Hey remember when I asked you all to help me find an alarm clock and we all failed miserably? 

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 09/26/2017 at 11:30 • Filed to: None

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I’ve had the same Emerson alarm clock for probably almost a decade. It’s great. It has giant numbers on it so I can read it without my glasses on, it automatically sets itself after being disconnected from power, it knows the date and daylight savings time. But my wife thinks it’s ugly.

Personally, I don’t care what an alarm clock looks like, I just want it to function how I like. And my alarm clock might be kinda ugly looking, but dammit, it functions great!

Aside from all the other features I mentioned before, it also has dual alarms so I can have my main weekday alarm time, and if I need to wake up at some other random time some day, I can set that time on the second alarm without having to redo my primary alarm. Nice.

My wife however, has been complaining for several months now about how my alarm clock doesn’t blend in with her vision for the decor in our bedroom. I tried back in April to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but somehow couldn’t find any Emerson alarm clocks. Don’t ask me why. So I kept my totally fine Emerson alarm clock, and all was right with the world.

My wife let it go, but within the past few weeks, she’s been changing up the sheets and curtains and crap for fall, and once again has been complaining about my supposedly ugly alarm clock. She escalated the alarm clock antagonism by asking me to try other alarm clocks we have lying around the house that she is more willing to tolerate the styling of. Those other clocks suck! One of them has dim-ass green numbers that I couldn’t read without my glasses. The other has bold red numbers that I can read, but not as well as my beloved Emerson. Neither of them have any of the spiffy features from my Emerson.

So tonight, I tried again to find a replacement, and discovered, hey, here’s Emerson with a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Given that there are literally thousands of reviews of these things on Amazon, I’m pretty sure they also existed back in April, and I’m kicking myself for how I didn’t manage to find them back then.

The Emerson clock that I landed on comes in both cyan and purplish blue colors. It’s got all the same goodies as my current clock, plus adds a night light with three brightness levels, a USB port for charging gadgets, and friggin bluetooth. I wouldn’t call its styling overly elegant, but I guess it’s more sleek and modern than my current clock, and my wife thinks it looks decent enough.

Why the hell couldn’t I find this thing before?

I liked the cyan one, but my wife liked the purplish one because she has grays and lavenders among the colors in our bedroom. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of a purple alarm clock, and the controls are probably more fiddly than the super simple easy on/off levers for each of the two alarms on my current Emerson clock, but I’d be willing to compromise if this was the way for me to get my desired alarm clock features and not be hounded about how ugly the damn clock is.

Then I discovered that this same clock is also !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , whatever the fuck that is. I showed this version to my wife and she liked it the best. I figured it’s not purple so that works for me. And now I have an iTOMA rebranded modern-ish looking late-2010s take on an Emerson SmartSet alarm clock on its way to my house. There’s even this handy youtube video overview of the features, and another one for how to set the thing.

Thanks, internet. I don’t know what the fuck I was doing back in April. I’m disappointed in myself.

(And no, I’m not using my damn phone as an alarm clock. I’m goddamn blind. My glasses prescription is -7. I need a real alarm clock with gigantic-ass numbers so I can see it without my glasses when I roll over in the middle of the night.)

UPDATE: I returned this clock. The white numbers were much harder for me to read without my glasses compared to the red numbers on my old Emerson. Even though it has an auto-dimmer feature when you turn out the lights in the room, my wife thought it was too bright at night. The procedures to set the alarm and other things were overly fiddly button-pressing sequences. The alarm setting in particular was irritating because you have to press a button, set the alarm time, press another button to set the volume, etc. but it timed out back to just showing the time too quickly. So to set all the alarm parameters took several tries. The radio reception was awful (although the radio on my old Emerson clock doesn’t exactly work either) and even when waking up to just the buzzer and not the radio the sound was still static-y. I’m back to my old Emerson clock and maybe I’ll try again at some point.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 11:48

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Stereo, big-ass LCD, iPod dock (30-pin), SD card slot, USB, easy-to-set alarms. Not cheap, but worth finding (I got mine at a thrift store for $10). I’m blind AF and I can read this thing at night, the first for any alarm clock for me.

I’m sure someone must have hacked one and put Linux on it...

ttyymmnn > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 11:49

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When did you start working for Emerson? ;)

Textured Soy Protein > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/26/2017 at 11:56

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Can you get rid of the Apple dock on the side? I got rid of my iPhone 3GS in 2011.

Textured Soy Protein > ttyymmnn 09/26/2017 at 11:56

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If I worked for them wouldn’t I have gotten one of the ones with the Emerson brand on it instead? ;)

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/26/2017 at 12:02

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Dock just tucks into the side. I haven’t used it since I upgraded from a 4S to a 6S Plus last year.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 12:13

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I do not remember, but thanks. Might end up picking one of these up for my wife...

Textured Soy Protein > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/26/2017 at 12:16

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This seems like a few more features than I really want.

Textured Soy Protein > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 09/26/2017 at 12:28

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Here’s how it breaks down... 

Purple - Emerson CKS1507
Cyan - Emerson ER100301 (has a higher-powered USB port, but currently out of stock)
White - iTOMA CKS507

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 12:33

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White is nice.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 12:42

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I suspect that this is one of the few times in recorded history that that sentence had ever been uttered. I really bought it for the large screen and USB port, and haven’t used the other features much. Not surprisingly, you can use your own pictures and alert sounds, so it’s possible to wake up to the sights and sounds of your kids, for example, if they don’t already do that for you without your asking...

Another nice feature is that it changes the brightness on the screen to help you wake up; I think it’s a sky blue screen with clouds, kind of like those fancy Philips clock/lamp thingies, but years earlier. A nice touch that makes getting up at 2AM slightly easier.

Textured Soy Protein > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/26/2017 at 13:32

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Too many features is actually very simple. Sometimes you just want something to do a limited number of things, and layering a bunch of other things it can do on top of it makes the few basic things you want to do more complicated.

I don’t want a picture background behind the clock because I’m blind as hell and that’ll just make it harder to read the clock.

I don’t want any of those Apple controls because I don’t have a device that’ll work with them.

According to the manual , only the UK model of this clock automatically adjusts for daylight savings time. Which is something that both my current Emerson clock and my new iTOMA clock do. I like auto DST adjustment. It’s one less clock I have to reset when that happens.

If you like it, great, but it’s not for me.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 15:49

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I know, I was just joking. It’s a clock, and is overkill for what it is. It’s like a brainstorming session was held and every idea that anyone came up with was included. Perhaps it’s just a tad too old to be Bluetooth and WiFi enabled, but I’m sure they would have done it if they could have.

190octane > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 18:08

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Question: do you have any smart home features, especially smart lights (Phillips hue, lifx)?

If so, there’s an alarm clock called Beddi, it can do things like turn your lights on when your alarm goes off and other fun things.

Textured Soy Protein > 190octane 09/26/2017 at 18:15

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I have no smart home doodads, and the numbers on this clock are way too small for my blind ass.

190octane > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 18:24

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Yep, definitely not the clock for you then.

MM54 > Textured Soy Protein 09/26/2017 at 22:00

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As someone with a prescription of -6.75 let me know if you can read it from a foot or two away without glasses, I may be buying a new alarm clock if so.

Textured Soy Protein > MM54 09/27/2017 at 20:55

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I got it tonight. It passes the squint test, although I was worried for a bit but that was because my eyes hadn’t fully adjusted.

To be honest it’s not quite as readable as my old Emerson clock with red numbers. I think there’s something about red light where our eyes can see it better in the dark.

For maximum readability you might want to go with this slightly differently shaped one with red numbers.

It was actually my first choice but my wife vetoed it based on being yet another all black clock with red numbers that didn’t fit with the decor. Sigh.

Textured Soy Protein > MM54 09/27/2017 at 22:50

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Actually, I may have to rescind the recommendation.

The buttons to set the different functions are a little too fiddly, the instructions aren’t super clear, and when you press the button to set an alarm, it times out pretty quickly before it returns back to displaying the time. It sometimes takes several tries to set the alarm with the different settings like time, day and volume.

I could live with that, except...

The audio is full of static. My wife asked how loud the alarm sound is so I set it to go off a minute ahead, and with just the beeper noise set, there was a bunch of static. The radio is also full of static. It got the best reception when the little antenna cord is all coiled up on itself and got progressively worse as I unwound it. I’m going to try it out for tonight but I think that static coming on even when you’re not using the radio to wake up is a dealbreaker. I never use the radio anyway so if it was just static on the radio I would be fine.

MM54 > Textured Soy Protein 09/28/2017 at 18:17

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Bummer!