My past alarm clock was very simple. It just had the basic features. Setting an alarm, playing a radio, snooze, and that was about it. I decided to splurge and try using an exciting alarm clock when I was shopping for college before my freshman year. I saw this one that's pictured below. It had various nature sounds and a projector that shined the time onto the ceiling. I thought these unnecessary features were cool and was curious if I would actually use them. It turns out I have. The "Ocean" sound is very nice to wake up to. I also enjoy simply opening my eyes and seeing what time it is on the ceiling instead of turning over and looking at the clock face.
I hoped that since this alarm clock had more features, that it would be more user-friendly than my old simple one. This has not been the case. There are two main issues, the brightness and setting the alarm. The clock face is just too bright. My old alarm clock never bothered me with its brightness, but this clock is noticeably brighter. An alarm clock is one clock that you do not want to be too bright, but this one errs in that way. I usually cover the clock face with a sock or something so it doesn't bother me.
The second issue is setting the time of the alarm. Setting the alarm mode or turning it off is easy. To set the alarm time, I have to press those two small buttons in the lower right labeled "HOUR" and "MINUTE." The problem is that if I want to change the alarm for a five minutes earlier, then I have to press that little button 55 separate times. The same goes for setting the hour (press 23 times for one hour earlier). This is frustrating because these buttons do not press easily. My old alarm clock had one hour and one minute button, but they were easier to use. They were stand alone buttons that were easier to press, and if you held one down it would start to fast forward your selection. This allowed me to quickly get to a specific minute setting 55 minutes away. Maybe the alarm clock designer should have focused on perfecting the main uses of the product before thinking about additional features.
I also have an issue with my alarm clock. On the display lies a tiny "dot" indicator as to whether the currently displayed time is PM. When I am setting my alarm, I find it difficult to discern whether or not the indicator is active. There have been multiple instances where I accidentally set my alarm for 6:50PM instead of 6:50AM--very annoying when I wake up for work in the morning.
ReplyDeletethe power went out in my apartment on tuesday and i had to deal with the whole minute issue you were having on my stove! it's so weird that when people make a clock, they overlook (or are obviously just to lazy to fix) that scenario. are the features worth it, or would you rather have a simpler design with no cool features? i probably would have splurged like you...the projector sounds cool.
ReplyDeleteYes I can see how that could be a problem. I ran into the same problem with slow changing of the minute and hour choices back at home on my parents alarm clock. It annoying to have to go through all those numbers just get to set the minute count to 55+ minutes. But the projecting on the ceiling seems cool.
ReplyDeleteI have this same alarm clock. While I agree that the brightness is a huge issue, especially since even the dim setting is way too bright, I don't mind the buttons for adjusting the time. As nice as it would be to not have to go through the complete cycle to set an earlier time, I've never had an alarm clock that could do that. On my old alarm clock you had to hold down a tiny little button (about the size of a normal reset button) and then press similarly small buttons to change the hour and minute. Besides the buttons being difficult to press, the numbers would occasionally skip so you'd have to go through them all again. Compared to that, this alarm clock's buttons are wonderful.
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