Clock Radios.

Clock radios suck.

Here's a selection of problems I've had with every bedside clock/radio/alarm wake-me-up-in-the-morning device I've ever had:

At night, the numbers are WAY TOO BRIGHT.

For some reason even clock radios with dimming sensors are much too bright. I can see around my whole bedroom in the glow of the numbers. I have to turn the clock radio around to get to sleep, meaning I now can't see the time. What gives? I don't need a night light. Can't I have a dial or something to turn the brightness down? Even GameBoys have a brightness adjustment.

It's WAY TOO HARD to set the alarm time.

I normally set my alarm for 7am. If I want to get up at, say, 6:50am, I have to:

1. Hold down three tiny buttons at the same time.
2. Hold down one tiny button, and click another tiny button 6 times.
3. Hold down one tiny button, and click another tiny button 50 times.

That's 57 CLICKS, to get up TEN MINUTES EARLIER. Not to mention all the "holding down" malarkey. It's easier to set an alarm on my mobile phone -- 9 clicks in total gets through the menus and types in the alarm time. It's easier to set an alarm on my PC -- right-click on TClock, click on TClock Properties, click on Alarm, type the time.

The primary purpose of my clock radio is to wake me up with an alarm. The primary purpose of my mobile phone is to call people. How can it need SIX TIMES as many clicks to set an alarm on the device that is made for that purpose?

Plus, for some reason all the buttons are about one third the size of my fingertip. They're built to hurt. Except the Snooze button. They make it *really* easy to hit the Snooze button. But there's seldom a need for me to press the Snooze button 57 times in a row.

One knob does several things.

My children occasionally play with my clock radio. Sometimes they turn the volume knob up or down. The problem is, the volume knob's correct name is "the inexplicibly combined volume control and alarm noise selector knob". With every clock radio I can remember, you select between the "turn on the radio" alarm mode and the "bleep bleep bleep" alarm mode by turning the volume down all the way til it clicks.

Why isn't there a normal sliding switch marked "radio" on one side, and "bleep" on the other? I know they've mastered the technology, coz there's a switch just like that to choose between AM and FM. I originally imagined they were cleverly stopping me from having my alarm switched to "radio" when the volume is down so far that I won't hear the alarm at all. Boy, that would be bad. Lucky they thought of it. It's a shame they completely failed to prevent this from happening.

My kids still manage to leave the volume knob turned down far enough that the radio is silent, but not far enough to click the bleeper on. If there was an indicator on the display showing the alarm mode, then I would notice this in the evening, instead of, say, the next morning, 20 minutes after my performance evaluation was supposed to start. But no, the only way to find out if your clock radio is in this dangerous state is to fiddle with the knob. Think about this for a second. On a device with a prominent, illuminated screen, the only way to find out this important information is via your sense of touch.

There's some great industrial design going on there. Are there Ig Nobels for small appliance manufacturers? My only consolation is that even if my alarm fails to wake me, my kids probably will.

Hopefully I've convinced you, dear reader, that clock radios, as a class of product, suck. They are obviously hard to get right. If only Google would make a clock radio. That probably wouldn't suck.

- Daniel