Radio-Controlled Travel Alarm

Just about to buy a replacement of this product, after the dog got ahold of it and chewed it. I'm not going to look for any other product, I will just order this item again. I have carried this little travel alarm every week for the last 4 years, from time zone to time zone and couldn't be happier with it. It adjusts, automatically every time.

I bought this primarily for my SUV. The factory-installed stereo came with a clock that was easy to read day or night, but the replacement stereo had a clock that's impossible to read when the sun is out. This clock has an LCD display, so the sunnier it gets, the easier it is to read. And when I'm travelling, I can just grab it and take it into the hotel with me at night.

The clock sets automatically, just as advertised. This sits inside my SUV, which is parked inside a garage with a bonus room above, and it receives the "atomic signal" with no problems. The description is a little misleading when it comes to time zones. You do have to manually change the time zone as you travel; this unit doesn't have a built-in GPS and doesn't know what time zone it is located in. This is easily done and not a drawback. I like it a lot, and recommend it.

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This travel alarm does all I would expect of it as described by other reviewers. However, I noted when I bought the clock that one of the reviews mentioned an "excellent blue electroluminescent display". To me, that indicated that the clock had a "backlit" (or "back light") screen display. No so! This clock (currently, on 1/30/11) has a display that is lit by a white LED bulb from the right margin of the screen. What's the difference? A backlit screen is evenly lit over the entire display and results in the digital clock numbers having a high/increased contrast to the display background. A clock (such as this one) with a white LED side light display causes the digital clock numbers to fade (have a very low contrast) with respect to the display background. That doesn't make any difference during the daylight hours, but at night (in the dark); the display appears very faded when trying to check the time. I am far sighted, and the time display is impossible for me to read at night in a dark room using only the white led light that shines from right to left across the display. I could possibly read it with a flashlight, or by locating my glasses and putting them on to check the time, but that is usually not what one want to be doing when trying to fall back to sleep at (e.g.) 3:00 AM. Too bad the LA CROSSE Company did not make these clocks with a backlit display. The technology to do this has been around for many years. My last travel alarm was purchased from Radio Shack many years ago and (with its backlit display) I never had a problem checking the time at night. Because of the faded night time display on this clock, I would not recommend it to others. This is especially true if, like me, you are far sighted and have to wear glasses for "near" viewing. Note, this item was purchased from "Bears Discount Den, LLC" via Amazon.com.

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I was eager to receive this alarm clock and it arrived quickly. I had a bit of trouble setting it up at first and actually had to read the manual -unusual for me! The clock set up is not totally intuitive the way I prefer electronic devices to be, but I did manage to set it up properly without much pain.

The clock does everything right. The only limitation is likely due to the fact that the radio time signal isn't available world wide. So you are only able to set time zones for a 12-hour range, not 24 hours for all 24 time zones. Even in Europe I could not set the clock to CET directly. Turns out that's not a major problem. I just left the time zone set to US ET, where I live, and changed the time to 6 hours later. It worked just fine.

Upon returning from Europe I took the clock out of my bag and noticed it had set itself back to the current US ET time correctly. Nice!

I especially like being able to give the clock a small push at night and see the time and alarm time lit by the back light. The same action sets the 5or 10-minute snooze function if you choose to enable that at all. All in all this clock is great.

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You know you're in trouble when the thing refers you to a website for instructions. Just what you want to do when you're tired and stressed about whether your alarm will in fact work.

There are instructions on the back, but I think they leave out some important information. I'll wrestle with it again when I have the time and energy, but meanwhile just wanted to plead with the world just to keep things simple, especially when it comes to alarm clocks. The old ones were intuitive without being particularly accurate, the new ones, like this, are accurate but a challenge to operate.

Sad. Though I do realize it's all relative...