Better set another alarm just in case – JINGOU Sunrise Alarm Clock

Check out the video review here!

This Sunrise Alarm Clock retails for $24.99 USD. It functions with or without a cord, so this product is ideal for travelers. It’s biggest selling point is the sunrise wake-up feature. This feature works by slowly ramping-up the light with 20 levels of brightness 30 minutes before your scheduled wakeup time. By the time your alarm goes off, the light will be at maximum brightness and you’ll hear a relaxing nature sound to wake you up.

*Packaging*

This product was packaged very well. I felt that all of the packaging components served a purpose and I didn’t find any wasteful products. Inside, you’ll find: the light, USB cord, and instructions.

*Instructions*

The instructions weren’t very well laid-out from a translation perspective. I felt that a lot of key info was lost in translation.

*Features*

Dual Power Modes

You can use this with or without the cord, which is nice. You also have a battery level indicator that starts to flash when the battery is low. Wish it showed the precise battery level.

Three-Level White Light Brightness

By touching the square above, you can adjust this device’s white light to one of three levels.

“Living Colors”

The instructions claim that, if you hold the top touch button for three seconds after you have the device set in one of three brightness levels, you can get the device to cycle through the colors of the rainbow. It’s more like pressing the button for maybe a second before the lights start to cycle.

*Setup*

Setting the time

As you’ll see in my video, I had an exceptionally-difficult time actually setting the clock itself. The instructions said to hold down the clock setup button for about three seconds. You have to press it and hold this button for maybe a second-and-a-half. But even then, when you reach the setup screen to set the clock, the + and – time-addition and time-subtraction buttons wouldn’t work. Only after holding down the clock setup button while using the time adjustment buttons was I able to set the alarm. While this may sound obvious to any user that (likely) has an alarm clock in their home, nowhere was this process mentioned in the instruction manual.

I liked the fact that you could set the alarm between 12-hour and 24-hour modes. This would be a useful feature for an individual in the military – especially if they travel.

Alarm Clock

The process for setting the alarm clock followed the instructions a bit more closely. Basically, after you set the alarm, you’ll be able to select one of five nature sounds.

Nature Sounds

Honestly, i’m not sure if I would want to wakeup to one of the five nature sounds, as they would likely make me fall asleep more than wake me up.

What’s frustrating is that the playback is not gapless. So you’ll hear the same sound repeated within 15 seconds – and you’ll notice the gap. I wish that the nature sounds had a longer recording.

Good as a Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) light?

A quick background on me…I suffer from SAD – pretty badly. One of the many therapy products available to help fight the “winter blues” and fatigue is a therapy light, which mimics natural sunlight. My doctor recommended a 10,000 lux brightness level. There are some smaller versions available for office use that emit about 5,000 lux.

I don’t find this to be an effective SAD light at all. You’ll know when you have 10,000 – or 5,000 – lux, as it feels like Heaven’s Gate is opening wide. The brightness does not compare to this at all.

Good as a sunrise simulator?

I don’t think that this is the ideal sunrise simulator for several reasons, which I will outline below:

1. The light isn’t very bright.
2. The white light actually hurts my eyes a little bit. This has nothing to do with the brightness; but rather, the type of light emitted.
3. You have no option – within your alarm setting – to choose when the device starts to light up. You can’t choose the light to start ramping-up 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 minutes before your scheduled alarm time. It always has to be 30 minutes.
4. It won’t work with an alarm less than 30 minutes into the future.
5. It doesn’t simulate the orange glow that you typically see in a sunrise – it’s all white light. That’s inexcusable, since this product has a “living colors” feature.
6. You can’t turn this feature on and off on a whim – it is a feature unique to the alarm clock

Check out the sunrise light ramping-up!

Good as an alarm clock?

I don’t think that this is the ideal alarm clock – in terms of the nature sounds going-off.

1. There is no volume control when the nature sounds go off. It slowly increases volume within the five-minute time-frame. The lowest sound is barely-audible.
2. There is no snooze button at all – which I believe is unacceptable for any product advertising itself as an alarm clock.
3. The nature sounds stop after five minutes. After 10 minutes of silence, the light turns itself off. So you basically have 15 minutes to make sure you don’t fall asleep again. That’s a high-order for an extremely-heavy sleeper like myself who has a hard time waking up in the morning.
4. You cannot set separate alarms. For example, if you liked to wake up an hour later on the weekends, you don’t have that option. But this is a common shortcoming to many basic alarms. However, when this is marketed as a wake-up light, you would naturally assume that the alarm would be an excellent feature that makes the sunrise simulation experience work.
5. Also, when you select your nature sounds, it doesn’t play the right one. For example, I selected the second nature sound to go off on my alarm. Instead, the first one (arguably the most-annoying, since it appears to be the shortest recording and has lots and lots of gaps in the playback) went off. So selecting nature sounds seems to be pointless in the alarm function.

Check out this video of the alarm going off

Good as a nightlight?

OK, OK, this isn’t one of the advertised features, but it’s a question that should be answered. If you want a basic night-light (that does not go off – warning to light sleepers), I think that this is an acceptable product.

Good as a regular light?

Again, not a feature touted. However, I found this to be an acceptable white light that you could use during the day-time. Again, like the nightlight, you have to manually turn this on and off.

*Build Quality*

Not bad for a $25 product. It is lightweight and made of durable plastic. It would probably survive a drop from your nightstand on to carpet below. It would probably crack if your room has a hardwood floor.

*Value*

Given the build quality and just the quantity of numerous (ill-conceived) features, I would say that $25 is a fair price for this product. This is a surprise to me, honestly, as many of the products that I review are often priced too-high.

*Verdict*

2.5/5 Stars – Really, the only features that are going for this product are the build quality, value, dual-power modes, three white light brightness settings, and the “living colors.” Everything else is a mess – it fails both as an alarm clock and as a sunrise simulator for numerous reasons outlined above.

 

Hardly Perfect – Rowenta Aqua Perfect HU5220 Humidifier, Black

PROS

-Awesome design
-Easy to use touch screen
-Easy to fill with included water handle
-Screen will dim to ensure you get a good night’s sleep
-Fairly-quiet
-Solidly-built

CONS

-Inaccurate humidistat readings leads to either your room turning into a desert or rainforest
-Inaccurate temperature readings plays a role in ensuring you will never get the device to turn on and off at the correct levels to maintain optimum humidity
-Horrible customer service
-Pricy – I expected something well-designed to last me years

I regret buying this humidifier! Sure, it may look all cool and futuristic, but it is designed very poorly. The humidistat sensor is way too close to the device, so you will get inaccurate readings ALL THE TIME. I tried putting a dry towel over the sensor to fix the inaccurate, high-humidity readings – to no avail. I tried turning it off and on. I re-read the instruction manual. Nothing could fix it.

I got external hygrometers and they read about the same level of humidity as each other while the reading on the Rowenta was WAY off.

Why is having an accurate humidistat reading important on a humidifier? Well, it will ensure it maintains the correct level of humidity in your room. This piece of garbage would stop when it was clearly too dry and would stay on when it was too humid – thereby making me both uncomfortable and vulnerable to mold and mildew.

Thinking I may have received a dud, Amazon kindly sent me a replacement, but then I had the same problems. I’ve concluded that it is a design flaw.

I further gave the huimidifier the benefit of the doubt and I sent mine back to Rowenta for repair. A few weeks later, I get a package with my humidifier. No letter, no email, no phone – nothing! Then they have the audacity to send me a survey asking how their customer service is.

I rarely write reviews for some things I strongly dislike – I’ll usually suck it up and deal with it or return it with no problem. However, the poor design of this product and even worse customer service is unacceptable!

I encourage everyone to AVOID this humidifier at all costs – you’ll waste precious time and money like I did. If this was simply a bad product and had excellent customer service, I would still give them the benefit of the doubt and try their other product lines.

However, due to the worst customer service I’ve ever seen, I will without hesitation recommend that you DO NOT BUY Rowenta products!

Overall Rating: 0/5 Stars

An iPhone Screen Protector That Has You Covered in More Ways Than One!

Check out the video!

After a frustrating installation experience with a previous “name-brand” screen protector, I swore-off screen protectors for several years. What really sold it for me was the fact that the screen also doubles as a privacy screen – so you can keep the peeps at bay

==Unboxing==

 

All of the materials are very well-protected in the plastic-case design. Open it up and you’ll find:

 

-Glass screen/privacy protector
-Wet wipe
-Dry Wipe
-Sticker to remove dust
-Polishing cloth

 

I really loved how I didn’t have to grab some rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs to prepare this for installation.

 

==Phone Preparation==

I currently have an iPhone 7 Plus, which I’ve owned for the past 15 months. I’m not a very clumsy phone user and I take good care of all my electronic devices.
With that being said, in addition to following the instructions on cleaning the screen, I also removed my phone case and used the cleaning materials to clean all-around my phone. That’s the thing when you take care of devices – they tend to accumulate a lot of dust and debris.

 

Instructions were quite clear and I was able to install the screen in under 10 minutes – all without the frustration! I’m not a technically-savvy person, but if I can install this glass screen, you can too!

 

==Testing==

Due to the nature of this product and my smart-phone, I didn’t engage in any testing. Rather, I will update this review in the event that this screen stops screen damage from a fall. However, the glass is pretty-thick (as far as they go), so I am confident that I could probably drop this from up to six feet high and not sustain any damage to my phone.

 

==Future Features==

For a future iteration of this product, I would suggest:

-Including a means to perfectly align the protector to the screen. This could be a sticker, a frame, a holder, or something that would allow you to precisely fit this screen to the phone. This is just a personal preference, as I am sure that you would still be able to make calls and take selfies if the glass was misaligned. But that’s just me being picky 🙂

 

==Customer Service==

Although I was excited about the privacy screen itself, the folks over at Customer Service is what really sealed the deal for me. They were not only patient with me when I ordered the wrong screen protector, but they were also checking-up on me to make sure I was fully-satisfied with this product.

 

==Score==

5/5 Stars – Durable, Provides Privacy, Super-Easy Self-Installation, and Excellent Customer Service is what really separates this product from the many others that you’ll doubtless find on the market today.