LED Alarm Clock with Multi-colour display

Introduction:

We are tired of the golden colour, old style (Roman letter clock face) mantle clock after many many years

and have decided to replace it with a smaller digital clock instead. So I have browsed through the

internet for cute little ones and in fact, there are lots of different shapes and sizes, and, of course

prices.

What we want is a small clock with a big display and I have spotted this one with a more solid and sturdy

base and not too big at £10.99 from eBay, inclusive of VAT and delivery. There are similar design ones of

roughly half the price £5 - 6 but the base appears to be a more filmsy and may prone to topple over.

What is in the box?

An LED digital clock with a sturdy base (all plastic , not detachable) that is operated by 3 X AAA batteries

(unfortunately batteries are not included, not even cheap ones).

A comprehensive user manual with instructions to install and set up the clock for its various functions and

display modes.

Features of this clock:

LED display for time (12 or 24 hours clock),
or, for date (day and month) + day of the week,
or, year? (you may not want this display permanently as it will change only after hundreds of days, only

joking, in fact you can not see the year display at all but you can set it, weird),
or, alarm clock,
or, timer (up to 59 min 59 sec),
or, digital thermometer (not the type that is used to check your body temperature by inserting it into your

body e.g. mouth, ear or another place; don't even try to insert this now rather big square clock anywhere to

check your body temperature, it is for the room only)

You can opt for a multi changing colour display back light (green, red, purple, blue, turquoise) during the

night. However you can not select the colour and therefore the colour keeps changing all the time.
This clock runs on 3 x AAA batteries which is not included.
Size of the clock : Width 83mm, Height 110mm, Length 103mm.

Installation and set up:

To start with, insert 3 AAA batteries into the battery compartment at the bottom. Once it has power, you

can start to set it up. There are two slide switches at the bottom and also 4 buttons to press.

The left hand side slide switch controls the on/off/transient mode of the back light and the right hand side

slide switch controls the on/off mode of 'return to time display' function. I will come back for these

later.

The first important thing to do is to set the time and date and year first. Push the square clock face

gently back once and it will give you a beep sound. The display will change with each gentle push e.g.

from time to date to timer to temperature to alarm clock etc). When it is displaying the time (default

00:00), press the
'S' for approximately 2 seconds. The hour digits will blink. Press the up or down arrow button to

change the number. Once it is what you want, press the s button to set it. Then the minute digits will

blink. Set it using either of the arrow buttons and then press the 's' button to finish. Too

complicated? Don't worry! You will have plenty of opportunity to practise this when you change the

batteries.

To set the date and year, just push the clock face to the date display and do similar button presses as

above. Don't worry about setting the day of the week. It is automatically set when the date is set.

Strangely enough you can set the year as well but I yet to find a way to get it displayed - not even a quick

flash. What is the use of setting it then? If you don't set it, the punishment will be: the day of the

week for that date is wrong!

To set the back light, slide the switch to on/off/transient. The transient mode is interesting. During

normal use you can push the clock face gently to change its display and at the same time the back light will

come on for a while to show you a few colours.

To set the display to always return back to 'time' (hh:mm), slide the other switch on the right hand side to

on. Then no matter how many time you push the clock face, it will always return to hh:mm display. If the

switch is set at 'no', the display will remain e.g. room temperature after the push and will not return back

to hh:mm display.

Good and the bad;

The good thing for this clock is many - cute looking, compact and perhaps portable too. Multi-colour back

light display is pleasing during the night. It is multi-function too - time, date, temperature, alarm and

timer.

Unfortunately you can not select a single colour display of the back light, and, most importantly this clock

eats alkaline batteries like a whale! If I switch on the multi-colour display every night, 3 AAA alkaline

batteries (the ever-lasting bunny - Dura-cell, not other brands!) will only last for a week or less. Then

the LED time display will fade significantly, very significantly that you can hardly see the time, even with

the back light switched off.

This may be linked with the ever-changing colour. I suspected that instead of having multiple LED of

different colours inside the unit, there is a ever-moving colour filter wheel over the white LED light. A

moving part like this will consume a lot more battery life and using multiple colour LEDs (more expensive

hardware option)

Overall summary:

It is a good multi-functional LED clock with good design intentions however it is seriously let down by its

huge appetite for battery consumption. Evern if you have loads of money for the consumables (batteries),

it is still not very environmental friendly even if you use re-chargeable batteries.