriptions for additional features, Skylight includes all of its base functionality in the device’s price. If you wish to use Skylight as a digital picture frame or import events from PDFs into your Calendar, you only need to subscribe to something. Even then, the subscription fee is only $39 per year.
The Skylight Calendar is almost ready to use straight out of the box. Opting for the 15-inch model over the 10-inch, I found the smaller model’s border seemingly taking up as much space as the screen itself. In contrast, the 15-inch Skylight features a minimalist white frame with a border that seamlessly fades into the background once the screen is activated.
For those planning to use the Skylight on a countertop, be prepared to install a surprisingly bulky stand to the back of the device. While it’s likely designed for stability while interacting with the screen, a more elegant solution might not leave the Skylight protruding six inches from the back of the counter.
Skylight allows you to synchronize multiple Google calendars, enabling you to view everyone’s schedules in a single location. An added convenience is adding and editing events directly on the Calendar using the touchscreen, although the onscreen keyboard may experience some lag. Any changes made will sync back to the respective Google Calendar seamlessly.
The chore chart, dinner plans, and lists seamlessly sync to the Skylight app. However, I wish the lists could be exported to Reminders in iOS for easier access on my Apple Watch during grocery shopping (unfortunately, Skylight lacks a watchOS app). Week view has proven particularly helpful, offering various calendar display options. With its ample screen size and spacious event cards, I can quickly grasp the week’s activities, aided by color-coded calendars to swiftly identify tasks and schedules.
However, the Calendar view needs a search function, which I found inconvenient when locating specific events. Despite this, Skylight can function as a digital picture frame with its Calendar Plus plan. However, optimal picture clarity is achieved when viewed from the front due to the display’s limited viewing angle.
The Skylight Calendar offers a polished experience with its user-friendly touchscreen interface, effortless calendar synchronization, and additional features. It seamlessly integrates into your daily routine, becoming an essential tool for organization and productivity.
DETAILS:
- Stay Organized: Effortlessly stay organized with a touchscreen display to manage your calendar events, chores, dinner plans, and tasks.
- Unified Calendars: Automatically sync and merge calendars from multiple personal devices for complete clarity.
- Flexible Planning: Use the free Skylight mobile app to update your schedule anytime, anywhere.
- Healthy Habits: Utilize our Chore Chart to transform daily duties into achievements and foster positive habits and routines.
- Dinner Solutions: Display your dinner plans to put an end to the daily dinner debate.
- Magic Import: Simplify adding significant school dates to your Calendar with Magic Import. Just forward any email or PDF containing dates; we’ll automatically convert them into events on your Calendar.
- Photo & Video Screensaver: Elevate your Calendar’s versatility by transforming it into a digital photo frame during idle moments. Utilize the Skylight app to upload photos and videos and add captions for a personalized touch.
Key Features include:
View Options: Easily switch between monthly, weekly, daily, or schedule views to suit your preferences.
Syncing Capability: Seamlessly syncs with other calendars like Google, ensuring that any additions made there automatically appear on the Skylight.
Color Coding: Assign specific colors to events or individuals, streamlining organization and coordination. Family members can be assigned a distinct color for easy and quick identification.
Dinner Plan: Utilize the dinner plan feature to input daily meal details, functioning similarly to adding an event. Now, family members can check the Calendar when asking about dinner plans.
Lists: Create to-do and grocery lists directly on the Calendar, with the option to sync them to a mobile app for added convenience.
Chore Chart: Set up chore assignments, allowing family members to view their daily tasks and mark them as completed as needed.
Weather Display: Stay informed about the current temperature with the integrated weather display feature.
A Smarter Way to Keep the Whole Family in Sync
In a shared household, especially with children, having a standard calendar accessible to everyone can be incredibly beneficial. There’s no more reliance on a dry-erase calendar near the door as a final check before leaving the house,e which is sometimes tricky. Everyone will be updated, organized, and connected with these three digital family calendars: DAKboard, Amazon Echo Show, and Skylight.
