Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pros- Great projection clock, has exactly the features and information display I was looking for. Appears to be a fairly well made, heavy duty piece of electronic gadgetry. The display (I aim it at the ceiling) is a good size and plenty bright for viewing but not so bright as to be a disturbance in the room I'm sleeping in. This is my second projection clock, the first one was made by Oregon Scientific and lasted me for over a dozen years so I hope this one has similar longevity. Cons- The projected display doesn't alternate between temperatures and time. This wasn't clear in the description of the item though I did see the word "or" in there- I still wasn't sure if it would alternate or not. It doesn't but I'm OK with that, I anticipated that to be the case and decided for an otherwise good projection clock I could live with it. You push a button to toggle the projection display between the indoor temperature, the outdoor temperature and the time. If you're also wondering about that, now you know. The nice color LCD display is still quite bright on it's lowest setting, if you're in a dark room and your night vision has kicked in. I have this sitting on a nightstand that's slightly higher than my bed and it makes a dandy nightlight if that's what you want. I like it as dark as I can get it so that's not what I want. Because of the idiosyncrasies of LCD viewing angles I solved this by tilting the display far forward and using the projection part of the clock to hold it up. So it makes an "X" on the nightstand as you look at it from the side. This shines the LCD down onto the nightstand and subdues most of the light while still being readable from the angle of my pillow. You can flip the projected display 180 degrees but you can't rotate it at all. To rotate it you need to rotate the whole clock itself. Depending on where you want/need to have that projected display hit the wall/ceiling this can be an issue. Because ... remember the "projected display won't alternate between time and temp" thing? So unless you want to reach over and find the button to press to change the display you might want to just read the interior and exterior temperatures from the LCD screen. Which means you're limited to having the display facing you and that limits how the projection hits the wall/ceiling. My last projection clock was an Oregon Scientific brand and it didn't have any of these display issues at all, but it didn't have a nice backlit color LCD screen either. Most of these "cons" are a little nit-picky and probably wouldn't be an issue to most people but hey, I'm doing a review so these are my experiences with this item. Failure point- The one big problem I've had with this unit is that the exterior temperature sender died within a week of installation. I have a couple other Acurite brand indoor/outdoor weather gadgets that use the same sender, or one that will work with this item so I just switched the channel it was receiving on to a different outdoor sensor. Not a big deal for me but if you didn't have that option then about half the functionality you may have bought this for is lost and you're into warranty claim limbo. Happily it was the sender and not the receiver that failed and I had some extra senders. If it had been the receiver you'd be reading a one star review instead of a three star review. Conclusions- Other than the sensor sender failure the unit seems to be well made and robust. The instructions are easy to follow and setting the device up is straight forward and simple. There are features that should be included at this price point that were not and this indicates that the device wasn't as well thought-out at the engineering phase as it might have been. The alarm options are a nice touch though I don't use an alarm clock except on very rare occasions. I always wake up usually minutes before an alarm clock rings and part of the reason for that is likely the two or three times a night I come out of a deep sleep, open my eyes enough to see the time projected on the ceiling, and drop back off knowing how much time I have left to sleep. Which is why I really like projection clocks. Even with the above provisos I like the clock and I'm keeping it rather than send it back. I may see if I can get just that sensor sender replaced under warranty and if so I'll post an update back here when that happens. Update- Accurite wanted me to send the whole thing back or nothing. They would sell me another sensor but they wouldn't replace the sensor on warranty unless I sent the entire contents of the package back to them for replacement. I told them thanks for nothing and please do read my review on Amazon. Update 17 Apr. 2014- I dropped another star off of my original review. Because of the orientation of the projection on the same plane as the display- if you have the display facing where you can see it, set it, etc. then the numbers are in the wrong position to just look up and see them. They're stacked sideways instead of linear. After a while this gets really irksome, trying to decipher what time it is while half asleep and wanting to get back to full sleep. So I had to rotate the whole clock to get the projection amenable and now the display on the clock is pretty much useless. Unless I want to fumble around with it every time I need to set or change or see the display for any reason. This thing really wasn't that well thought out and after trying to live with it for several months I wish I had spent more and got the equivalent from Oregon Scientific to the one I had that died after a dozen years.