When comparing Vaadin vs SmartClient, the Slant community recommends SmartClient for most people. In the question“What are the best Javascript UI Widget Toolkits?” SmartClient is ranked 8th while Vaadin is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose SmartClient is:
There is an online showcase and a 100+ Getting Started guide
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros

Pro Compiles Java to JavaScript
Vaadin uses GWT to compile Java code into JavaScript. This means that developers using Vaadin can write both frontend and backend code in Java.
Pro Easy to use
Vaadin has a 'design mode' which allows developers to drag and drop components into a canvas and then provide the logic for every component. There are also a lot of third party tutorials and guides which help with the initial learning curve.
Pro Top notch documentation
The book of Vaadin is a must have for every developer that uses Vaadin to make web apps. It is an excellent reference manual and all around a great tool for every Vaadin related need. You can find and download the pdf online or get it for free in almost any Vaadin sponsored conference.
The online documentation is also very good. It has some tutorials and video guides.
There is also a vibrant community which sorround Vaadin, for any problem you may have there is a big chance that someone has already asked and answered that question on StackOverflow or in the Vaadin forums. If not, it will probably be answered quickly if you ask it.
Pro Modern, configurable theming
Vaadin comes with the Valo Theme, a Sass-based theme and engine that calculates styles based on configurable variables and making it easy to define a completely new theme with a few lines of SCSS.
Pro Easy to develop prototypes quickly
Vaadin has what is called the Vaadin Directory which is a repository of downloadable Vaadin components which can be easily used for development. To use something from the repository, you need to download the JAR file and add it to the project.
Pro Good documentation
There is an online showcase and a 100+ Getting Started guide
Pro Advanced UI widgets
Layouts, grids, forms with a lot of builtin functionality.
Cons
Con Weak scalability
Since Vaadin stores the UI state and logic in the server, this means that for every user interaction a request needs to be sent to the server and the client needs to wait so it can know how to react. This leads to higher traffic and load times.
Con Expense: Free LGPL version but expensive to leverage the real power of the framework
The Developer version starts at $745 / Developer
Con Difficult to integrate with other frameworks like React, Vue, Angular...
SmartClient has it's own layout mechanism and doesn't have anything like Kendo UI's framework support for Angular, React, Vue, ..
