endolith:
#neverlate_executive I was really excited by the idea of this clock, but after getting one for Christmas, I changed my mind. It's really not worth the money.
First, the display is impossible to read. You have to be looking downward at the face of the clock or all you see is a blue square. I don't have any horizontal surfaces that are lower than my bed except the floor, so I have to sit up in bed in order to read the clock, and then lay back down. I'm confused as to how they ever went into production with this.
This morning, I accidentally pressed two buttons at the same time, and the clock "crashed". It's stuck on the time that I pressed the buttons, and I don't know how to get it to function again without removing the battery and losing all my settings. Operating the buttons or wheels does nothing, pressing multiple buttons at once does nothing, unplugging and plugging it back in does nothing.
Similarly, I would notice the display going haywire if the click wheels on top stopped in between clicks, etc. I'm an electrical engineer, and this feels like it was designed by amateurs. How hard is it to make an alarm clock without bugs? This isn't an operating system.
It's certainly useful to have a separate alarm for each day, though this would be more useful if I had different schedules for each day like a college student. It's good to have no alarm or a much later alarm on the weekends, though, and if I can, I'll definitely search for a clock with this functionality when I try to find a replacement.
I didn't find it difficult to set the alarms, though I'm the type that could program a VCR back in the day, too. I would have expected the center dial to be the time-setting dial, and the outer ring to select the days. The outer ring snaps pretty solidly between positions; not really what you would expect for a jog wheel that you're supposed to spin around continuously. The inner knob would be better for this function.
It is somewhat confusing the way they organized the wheels for the third "bank" of daily alarms, but not really that difficult to understand.
Displaying the day and date is useful for an absent-minded person like myself, but again, it's hard to read, so I never actually can see it when I need to, and just look at my phone instead.
The clock has 4 different alarm styles, so I was expecting at least one of them to be gentle and nice instead of the shrieking banshee that most clocks have. In reality, they're all just variations on the same electronic beeping sound. They're not nearly as annoying as a screech alarm, but none of them are really pleasant either.
Gradual wake is not really very gradual, though it's better than nothing.
I'd love to have a really nicely designed alarm clock, but this isn't it.
Sep 15, 08
