Customer Reviews

Oregon Scientific RM981A Radio-Controlled Alarm Clock

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This product should be used in universities to teach programmers and design students how to NOT design a product.

Its awful, horrible, the worst product I have ever used in my life. I find it hard to believe that they even sell this piece of crap. If you compare it to a standard bed side alarm clock, it doesn't even meet this basic requirement - its difficult to set, you can't turn the bloody thing off in less than 15-30 seconds pressing and/or holding down the Alarm button 15-20 times in the process.

I thought I was missing something. I have an engineering degree, developed software and work as a systems integrator, so I downloaded the docs from the manufacturer's web site. No, it appears I'm not missing anything, it just doesn't work the way it was designed. Even if it did work the way it was designed, it still sucks.

The product is inexpensive, but if it worked, I would

Bad DeSiGn:
- There is no way to disable/turn off the alarm
- The Alarm button requires several attempts before it shuts off. It takes 15-20 seconds to shut it off.
- Setting the alarm is an exercise in frustration - I have never been able to set the alarm the first time. I have to cycle through the menu several times before it 'takes'.

On the positive side, it does have two redeeming attributes:
- The radio update works like a charm, the clock keeps very, very accurate time and updates automatically.
- Having a 'daily' (M-F) and 'special' alarm setting is a good idea, if they were easy to set, if you could enable/disable them with a switch and if you could turn off the alarm before my kids wake up and the cats start some feral feeding frenzy on my leg.

The keys don't work reliably, and the user interface is complicated enough that I have to look it up every time I try to use it. In addition, the display doesn't seem to work effectively - some segments don't light up properly.

Hard to imagine how this ever made it to market - or perhaps really appalling quality control.

The Radio Controlled Alarm Clock has serious design deficiencies. Once the weekday alarm is set, there is no way to turn it off. That is, the alarm time can be changed, the snooze button can be hit - but the alarm is going to go off at *some* time during the day. The only way to clear the setting is remove the battery and reset the clock. The alarm supposedly has a "crescendo" feature that starts the alarm quiet and gently increases the volume. But the alarm simply starts off loud - and gets louder. The radio control feature is neat - the clock sets itself by radio to the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. But completely compromising this feature is that the clock can only run on batteries. Thus when the battery runs out, you must then reprogram your alarm and let the clock know what timezone you are in. After doing this, you may wonder what the convenience of having atomic time is - after all, how long does it take to set a clock yourself?