$150 Smart Mirror — Is It Worth It?
With workout mirrors and smart mirrors gaining so much popularity during quarantine, I really wanted to hop on the trend. However, I wanted to really see what all of my options were before I made the big leap into the world of smart gadgets.
So I started to do some research and I found an incredibly cheap smart mirror on Amazon and was really curious about the price — $150. Which obviously is still a decent amount of money, but considering similar products are 10x the cost? It was a chance I was willing to take.
Needless to say…I bought the mirror. The real question was how well it was going to work with it being such a low price.
FIRST IMPRESSION: It looks really well made for the price, so definitely off to a good start. The frame is nicely manufactured, and the corners look pretty good for the price point. The backside of the mirror is a thin MDF, which gets the job done but it can be pretty fragile.
The display itself is pretty cheap, with one HDMI and one USB input, but that’s kind of expected with the price. It’s actually decently large at 22’ of viewable area. The downside of this great find was the glass in front of the display — it was a standard two way mirror.
If you know anything about glass or mirrors, this type of mirror is especially hard to see through. It typically has a high reflection and a low transparency, which is ideal for certain projects but definitely not for a smart mirror. It was glued down in the corners to hold it in place, but it was fairly easy to remove with a box cutter.
It doesn’t come with smart mirror software, so you’ll want to program a Raspberry Pi or other device to plug into it. You could even plug a Roku or Fire TV stick into it depending on what you’re using it for.
Once the glass was removed, it was easy to get it replaced with a more transparent glass, like a Smart Mirror. You can also use acrylic for a more lightweight setup. If you can cut and sand your own glass, then you’re set once you measure out your dimensions. If you DON’T have the means to get your own piece of glass, you can easily find acrylic to be cut at a local hardware store. You can also order a smart mirror cut and sanded to your custom size from us at twowaymirrors.com!
OVERALL IMPRESSION: It’s a good product for the price point. If you’re willing to put in a little extra money and time then it can be an even better product. I’d give this a 8/10, definitely worth checking out if you’re not trying to break the bank.
