Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was shopping around for a sunrise alarm clock for a while and finally settled on this one because it was cheaper than the popular Phillips models while still having most of their more appealing features. I tried it out last night after it came in the mail, and so far I'm more or less happy with my purchase. It functions as I expected it would, and the features are nice if not top-notch. Here's a run-down of the pros and cons: Pros: 1. Sunrise AND sunset option (but so far I'm not sure if you can do both in one night) 2. Option for 4 nature sounds, a regular alarm noise, or FM radio to wake you up after the light has finished lighting up. You can adjust the volume of any of them to suit your waking up needs. 3. White light! I am a big fan of white light, and that was the biggest factor in why I chose this specific clock over the many other yellow light options. 4. The LED bulb seems to be fairly easy to replace, will last for quite a while (according to the packaging at least), and a replacement can be purchased for a reasonable price. 5. You can adjust the sunrise duration from 15 to 90 minutes at 15 minute intervals 6. Nice compact size; fits nicely on my tiny nightstand 7. Backup battery as well as wall plug 8. The light can be used separately as a night light or lamp if you want, but I haven't been able to determine if leaving it on will interfere with your sunrise in the morning. 9. There are 10 separate light levels, with the lowest being like a really dim night light, and the brightest being about the same as a 60 Watt-equivalent compact fluorescent. Cons: 1. The light is not bright enough to light up my 10x11 foot bedroom; at full brightness, the room looks like it would during that dim pre-dawn stage. Nevertheless, if you are facing the light with your eyes closed and the light on at full blast, it will be bright enough to convince you that it's light out. With that said, I think it would be unreasonable to expect this level of light to wake you up without some additional noise in the background, so I still set a backup alarm and turn the wake-up nature sound up really loud to make sure I get up. 2. The controls are definitely NOT intuitive. I read the instruction manual four times and still couldn't be sure that I was setting things correctly until I tried a few test runs. 3. The whole thing feels a bit rinky-dink for a $70 gadget, but that's a purely cosmetic complaint. Functionality is fine. 4. I have not figured out yet whether or not you can adjust the brightness of your sunrise. So far it seems like the default is to go from level 1 to level 10 over the amount of time you set. 5. Although the waves nature sound is convincing enough, my preferred wake-up sound (birds) sounds like an alarm clock with a chirpy beep. 6. The snooze button will be impossible to find if you are genuinely just waking up and trying to hit the snooze. It's the same size and shape as all the other buttons on the face, and it's not set apart from them at all. However, the light at its brightest is not obnoxious and you can adjust the alarm sound to a tolerable volume, so I don't anticipate ever needing to use the snooze function. 7. The LCD display can only be clearly read when the light is not on and when you look at it from a certain angle. I'm keeping my other alarm clock around to tell the time. 8. I noticed when I was testing out the sunrise function that the light comes on incrementally instead of smoothly. For example, it will stay on at level 1 for a while and then jump noticeably to the next level. My sleepy brain definitely doesn't notice this during actual use, though, so it's not a huge con.