Homedics SS-5010 Soundspa Premier Am/Fm Clock Radio

I really wanted to like this projection clock. It looks great and has several very nice features. Unfortunately it looks much better than it works.

I have had two of these in the last week. The first one that I brought home wouldn't receive FM transmissions very well, the tuning wheel is not marked, so tuning is by guess and by golly. I managed to tune it by using a portable radio and getting matching stations. Once tuned, the display became a fascinating presentation of seemingly random numbers. The numbers are not the numbers of the tuned station and vary from 71.0 to 102.6. After a bit the numbers stabilize and the display returns to the time (which is accurate).

The second one seemed to be OK for tuning, that is the numbers were stable even though not the numbers to which it was tuned...today it began the random number generation that the first one had from the beginning. The FM signal fades in and out as you walk around the room.

The clock face is quite bright, but I tamed it with some widow tinting film. The projection of time and temperature is very bright and the light around its edges lights up the room like the full moon. It is bright enough to cast shadows. I tried various means to control the excess light (paper towel tubes, more window film, etc.) but nothing works. I really need a dark room when trying to sleep.

The unit is very light, and pushing any of the buttons on the front require that you hold it still; by doing this, you press one or more of the many buttons on the back which causes some interesting but unintended actions.

The sending and or receiving of the outside temperature is sporadic. Some times is will be off for a few hours and then redisplay; some times I must bring the sending unit into the house to get the display back (the sender is less than 20 feet away with only one wall between it and the base).

I really wanted to like this unit, it looks real nice and has many of the functions that I want...unfortunately it doesn't work very well...it goes back to Bed Bath and Beyond tomorrow...my search for the ideal projection clock continues.

My wife got one of these by saving up gym reward points.

It has two settings for brightness which are "half the room is illuminated" and "the entire room is illuminated" I have to put a book in front of the thing some nights to sleep.

I played a game one month called "why didn't I wake up today" in which this clock was primary and my old free bank clock I've had for 20 years was secondary. Some highlights were:

Although the volume was up, something must have touched the knob because it was somehow off but touching it made it work.

No idea alarm was set, showed set, was awake and watched as the time went right on through and the alarm never went off.

The alarm just turned itself off one night.

The projection time and temp do not rotate 180 degrees this means that if you have the clock at the head of your bed facing you, and you for some reason want the info projected to your ceiling, well, it's going to be off.

The remote sensor sort of works... if the temperature is between 50 and 72 out you've got a good chance of it being right on. Outside of that range and you're screwed... woke up one day and it said it was 54, it was snowing. I put my hand where the sensor was outside and it was 20's at most. I looked at the sensor and it said somewhere around 30, the clock said 54, yeah, useful.

If the remote sensor is more than 8 feet away the thing will stop working in about a day

The sounds that this thing has are short-sequence loops, meaning you can predict exactly what the next sound will be after listening to it for a minute. This may not annoy you as much as it does me, but I need some randomness to my white noise, not repeating computer generated patterns.

The ideas here are good, but it's made cheaply, it doesn't properly function as an alarm clock (we have our phones set now all the time to wake us) that's about it. If you're considering purchasing one, I'd advise you didn't, but if you still want one contact me I'd love to see this thing go but the wife does not want it chucked.

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I really liked the design and offered features. I gave it a month and had several issues.

1. The display is very bright in a dark room.

2. The base and angles of the buttons are not stable. Every time you depress a button the clock slides.

3. The volume and radio tuner dials on the side are very sensitive. They move at the slightest touch.

4. The volume dial has spots where you completely lose any sound.

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A friend gave me this for Christmas and I was really excited about getting it. I have almost all my life had a habit of going to sleep with the radio playing and then automatically going off. But now that I'm married my wife can't stand ANY sound as she goes to sleep. I was ready to see if some of the "nature" sounds might be something she could accept. Well, the she actually liked the sounds and I was happy with the radio reception and the different options for the two alarms (wake on beep, wake to radio, wake to sound) as well as the timer for turning it off automatically.

But...I quickly found two horrible problems. One, the device too light and the buttons are positioned in such a way that to use them you have use two hands every time otherwise the you catch yourself pushing the thing all around the bedside table. Actually the only convenient button is the snooze button on the very top. Even the power button is unusable because you have to use one hand to stabilize it and the other to push.

Second, the display. Where the weight of the item was too "light" the display shines too much "light". I mean there is too much light. The first time I turned off the room lights I almost felt like I hadn't. There is almost enough light to read by. I have to turn the display away from facing me otherwise when I wake up at night to turn over or something else I'm blinded!! It's like there is a spotlight setting in one corner of the room. My wife gets up a lot to go to the bathroom and she would always turn on her bedside light but now she doesn't have too. (I'm not saying this is a good thing.)

Another issue is the projection clock. I've always dreamed of having a clock like this but I was so sad in the implementation. I would assume that the purpose of a projection clock is to make it convenient to remain on your back and look to the ceiling and see the time. But the way it's done the projection will only be behind the base clock or directly overhead of it. So, if I want to see the projection from where I am sleeping I have to turn towards the clock (and the blazing spotlight) itself and therefore don't need the projection. A big disappointment. :-(

To summarize, I really like what features are included but the design was probably never tested in real life to see how people would interact with it. As such I would NOT recommend this to anyone.

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My wife bought one of these and when we got it set up I was glad she got it. At first I thought 'To much for a clock' but after seeing what it does I changed my mind. This thing is not just a clock but the sounds help also. Being a disabled Vet I'm in bed a lot and with this clock/sound/radio combo. I can tell what the weather out-side is and the sound of the 'Rain Forest' helps me sleep, the sound is so good I have to remember that we don't have a bird to feed. When she brought it home and I listened to the different sounds I picked the 'Rain Forest' and it is on All day and Night every day and night, we haven't turned it off since we've gotten it. It is so nice we looked all over town and not one store had one,and so I checked Amazon and found it so I got 1 for my Daughter and Son-n-Law and will give it to them for Christmas. They live in Washington State and I'm sure they will enjoy the sound of the Rain Forest also,and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to listen to the Rain but they will enjoy the sound of the birds. For the Money I'm think ing about getting another one for back-up.

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