The $1,000 question: do you really need a smart family calendar?

They’re everywhere at the moment: big, beautiful touchscreens on kitchen walls, showing the whole family’s week in soothing pastel colours. And honestly? They look great.

Then you see the price.

What a smart wall calendar actually costs

Take Skylight, one of the best-known brands. In Australia (prices checked [date]):

• Skylight Calendar 15″: around A$529 (JB Hi-Fi)
• Skylight Calendar Max 27″: around A$1,199 (Amazon Australia)
• Calendar Plus subscription: A$124.99 a year, which unlocks features like meal planning and chore rewards

So a big screen, plus the first year of the features many families buy it for, comes to over A$1,300. That’s a lot of money for a calendar. It’s also, as I keep telling Rowena, roughly 2,600 Freddo Frogs. [check the Freddo price before publishing, or cut the joke]

What you’re really paying for

A smart wall calendar is really two things:

1. A screen that’s always on, in a place everyone walks past
2. Software that pulls everyone’s calendars together and adds lists, chores or meals

Here’s the thing: you might already own the first one.

The tablet in the drawer

Most Australian households have at least one tablet that’s been demoted: an old iPad, the kids’ Android tablet from a few birthdays ago, the one with the cracked corner that still works fine. Put it on a stand in the kitchen and it’s a family screen.

What it needs:

• A stand or wall mount. A cheap tablet stand or an adhesive wall mount does the job
• Power nearby, so it stays charged
• A family app that runs in the browser or as an app, with big, readable views

Setting it up (about 10 minutes)

1. Update the tablet and connect it to your home Wi-Fi.
2. Open your family app in the browser and add it to the home screen, so it opens like an app.
3. Turn off auto-lock, or set it to the longest time, while it’s docked. [confirm: whether My Tomte has a kitchen display mode]
4. Turn the brightness down a notch at night so it doesn’t light up the kitchen like a runway.
5. Put it where the family actually looks: near the fridge, by the back door, or next to the kettle.

When a dedicated screen is worth it

To be fair, there are good reasons to buy one:

• You want it to do one job, beautifully, with no apps, notifications or kids sneaking off to play games on it
• You love a photo frame screensaver
• You don’t have a spare tablet, and you’d rather buy a finished product than set one up

If that’s you, a dedicated screen is a lovely thing. Just go in knowing what the subscription covers.

When a tablet (and the right app) is better

• You already have a tablet
• You want meals planned, not just a place to write them down
• You’d like the calendar to know who’s home for dinner, and the shopping list to know what’s already in the fridge
• You’d rather spend the $1,000 on literally anything else

Where My Tomte fits

My Tomte runs on any tablet, phone or computer. It brings your Google, iCloud and Microsoft 365 calendars together (two-way on the Family plan), plans the week’s meals around who’s actually home, and keeps chores, rewards and the shopping list in the same place. The Family plan is $19.99 a year for up to six people.

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