The wall clock finally gets an upgrade with the Amazon Echo Wall Clock

Best answer: This wall clock is an understated and almost elegant timepiece that might not be as "smart" as the rest of the smart home tech we see, but what it does it does well: keep accurate time and display your Alexa timer. The automatic adjustment for Daylight Saving Time is almost worth $30 on its own, just so Grandma doesn't have to get on a stepstool to wind the clocks back.

Amazon: Amazon Echo Wall Clock ($30)

Time for a new era of wall clock

I'll admit it: when I got out of college, I didn't think I needed a wall clock. After all, there are clocks on everything else in my home: my phones, my computers, my microwaves and ovens, my watches — both smart and traditional — and even the Chromecast's Daydream shows the time in the bottom corner. That said, I missed having a wall clock. Yeah, I can ask my Amazon Echo what the time is, or how much time is left on one of my many daily timers, but it's still not nearly as easy as being able to look at the wall and see the time.

A wall clock is just easier, more dependable... right up until the time changes and then it becomes a battle of clock winding and resetting. That's where the Amazon Echo Wall Clock comes in.

This simple timepiece pairs with an Amazon Echo device in your home in order to do two things:

1. Tell accurate time, adjusting automatically to Daylight Saving Time each season.
2. Display how much time is remaining on the time you started via Amazon Alexa using subtle LED lights in the minute marks of the clock.

It doesn't do very much, but it does more than your normal wall clock and promises to never make you get up on a ladder just to twist the hour hand back and forth twice a year. The timer feature is especially alluring for those of us who use timers to keep us on task throughout the day — I'd love to be able to quickly see if I'm 9 or 29 minutes from the end of that hour-long timer I told Alexa to start without having to ask Alexa out loud and wait for her to tell me.

While the style of the Amazon Echo Wall Clock may seem a bit plain, that simplicity also ensures that the clock won't feel terribly out of place no matter which room of your home it resides in.

While the Amazon Echo Wall Clock is very much worth that $30 price tag, it hasn't received the FCC approval it needs before Amazon can sell it yet. You can sign up to be notified when it becomes available on Amazon's Echo Wall Clock page, though, and I'd recommend it. This clock is going to sell out quickly.

Our pick

Amazon Echo Wall Clock

$30 at Amazon

Check the time and your Amazon Alexa timers in style

The Amazon Echo Wall Clock might not be tanked to the brim with weather data and the precise location of the stars like some bulky atomic clocks, but this simple analog wall clock automatically adjusts to those pesky time changes and can display your timers with subtle but easy-to-read minute mark LEDs.