Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I did a lot of research on these sunrise simulating alarm clocks and most of them seem to have fairly mixed reviews, so I took a gamble on this one which doesn't have many reviews yet. It looks cool enough and it's made by Verilux, which has a pretty good name in this arena. I'm sending this clock back to Amazon, and here's why: 1) There is a loud buzz in the speakers that is particularly noticeable on the alarm chimes and one of the other sound effects. It's even worse when the colors are cycling and a sound is playing, so I don't know the story, if it is some kind of interference or what. 2) The LEDs are extremely cheap. You can especially tell when the lights are changing color because when the voltage varies to create different colors, you can see the lights flicker. I've seen this on very cheap LEDs, but not proper ones. For almost $100, they certainly could have sprung for decent LEDs (or voltage regulators, I don't know electronics, whatever would make the light not flicker). Even the white light flickers at certain intensity levels, and also emits a low hum like old fluorescent tubes when it does. 3) The point of a light alarm clock is it's supposed to simulate sunrise. In order to do that, it has to create at least a somewhat significant amount of light. When this thing is on full blast, it's like someone just plugged in a 10 watt night light next to you. It seriously could not output over 150 lumens. I like that Verilux wanted to use LED technology, but at least use ones that create a decent amount of light. This is more of a mood light than a wake up light. 4) I'm decently tech savvy, but this clock does have a high learning curve. Once you figure it out, the methods aren't overly complicated, but the instruction manual almost seems like it went out of its way to make the information unclear. It makes me think there is some functionality that I'm missing. 5) The entire thing feels cheap. Cheap plastic, cheap buttons, cheap speakers, cheap LEDs. It feels like some no-name Chinese knock-off of an established brand, only Verilux is an established brand. The design is attractive enough, but everything about this clock just feels cheap. That leads me to my final point. If this clock was $30 and you wanted a novelty clock with a light in it, I'd say it's fine. But for about $100, I expected much more quality. I really can't figure out the pricing. It can't contain more than $3 worth of parts, there's no patent on making a light that brightens slowly, and it's not difficult to program a light to do this. They way I figure, they are selling these things at a 2000% profit and pocketing $95 on each one. Yes, I know they should make a profit, but their pricing strategy is way off given the quality level. These aren't special color temperature LEDs to help with seasonal affected disorder like other Verilux products either, they're just simple off the shelf LEDs. It's just cheap components all around. If you want one of these kinds of clocks, I would recommend finding one that actually lights up the room, or just figure they're all a bit wonky and go with a cheap one. I'm quite disappointed that Verilux would market a clock with this many shortcomings at this price point. I expect to see it for $29.99 in the near future or discontinued. I'm going to go with one of the uglier designs that uses a regular light bulb so at least the light function will do what it's supposed to.