Side by Side Comparison of: Timex vs dragonpad

I bought this for my 8 year old grandson for his birthday. He thought it was so cool with the changing light colors and different sound choices. It is one of a kind that is sure to thrill a young child, boy or girl. I have always been pleased with Amazon's easy to navigate site, prompt service, enormous variety of merchandise, , and value and quality.

After a brief encounter with a carbon monoxide detector my child would not sleep. Every noise, every shadow was a cause for alarm. I bought this little thing to replace the hundreds of dollars worth of children's products that offer light and soothing sounds. Unlike any of those I could find this one actually lets you choose how long the nature sounds run--not every kid falls asleep in ten minutes, plus it glows to add a little extra light to the room and then turns off. All of the sounds on it are very pleasant and block out all the creatures that go bump in the night. It is a functional clock and the alarm works, the directions are lousy but it is pretty easy to figure out without one. It lasted 1.2 months before needing a new battery with use of the nature sounds for 30 minutes every night,

After figuring out how to use (not difficult btw, figured out most of it without the instruction manual), this alarm clock has been great! Between random sounds to fall asleep to and the ability to set a different sound for the alarm, this clock is great to move in the morning!

I decided to buy this clock based on everyone else's "bad" reviews. So glad that I did! I wanted a small white or clear clock for my baby's nursery. I needed something that was battery operated, so I could move it around the room and not have to worry about finding a free plug. I really like that the color changing lights don't stay on constantly, only when the "nature sounds" are on. (My baby seems to enjoy listening to those sounds and watching the lights.) I also like that you can set the amount of time until the sounds shut off (one hour or less), so that it doesn't stay on all night. Seeing as how this is used in my baby's room, I also love the thermometer function. Bottom line, this is a nice, small, inexpensive, simple clock. As long as you read the manual, operating this clock is not confusing at all. Perfect for what I was looking for. However, I do not use it as an alarm clock, and not sure that I would. I am a sound sleeper and I don't think that the nature sounds would wake me up. There is a beeping alarm option, but it isn't very loud compared to other alarm clocks out there.

This alarm clock is great! It is a little bit confusing but it does have a very descriptive instruction manual. It is the first day I have had it but it is working perfectly and I have done a few practices and I love the sounds and everything for it. I also do like that it does turn off (the background light) because it would bug my sleep a TON!

I think it is super cute!! I love the sounds, the different colors that light up, the temperature feature and its unique look and size. Also, the alarm features works very well. All in all I really like it and would recommend it for anyone who is looking for something that doesnt take up too much space and is convenient .

I bought this clock about a year ago, for my grandmother, when she started having memory issues. She thinks it is the best thing since sliced bread. She loves being able to see the date in a digital format and enjoys the color changing lights from time to time.What annoys me is that the clock just died. We had never changed the batteries so we thought they had died. I put new ones in and nothing - it just doesn't work. But for approximately $20 (probably around what I paid at the time), it was worth it. I'm searching for another. She likes it THAT much.

My 6-year-old grandson told me the only thing missing from the playroom/kids' bedroom was a clock. I ordered this one for the price, brand and features and am not disappointed. It is colorful and the alarm will be useful since my grandkids are with me at times overnight on weekdays at times and they will use it to get up for school. I would have liked the time display to be a little larger. My grandkids, ages 2 to 6, are learning to tell time with a "gadget" they find interesting while even my 10-year-old granddaughter likes this product.

Like many parents of preschoolers, my preschooler sneaks into my bed in the early morning hours. Now she has a clock that tells her when she needs to stay in her bed. And if she stays in it all through the night and morning, she gets to see and hear the fun alarm.about features- Like a telephone, the buttons beep to give you feedback that you've pressed the button. Apparently some customers don't like the pitch of the sound.- Oddly, the alarm is turned off by pressing the "set" button. Not a big deal for me as I'm not relying on the small child to turn it off. I do it.- laughably, the up button is located below the down button.- front cover--softer plastic than I expected which I noticed from a scratch in the first weekbottomline--it was never meant to be a long term clock for an adult, just something fun and motivating for a small child for a while. It's meeting our needs fine enough.

I was having a hard time waking up, and needed a 2nd alarm (I don't want to get rid of my ancient clock radio!) It's smaller than I thought it would be, and not very user friendly. All the control buttons are around the rim of the face, so it's hard to hit the snooze button when you're half-conscious (which is no bad thing for my purposes). But, surprisingly, I've enjoyed the white noise to go to sleep with. I've set it for 9 minutes to the "babbling brook" option, and I'm out like a light.

My daughters have love this clock and enjoy the fun sounds it makes. It is not very loud and they sleep through it more often than wake up to it. It dose not have annoying sounds that last for long periods of time, so if they forget to turn it off on a Saturday morning it doesn't wake up the whole house, and it will stop after a short time. It was easy to program and they can do it themselves. I am surprised it has not broken yet because it feels rather flimsy, but my girls have carried it all around the house and dropped it once or twice but it has continued to perform well. Also, to my surprise the batteries have lasted a long time. It doesn't suck up batteries and we haven't had to change them once.

I teach about 100 terribly hyper and quick-to-anger 9th graders. We've dubbed this the "orb of tranquility," and for some of the students it's provided some amazing calm. If someone's getting especially worked up, I can turn on the sounds, put it by their ear, and most of the time it really does calm them down.The only bad things:-Doesn't keep time that well (this was not a tremendously important feature to me, but, clearly, would be a big issue to other people). The batteries slow down quickly, so I wouldn't make this your alarm clock or anything.-You can't turn the lights on without turning on the sound.

It does it's job, but it's cheap.

It's alright, for the price. I don't love the options for the different sounds, but my daughter does so it's not a problem. She also loves to fall asleep to the nature sounds every night. My only complaint is that it isn't very easy to use, and any time she needs to turn the alarm off or on, she needs my help, and even I have difficulty doing it because there are so many buttons, they're easy to mix up, and you have to press three or more to make any changes. Not my favorite thing to do. This also means a lot of times we're woken up by her alarm on the weekends because she thought she turned it off but it didn't take.

I am SO disappointed that the shiny chrome spot on top is not the snooze button. Instead you have to search for a small white button with an embossed label that I can't read without my glasses. I will learn which one works but when I forget to disable the alarm before I step into the shower and my husband needs to turn the alarm off, he's going to get pissed off and probably throw this clock through the window. Also this is BATTERY OPERATED ONLY, which I think ought to be more clear in the description. In my experience, any clock that does not plug in to A/C is called a "travel" alarm clock. I just got it today, so I'll give it a try, but expectations are low.

My three and five year olds love this clock and it was very cheap. It plays 4 different nature sounds while rotating through all the colors on the dash and projected all around. This works like a sleep function with auto shutoff.I have a couple of complaints. Why not make it with a power cord to the wall? The cheap AAA battery door was lost the first week, but the batteries stay in on their own without it.I don't know who designed a clock where the up button is below the down button. I probably won't get used to that.But it was cheap and the kids love it.

It lacks a lot of features I expected it to have. There's no way to keep the light on all the time, and there's no easy button to press to make the light come on. It makes it a chore to try and see the time at night.The interface is also extremely clunky. I had to read instructions to do anything, and I've never had to do that with such a simple clock.There's also no optional adapter, so you have to use batteries.The sounds are a bit lower quality than I had hoped, but I guess I should have expected that.It looks kinda pretty, but since the light isn't always on, it just looks like a clear plastic ball most of the time.It's a clock is the only good thing I can say about it.

As far as I can tell, the colors only change when 1) a button is pressed or 2) you play the "soothing sounds". Otherwise it looks like a clear plastic sphere with a white faceplace/insert. The silver "button" on top apparently does nothing (I thought this would be perfect for snooze!). The soothing sounds are very digitized, but for the price I wasn't expecting much from that feature. I had thought with an "INDIGLO night-light" that the clock would remain backlit at night, but that does not appear to be the case--at night you have to press one of the face buttons (which always BEEP when pressed, annoying!) and then you get a brief backlight.The pros...it's cheap, it tells the time/date/temperature (though I have yet to understand why anyone needs their room temperature readout on their clock), you can wake up to a pseudo-nature sound that is not a buzzer, and it runs on batteries so it is small and compact without needing a trailing cord. I think the design overall is cute, but the functionality could have been much improved.

The actual clock display is about the only positive thing about this. Let me start out by saying this photo is VERY misleading. THE clock is essentially a clear sphere with a small column up the center. As its referred to as color changing, and even the words "night light" on the front of the clock, the illumination only happens when you press a button, or when the soothing sounds are playing. The colors do not transition into each other, they abruptly appear one after the other, and some of the colors are really quite bright in the dark. Take note, the actual clock face does not light up, and is therefore hard to see in the dark unless you have the blinding colors going. The "soothing sounds" are frankly not very soothing, as I don't find loud pings or the loud clanking associated with ships comforting. Even further, the lowest volume setting is still quite loud from my bedside table. I also don't know why they bothered labeling the buttons, as all of them have multiple functions, and slightly annoying that DOWN button is placed over the UP button. As far as pros go, once you figure out the buttons, its easy to set. I like the fact it does run on AAA batteries, as it frees up one more outlet. I will keep using this, because it ultimately does what I want it to do, but I am disappointed in all the things that make it more than just a clock.

This is a great clock... and that's it. There isn't a designed option to continuously have the clock's LED lighting 'on' all the time. I have rechargeable batteries and was hoping for this feature. A light blue or purple LED lighting near my end desk would've been nice. But this is not to be with this product.I should've read the spec's more closely. It only light's up when you touch a button(an unnecessary button at that), and only for a few seconds.Oh well, it wasn't a pricey error on my part.

I just got this, and it is so useless, that I am not even angry, I am laughing. I really am. For 6.50, and free shipping from Hong Kong, what did i really expect? First of all, it is about the size of a softball, round, and clear lucite/plastic...When I put the batteries in, it started to make this static like noise, very low, it is still making thatsound, I cannot turn if off...lol...I guess that is the nature sound..lol....The printing on the front of this thing, you can not even read it, the directions, are in English and Chinese....it does not work, it looks like something from the 60s, round and egg like...The very top piece, which is silver, has no function whatsoever....just decorative...that is the place where every clock has a snooze...But wait...there is more..lol....I will use this as a gag gift for Halloween or something....or take it to my office and it my desk, and when people come by, they will ask me what it is...so if you want a cheap gag gift, this is it, otherwise, go somewhere local and buy a real clock that you can see, touch..etc...I really even wonder if the people from Timex have ever even seen this thing?

I bought this for a kindergartner, to help him wake up on his own. Now, I'm a smart person. I can figure anything out. I scoffed at the other reviewers, smug in my confidence that although all those idiots couldn't figure this thing out, I'd have no problems. So... I HATE this thing. It is incredibly unintuitive to use. Yes, I saved the owner's manual, but I don't want to get it out every time I want to change something (which is more often than I anticipated, because the kid changes settings accidentally all the time). I think what makes it so difficult is that the button labels mean nothing, and it's unclear what, if any, setting you've just changed when you push them. Also, the alarm is too quiet. Perhaps I can change the volume, but I'd have to consult the owner's manual to do that.The setting that allows soothing sounds and lights for a set period of time is nice. My kid likes to go to sleep watching and listening to it.So, the sounds are nice. The lights are nice. Overall, it looks pretty cool. It is small, light, and cheap. It runs on batteries. It would be really great for a kid, except for the bizarrely clumsy user interface.

I am a connoisseur of bad usability design, and I love this alarm clock! I have definitely gotten my money’s worth of amusement out of it. It’s like the design team at Timex set out to take a simple, well-established piece of technology and make it as unusable as possible.I can’t decide which is my favorite feature.Is it the ear-splitting beep at every button-press that wakes up everyone in the house when you go to set your alarm at night?Is it the small, close-set buttons that each have several features having nothing to do with the feature they’re labeled with?Is it the “soothing sound” that goes PING! PING! every five seconds or so?...No, I think my favorite feature of all is the placement of two of the buttons arranged vertically on the front surface of the clock: the Up button BELOW the Down button.Beautiful!

I didn't expect a lot from this, but I was still not really happy with it. *Every* time you hit a button, you get a loud "chirp" noise, which makes trying to adjust anything on it next to someone sleeping hopeless. I had thought that the sounds would be constant, continue until turned off, it turns out they're on for a maximum of one hour (you can reduce the time, but not increase it), which made it useless for me (I need something that can run all night long). I wound up giving it to my 4 year old, she likes the sounds and the pretty colors.

This clock should win an award for the worst, most non-intuitive user interface. Buttons don't do what you'd expect at all, just try randomly, maybe you'll be lucky and stumble on WHT you want. Lower button advances time, upper button decreases it, big obvious button on top does nothing at all, snooze works sometimes, or you might just oversleep. Colors flash randomly along with a loud annoying beep on each button press. I hate this thing!

Pros:The changing colors and different alarm sounds are nice.Cons:Poorly constructed.Loud operationNot durableReview:This is truly one of the worst products I've purchased. I got it because I was looking for a battery operated alarm clock and the price was decent. You get what you pay for. Right off the bat, the battery clover wouldn't stay on. It wasn't broken, mind you, it just did stay on. I then periodically had a problem with the batteries popping out and I had to reset the clock.Speaking of the setting the clock, it's annoying. It beeps - loudly - every time you press a button. When having to do this more often than usual because the batteries have popped out, it gets on your nerves.The changing colors are an interesting, but utterly unnecessary addition as are the different alarm sounds, which I suppose can be more pleasant than a grating beeping like most alarm clocks. But other than that, it's junk. The upper display is already not working. Buy something else.

I HATE this alarm clock!! It changed, for no apparent reason, to military time, witch isn't necessarily a big deal, but annoying all the same. Buttons don't make sense, and don't seem to do what their supposed to. EXTREMELY hard to navigate. "soothing" (Extremely loud) sounds only seem to come on when you are trying to figure out how to work the thing. Maybe the sounds are there to soothe your frustrations. Changing color lights? Same thing, only when your trying to set time, alarm, etc. I gave up on this piece of junk after a week. It now resides in the back of a closet somewhere. What a waste of money!!

I had no problem setting this up, but it's got some problems.First off: the day after I put brand new batteries in it, it somehow found itself two days and several hours behind.Second: you can't make it light up without making it beep. I had wanted it so that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I could see what time it was and go back to bed... The beep is loud enough to wake the whole house.Wish I had read the reviews.

I purchased this clock… after several other failures b/c I'm tired of the loud obnoxious alarms on most other clocks and I didn't want a radio. I have 6 kids… it doesn't take an Act of God to wake me up. This clock…though pleasing to the ears is the most ridiculous clock ever. First, the numbers don't light up so if you need to check the time at night you have to press a button which wouldn't be so bad except that every time you press ANY button it makes a very loud obnoxious beeping sound. Not good when rest of house is sleeping. Then, the controls are so illogical and backward… I've one alarm time set and if I need another time I use my cell phone b/c I can't figure out how to change it without the manual… which means it isn't easy and if it's not easy then I don't have time for it. To repeat… EVERY time you press ANY button… even to turn alarm on, get light… the same loud obnoxious beep occurs. Shouldn't alarm clocks be quiet until you want to wake up?? Would NOT recommend this product to anyone for any reason. If I could find a clock I liked I'd return it……

I bought it so my second grader could have her own alarm clock and practice time being aware of the time, etc. It has a lot of great functions--date, time in twelve or 24 hour options, temperature, etc. This alarm clock has fun colors and sounds. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually keep the time.At first I wondered if my daughter was playing with it and messing it up pushing all kinds of buttons (it is a little confusing to set and use). After a few months I finally took control over it to test it. Within an hour of setting the clock to the accurate time, it is off by 8 minutes! Within a half of a day it is off by more than an hour. I've repeated to this test and had the same results. It's super, super fast (to the point I wouldn't trust the time it displayed within a few minutes of setting it).A great toy I let my kids play with, but it doesn't actually function as a clock.