Skylight Calendar 2 Review

About the Skylight Calendar 2

• Display: 15-inch touchscreen, Full HD 1920 x 1080 (60% brighter than the original, per Skylight)
• Dimensions: 15.8 x 9.9 x 1.4 inches
• Storage: 16GB on device
• Mounting: Adjustable 180-degree tabletop stand (tilt capable) and wall mount with bubble level; removable magnetic Snap Frame
• Frame styles: Classic, Wood, and Shadow Box (aluminum) in White, Black, Sage, and Lagoon
• Syncs with: Google, Outlook, Apple, Cozi, and Yahoo calendars
• Power: Plug-in only (US-style plug; no battery)
• Price: $279.99 (Classic) with a free first month of the Plus plan, then $79 per year for Plus

The Skylight Calendar 2 is a touchscreen wall calendar that pulls all of your family's schedules, chores, meal plans, and photos into one shared screen you can hang, stand, or—with the right accessory—stick to the fridge. It syncs with the calendar apps you already use, and a companion mobile app lets you manage everything from your phone. Some features (meal planning, photo screensaver, Magic Import) are available on the paid Plus plan; the core calendar, tasks, and lists are free. The top of the calendar view also shows the current time and the outside temperature, so you can see both at a glance as you walk past.

Skylight first launched its original connected home calendar in September 2020, and it went on to become a viral hit with busy families. Calendar 2 is the next generation of that original 15-inch device, and it's a hardware refresh, not a reinvention of a device that was already pretty great.

The software remains intact, but the box it lives in has been upgraded. According to Skylight, the Calendar 2 has a display that's 60% brighter with improved color accuracy, a body that's 20% slimmer, and processing that's roughly three times faster than before. It also borrows the design language of the 27-inch Calendar Max, adding swappable magnetic Snap Frames (in colors like White, Black, Sage, and Lagoon, plus aluminum and wood finishes) so you can change the look to match your space. Skylight says the redesigned 180-degree adjustable tabletop stand came directly out of customer feedback.

What we like

The Google Calendar sync is instant and two-way

This is the feature that makes the whole thing work. The Skylight syncs to Google Calendar quickly, and it's genuinely two-way—I can make a change in either Skylight or Google Calendar, and it reflects in both.

The day and schedule views are winning

On the calendar view, you can switch between day, week, month, and schedule views. While each has its place, my favorite is the day view. Of course, that's subjective. The one that works best for you will depend on your habits and perspective.

I liked the schedule view, particularly for packed days: It lays out a 12-to-12 timeline with exact time blocks. On a typical day, I can see that my daughter Violet is working from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., has swim practice from 4 to 5:30 p.m., and is free from 5:30 to 11 p.m. That kind of at-a-glance clarity is the whole point.

The month view is the weak spot for the Skylight. On a smaller screen with a lot of daily activity, it gets cramped and hard to read—but that's a fair trade for how good the other views are.

Per-person filters make a chaotic calendar readable

You can filter the calendar down to specific people or events—the whole family, just me, just my daughter, or a single Google Calendar. For a household where three or four people's plans are stacked on top of each other, this is the difference between a wall of noise and something you can actually parse.

The weekly Tasks view keeps everyone's chores in one place

There's a dedicated Tasks tab where I've listed chores for everyone in the household, and the weekly view is the star of the show. It displays every chore you're responsible for across all seven days of a given week, with the ones you've checked off—or not—on each day. One note: Tasks live on their own page you have to click over to. You can set them to appear on the weekly calendar, but I turned that off fast—it takes up too much space and bounces your actual commitments off the screen.

The photo frame and sleep mode are quietly great

If you wall-mount the Skylight, the Photos tab turns it into a fun digital frame—you can load in photos or build albums, and they double as the screensaver when the device goes to sleep. Sleep mode itself is one of my favorite small features, as it automatically powers down between the hours you set (mine's off from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., when we're actually in bed). You can also drop it into or out of sleep at any time.

Meal planning shows up right on the calendar

The meal planner (part of the Plus plan) lets you map out breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack for the week, and I love that you get to choose which of those show up on the calendar—all four, none, or just some. We only surface dinner, and it's become a useful nudge about what needs to be prepped for the evening meal. If you're the type who sits down on Sunday to plan the week, this is a great tool for it. And if you're not, fair warning: It can feel like a vision board for the organized person you keep meaning to become.

Sidekick can plan a night out or dinner in about two minutes

Skylight hides my favorite feature, which incidentally I keep raving about to friends. Sidekick is the Skylight's built-in AI tool.

It has an activity planner function that’s a standout. I instructed it to search for local events and dialed in exactly what I wanted: the area, the day and time, who was coming, how much I wanted to spend, and the kind of vibe I was after. Sidekick went online, found applicable events, and handed back all the details. Once I confirmed my interest, it turned my pick into a calendar listing I could save straight onto my Skylight calendar.

The Create Meal Plan feature is just as clever. You tell it what sounds good. I set a plant-based diet around what I already had on hand—arugula, sweet potatoes, carrots, and lentils. I told it there'd be three people eating on Wednesday and asked it to generate a new recipe. It came back with a roasted sweet potato, carrot, and lentil salad with arugula, dropped it into my meal plan for Wednesday dinner automatically, and then generated an optional grocery list with everything I'd need to buy to make it. The whole thing took about two minutes, which felt super efficient and very useful. And the meal tasted OK, too.

What we don't like

It comes with no magnet mount—and that's a real miss

The Skylight ships with a tabletop stand and a wall mount, but no way to put it on the fridge—which, for many families, is exactly where a shared calendar belongs. I ended up buying a magnet separately and attaching it to the back so I could stick it on my refrigerator. It works great, but I shouldn't have had to source it myself. I'd like to see a first-party magnet-mount option included in the box. (Worth clarifying: the magnetic Snap Frame Skylight advertises swapping the frame's face, not mounting the device to metal.)

The kitchen counter is a terrible landing zone

I first set the Skylight on the kitchen counter because the kitchen is where my family spends time together and hashes out the next day’s logistics. This feels logical, but it didn't last a week in our kitchen. The Skylight took up too much counter space and got splattered with food and water from the faucet pretty regularly.

If your instinct is to put it on the counter, resist it. Mount it on a wall or the fridge instead. Just remember it has to stay plugged in, so wherever it goes needs to be within reach of an outlet.

The grocery list won't talk to other apps

This is my biggest frustration. The Google Calendar sync is so seamless that I expected the grocery list to work the same way—but it doesn't sync with outside apps. My family lives in AnyList; everyone's signed in, and it's how we already build our shopping list. I'd love to connect that to the Skylight so I don't have to maintain two separate lists. It matters more than it sounds: I'm the one with the Skylight app on my phone, but my husband does most of the shopping and doesn't have access to the Skylight list on his. Make the grocery list interchangeable with the apps families already use, and this goes from an annoyance to a non-issue.

The built-in recipes aren't worth using

The recipes that come preloaded are basic and, honestly, not good. They're fine as a demo of the feature, but the real value is in importing your own—so don't judge the recipe function by what's already on there.

Should you buy the Skylight Calendar 2?

Yes. For a busy household, this organizational tool earns its place.

The two-way Google Calendar sync, the excellent day and schedule views, the per-person filters, and the weekly chore tracking have made the Skylight Calendar 2 (available at Amazon for $299.00) a real hub in my house—and it even got my teenager checking the schedule and making her own plans.

Is it perfect? No. But I might argue it's close. The grocery list's refusal to sync with outside apps is a gap; the built-in recipes are throwaway, and I wish a fridge magnet came in the box instead of on a separate order. But these are nitpicks, and none of them outweigh what it gets right.

If you're a parent juggling your own commitments while shuttling kids in three directions, the Skylight Calendar 2 is an essential tool that pulls the whole family onto the same page—literally.