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:
- Hold down three tiny buttons at the same time.
- Hold down one tiny button, and click another tiny button 6 times.
- Hold down one tiny button, and click another tiny button 50 times.
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
posted by Daniel at 2:22 pm
7 Comments:
I have realted issues. I listen to ABC radio at night in an effort to bore myself to sleep. The biggest problem I have is that ABC radio play their fricken news 'theme song' at 100 decibels louder than all their other programs combined. And they have the news EVERY half an hour. So I have to set my radio timer such that it will switch off before the news so that it will not wake me up (which it will do every time without exception if i 'miss')
Without boring you with all the precise small button pressing, holding, clicking and fumbling details, it takes ON AVERAGE 45 clicks of a button while holding down another button (awkwardly) to do this.
This wouldn't suck nearly as much if I wasn't also a chronic insomniac. I somtimes have to do this 10 times a night.
And you thought you had bad, Dan. At least you only have to check your alarm once a night. Luxury, I'd say.
Had the same experience like you, Daniel. And since I'm getting up at a differnt time every day ... Found a Sony which can turn hours and minutes up AND down. So going from 7:00 to 6:50 is 12 clicks. (Your examples base on the AM/PM system, here in Germany with the 24hr system you had to press 23 times for one hour back...). My Sony has even two alarms, one for the radio (soft wake up) and the second which beeps (FINAL wake up call). But is cost a lot more than normal alaram clocks :-(
"But there's seldom a need for me to press the Snooze button 57 times in a row"
Well, if you feel crappy in the morning, sleep till noon.
6:50 + 57 * 5 min = 6:50 + 285 min = 6:50 + 4h + 45 min = 11:35.
That got to be enough. :D
My solution was to give up radio alarm clocks, or whatever you wnant to call them. I just got one of those small buzzers with hand that you spin a wheel in the back to set the time. best this is no light in the night and no button pressing.
My only problem now is my girlfriend that still uses a red light radio alarm clock. That thing just glows all over the bed room and it looks like a submarine in red alert.
my solution to that problem was to tactically place one of my pillow on top of it and (as I get up earlier) take it of when I leave.
Of course i forgot it many times and she couldn't hear the muffled alarm chocking under the pillow.
Not to mention that when you cut the power that thing starts showing the wrong time (happened sometime)
Oh god, I hate radio alarm clocks...
I had similar problem with the clock radio being too bright, but I found a solution you can check out at www.dimitstrips.com.
Hi there! I recently both a philips radio clock and i made the dumb choice without doing my research on clock radios. Maybe you know more then me and can set me straight. I heard a lot of rumors that radio clock are verry dangerous they emit emp fields, radiation. Now i am verry worried as i both the clock radio so that i dont have to sleep with my phone next to my bed so it can wake me up. If the clock radio really emits those things, than i made the biggest mistake.
yup. I have bought way too many clock radios and so far I have been dissappointed every time. My wife listens to late night radio and the digital units just can't tune them in. Onee unit became self-aware right out of the box and I was never able to turn off the alarm. It would show no alarm and then sometime around 2 a.m. it would come alive much like the domo-bot in i-Robot. Finally, I discovered a cord on the back that would make it not do that by yanking firmly on it away from the wall. Problem solved. The latest clock radio was $300. It'l find a home in my workshop because it turns out that it cant find the stations and the incessant clicking of buttons in the middle of the night as my wife hunted for her stations was about enough to headline us in the evening news. Bottom line is that, along with hundreds of similar experiences, (and I'm not kidding here) I find that electronic gadjets are really just toys and not something you want to count on to make life easier. I find them unecessarily complex and finicky.
Post a Comment
<< Home