Review on Sony ICFC218 Dream Machine Clock Radio - The Ultimate Black Radio Alarm Clock by Noah Lewis

I've only had this alarm clock for a few weeks and when I opened the packaging for the first time I immediately felt some remorse from the buyer. But after a few weeks I feel very different. First, the fear is much stronger than I expected. Yes, I realize I'm an idiot and could have read the measurements in the description, but the photos gave me the impression of a much slimmer and smaller design. There are also a lot more and fewer controls than I expected. I'm very tech savvy but I had to pull out the instructions to figure out how to set everything up on this watch. It was a little frustrating for me at first as it seemed unnecessarily complicated for the watch, but I found the instructions clear and easy to read and understand, which started to change my feelings. After the initial setup, I set up a test alarm after about 10 minutes. When the alarm went off, I was immediately excited about this purchase. It's not an "oh my god, we're going to nuclear war and running to bomb shelters" alert. It's a reasonable volume and it's just a simple beep that persists and increases in frequency the longer you let it run. I like it very, very much. I don't like waking up, and it's a bit more intrusive than the "Zen" alarm clock category, which uses bells and birdsong, but again, it doesn't put you to sleep. This quieter aspect also benefits my house, because we have a very open concept with attic rooms and you don't hear the alarm in the whole house. The display is a bit dark which I really appreciated in the end because it doesn't distract me at night. The display is quite large, so it should be easy to read if you place it a little further from the bed. It can be a little difficult to read in the morning if you have a very sunny room, but I prefer it when it's overwhelming at night. One more note: While the initial setup was less intuitive than I was hoping, the way you set your alarm is VERY easy and you don't have to do it every night before bed if your schedule changes. It is also easy to change the radio/buzzer function. This requires a backup battery hopefully you'll never have to do the initial setup again. There's also an indicator to show if the backup battery is low, which is a very nice touch, something I've never had with other alarm clocks. I don't think it's common for a power outage to run out of backup battery, but it gives an added sense of security.