Sharper Image CD/Radio & Sound Soother: The World's Most Expensive Alarm Clock?
Written: Dec 14 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very convenient, great features, cool factor
Cons: Expensive
The Bottom Line: A wonderful idea that combines a CD player/radio/alarm clock into one machine that does all three very well and plays relaxing sounds. Wonderful.
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| hwz1's Full Review: CD Radio/Alarm Clock with Sound Soother 20 and Tal... |
See if you can follow me here: Most of us buy an alarm clock about every decade or so and when we do so, we spend less than $50. Well less than $50. Right?
Imagine my surprise when I parents came home with the Sharper Image CD/Radio?/Alarm clock. The thing is beautiful and sounds great, but it just may be the world's most expensive alarm clock. Yep, it will run you more than $200 for the entire contraption. While I will admit to a weakness when it comes to Sharper Image products, this was ridiculous and way out of character for my parents. So, I needed to know more.
Basically, the thing consists of an alarm clock, cd player, and a sound "maker". The alarm and cd player are fairly self explanatory, but it is the sound maker that needs some explaining. Essentially, it is one of those noise machines that make various relaxing sounds. A babbling brook, rainforest, or the sound of the ocean. These and 17 other sounds are included.
So this is what sets this machine apart from being just an over-priced alarm/cd player. A machine like this costs a good $50 or more on it's own and Sharper Image just took the next step of combining a few things we all us. The sound machine works well (I have used some sort of sound machine since I was a young teen.) and is very soothing. The sounds are listed on the machine and are easy to access- just a touch of a button. You can even program the alarm to play one of these sounds in order to wake you up. Which, to me at least, seems odd. The sounds are supposed to relax you, not wake you up.
At any rate, the sound machine portion of this machine passes my tests with flying colors. My two tests are whether or not the machine provides relaxing noise and whether or not it does a good job of blocking out other noise. The machine does both quite well.
What about the alarm clock? It works. Perhaps too well. You can set it up to sound like any other alarm or you can program it to play a CD of your choice, the radio, church bells, or the relaxing sounds. The sound will get louder in a progression of 10 different steps until you are wondering how loud the thing can really go. The coolest feature of the alarm is the sleep button. If you want to get an extra 10 minutes, simply press the button once. Twenty extra minutes and you get to press twice. You get the idea. You can press up to six times for an extra 60 minutes of sleep. Even cooler is the ability to press a button and ask for the time. Instantaneously, the clock will tell you what time it is. Pretty cool.
Finally, the CD player. Lets face it, you did not buy this for the CD player, but Sharper Image still comes through with a pretty CD player. The best thing about it is the convenience of it- putting together three products into one and the entire thing is not a lot bigger than, say, half a phone book. What this means is that you can hear the CD's that you want to hear in your bedroom without purchasing another CD player and/or without blasting the main system loud enough that you wake up the dead. The sound is quite good and the CD player functions and performs just as any other CD does. You can program up to 21 tracks and also pre-set up to 30 radio stations.
What else? Well, a nice feature is the way you can asleep with this machine. Remember how the alarm will gradually increase in sound? Well, when you want to fall asleep the opposite occurs. You can set a timer and as you get near the end of the time the system will slowly turn down the volume until it is all quiet. Finally, there is a blue backlit screen that displays all of the info that you need.
After almost falling down the steps with amazement at what my parents had purchased and how much they had paid, I might be off to get one for myself. The last time we stayed at their house for a weekend we used the machine and really did enjoy it. Nothing was better than the ability to fall asleep to the music and then have it slowly drowned out. We also enjoyed the compactness of the machine and the fact that you get three components in one machine.
I highly recommend the Sharper Image CD/Radio/Alarm clock and think you will find it money well spent. Yes it is expensive, but it is also something that you will enjoy and makes sense if you have the need for a CD player in your room, or if you enjoy falling sleep to the sounds. We will be making our purchase as soon as the holidays are over and we have tallied the bills.
Recommended:
Yes
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hwz1
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Location: Philadelphia, PA
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