Review on Emerson CKS1800 SmartSet Radio Display by Tony Pierce

Updated June 2018 which we have a lot here in the outback. The clock is always ahead 5 minutes, and even if I turn it back, it's going back 5 minutes in a day or two, but it's never more than 5 minutes behind. It seems that "SmartSet" is not that smart. I'm having a few issues with this watch which was meant to replace the 1980's digital watch that started telling the time a few weeks ago. It has the two brightness settings listed in the description, but they get dimmer and dimmer... and the brightest setting is so low it's barely visible from about 10 feet away. That's a far cry from the brightness shown in the image for green, and if it's even half as bright that's probably overkill. There's also a piece of highly reflective clear plastic that reflects light and during the day you literally can't tell the time, if any glare at all. There is a wooden shelf above our large TV and that was the intended location for this clock, but there was a fairly large adapter on the plug so it didn't go through the hole that resulted in the cord hanging off the edge of the shelf though it turned out not to be a problem because it's too dark to see the time on the shelf. To put it on a shelf would require a hole about 2" in diameter and if they had shown the size of the plug I would not have bought it for that reason alone. Now it's on the floor and tucked into a corner so we can tell the time without looking at it. When connecting, the time was wrong...5 minutes past...even though the date was correct, which probably means the time is lost. The backup battery has been installed, but who knows how long it will try to keep all the information correct. This is the second purchase and this is another loser. I paid about seven bucks for it so the pain is minimal and not worth the return process, but at the current price of seventeen bucks I wouldn't recommend it unless you're in pitch black and not very far off. We have aluminum shutters in the room that close before sunset, so there's not a lot of light in the room, but the front panel of this thing amplifies it like a mirror. Enough ranting but with all the 3 star ratings and under I should have avoided it but the low price drew me in and all I can say is it was my fault. I haven't tried any other features other than time because that's all I wanted from it. I rarely rate anything this bad, but I took off one star for the connector, one for the brightness that didn't match the picture, one for the highly reflective bezel and that left two stars despite it being a flip. Coins between this and a star. It's going to the store for the next one so I can really see what I'm getting.