Sharper ImageSound Soother White Noise Machine

I was dealing with bad insomnia for the past few months, and my efforts to wake earlier (so I'd be tired enough to sleep earlier) were not helped by me constantly sleeping through my alarm. I was looking for a clock with a few specific functions: 1. It had to have a gradual wake feature, as the shock from normal alarm clocks always left me groggy in the morning, 2. It had to be able to use some kind of nature sound as the alarm, simply because it's more pleasant to wake up to those than it is to a beep, and 3. It had to be lit with cool blue LED lights, because this is less jarring to look at at night, and the blue is more soothing to look at than the normal red LEDs, which just look ugly to me.It was really impressed with how many sounds there were on the clock (20), I didn't expect it to have that many. I've never heard the earlier model so I can't comment if the clarity was better with those, but the sounds are fine to use as an alarm. They are definitely not clear enough to use as a sound machine or sound soother; there is a lot of noise, like the sounds were recorded through a cheap microphone, or possibly the speakers are cheap. But since I did not buy the alarm clock to listen to, and just use it as an alarm, it personally did not matter to me.Some of the sounds are also pretty clear. I like to use the wind chimes sound as my alarm, since it's a gentle way to wake up, and the sound clarity is better than some of the other sounds like the ocean or the brook.It's very easy and straightforward to navigate the clock menus and set up the alarm. You can also program 2 alarms, which is a nice bonus! And you can set each alarm to go off everyday, every weekday, or every weekend day. I was impressed with how many features the clock was programmed with.My insomnia is also a lot better now, and this clock looks great on my blue desk! It had an unobtrusive yet slick and modern design, and the numbers have 3 levels of brightness that are all aesthetically pleasing. There is also a daylight savings time button on the back of the clock, so you can adjust that with the flick of a finger instead of programming it through the clock buttons manually.I am happy with my purchase and glad I bought it despite the negative reviews. :) There really wasn't any other alarm clock on Amazon that fit my criteria, and if they did they cost over $100 and there was no way I was paying that much for an alarm clock, so I'm relieved that the one clock that is reasonably priced turned out to be better than what I had been expecting.

Sharper Image EC-B150 Premium Sound Soother, Serial Nr. of this unit appears to be #2912. Although the stock item photo appears to show the top buttons surrounded by brushed silver backgound, the one I received is actually glossy black background with flat black selection buttons...just for what it's worth, it looks great either way. The unit as received has a tight, professional appearance, and looks very nice when installed.The display is a backlit liquid crystal, visible by day but not overly obtrusive at nite. The intensity of the display is adjustable by a rear mounted 4 position slide switch (Off, L, M, H). Medium works great for me. Rear mounted as well is a slide switch that enables or disables onboard automatic time adjustment for Daylight savings time. The items displayed when the unit is done being set up make real sense; very large Time of Day, a very small icon showing alarm(s) that are set (along with an icon showing what will be the alarm type sounded), also the actually day name, and the date (short month name and day number)are shown.This unit allows the user to listen to one sound by timer to go to sleep by, and a DIFFERENT sound (or FM radio or alarm) to wake up to. From what I have read, the previous models did not offer this.The unit is fairly lightweight, but has non-skid feet that stop is from sliding around. There are a pair of small speakers mounted rear facing that provide the sound. I find if I position the unit a little ways away from the wall behind the headboard, the Sound Soother does a good job of filling the corner of the room with sound. Better yet would be to position the unit as you would a white noise generator, (across the room, not so close to the head of the bed).Some of the sounds on this are better than others to me. Certain sounds are cyclical by nature and lend themselves to the fairly short loop that the unit uses (Surf's up, Ebb tide, Dockside,ect). Several sounds are very nice just because of their content; I like the distant rooster in Everglades for example, and Rainforest is nice as well. The wake up sounds come on low volume at first, and then becomes louder over several minutes which is another nice feature. The box mentions clock "AutoSet", and I do not know what they mean by this. I was required, as part of setup, to tell the unit the month, day, year, hour and minute, AM or PM; I didn't see anything automatic about the clock setup. The clock has options in it for setting the alarm to only operate during the week (M,T,W,Th,F) with one single toggle setting, a nice little option.I'm happy with this purchase, and I think this model is a improvement over some of the earlier models. I have not used the digital FM radio included in this model, so I have no opinion on the radio portion of the machine.