[Newest Version] Day Clock - Extra Large Impaired Vision Digital Clock with Battery Backup & 5 Alarm Options (Premium Wood)

[UPDATE 19 Feb 2018. Since I set the clock on Boxing Day, it has gained 2min 12 sec. This equates to about 2.5 sec per day or 1.25 min per month. Apart from that, the clock is still working perfectly. Original review & updates follow...][UPDATE 26 Dec 2017. When I went to see my mother in law on Boxing Day, it gave me a chance to check the timekeeping on the clock. It has now gained 135 seconds since it was set on 9 Nov. That is only 48 days which equates to an average gain of 2.8 seconds per day. Although this doesn't affect the primary use of the clock (ie to indicate the day in the week) I believe it is unacceptable and have reduced my rating to 3 stars][UPDATE 8 Dec 2017. We have just done a time test on the clock. It has now been in use for 30 days and during that period, it has gained 80 seconds, roughly 2.5 seconds per day. This is disappointing but not serious enough for me to change my opinion.However, it is possible that this may be due to the 2 hours that it was running from battery while it was moved from our house to my Mother in Law. So, I will update this review again in about a month. Original review follows...]My wife's mother celebrated her 90th birthday this year. Unfortunately, with the passing years, her memory isn't as good as it once was and we have noticed that sometimes she gets confused about which day it is. We felt that it might help if she had a constant reminder of the day and, to a lesser extent, what part of the day it is (eg morning, afternoon, evening).As usual, I turned to Amazon to see what was available and we ordered the 'Day Clock' with the wood effect bezel. Only the front of the bezel has the wood effect, the rest is white plastic.Personally, we found the wood effect too red in colour and feel it should be a darker colour but this is a minor preference.The clock came with a 5V power supply with 1.8m cable which plugs into the back of the clock. There is also a standard type A 'female' USB port but the instructions make it clear that this is only for software updates and (presumably) should not be used to try to power the clock (I deliberately haven't tried it). I try to charge my phone with it. It seemed to work but the clock rebooted itself so I disconnected the phone and the clock returned to normal.Personally, I found the setup quite intuitive although what isn't immediately obvious is that there are more settings below the visible area of the menu screen. You have to scroll down to see them but it is easy enough to do.There are two choices of display colour which can be chosen from the menu; white and yellow. We preferred white which seems to be the default. The characters for the day are quite big (about 2.5cm high) and the numbers for the time are even bigger at around 3.5cm. It is very easy to read from any angle - I tried as close to 180 degrees as I could get and it was still very easy to read even from a distance of 10m. The screen has a slightly matt finish which significantly reduces any glare from sunlight or other ambient light sources.Underneath the Day, there is an optional text to indicate whether it is 'Morning', 'Afternoon', 'Evening', 'Night' or 'Before Dawn. I think in general this is a good idea. In the summer, it will be light outside at both 7am and 7pm so the reassurance as to whether it is morning or evening can be useful.However, I do take issue with 'Before Dawn'. First, I am not convinced you need a 'Before Dawn' time indication at all. Secondly, at midnight, the display will switch from 'Night' to 'Before Dawn' which is far too early. 4am, maybe but midnight? Definitely not. As I say, I would have just left it at 'Morning', 'Afternoon', 'Evening' and 'Night'.I was concerned that the display might be too bright for night time use but it automatically dims at night. Unfortunately, rather than using a light sensor to do this, they use the time instead. The display dims at 7pm and brightens again at 7am which I think is a lazy design flaw. I am also not convinced that it dims enough if you like a really dark room when you go to sleep but that is just my preference. Ideally there should be several dim brightness settings.There is also no automatic adjustment for Daylight Saving Time. Given the target market for this clock, there is no excuse for this oversight which forces someone to change the clock twice a year.There are quite a few options on the alarm schedule but no 'once a week' alarm which is disappointing. For some reason, they have included an hourly chime although personally, I can't really see the point of it. Fortunately, it can be turned off or set only to chime between 9am and 6pm. We left ours at the default setting which is 'Off'.There are five alarms. Each one has an option to display a reminder message to 'Take your medicine'. Unfortunately medicine is the only text option but I can understand why they chose it (perhaps 'feed the cat/dog' should be another option).In a perfect world, the message would be completely customisable but I can see how that might be quite clumsy and difficult to implement. The alarm sound isn't very loud. It is fine if your hearing is ok but for those with hearing difficulties, I am worried it may not be loud enough. Also, the only way to stop the alarm is by pressing any button on the back of the clock. I suspect this may be quite challenging for some people (especially if they were having a nap). Fortunately it will turn itself off after 50s but there really should just be a big button at the top of the clock!We haven't had it long enough to find out how good the clock is at time keeping but I will try to update this review once we have had a chance to find out. Unfortunately, as my mother in law does not live with us, it will not be particularly easy to check.Overall, as a way of telling you what the day is, the clock scores top marks. However, several of the supplementary functions do not seem to have been thought through properly - hence 4 stars. Maybe they will fix some of them with a firmware update.

My mother suffers from Alzheimer's, and has lost the ability to tell the time. We've had a string of incidents when she has either got up in the middle of the night, or put herself to bed in the middle of the day. She finds this clock very comforting; and apart from a couple of instances when she has been convinced I've altered all the clocks in the house and made the sun rise in the west (!!!) just to confuse her - she seems to be managing very well with it. So well, in fact, that my brother has bought her a second one so that she can have one by her bed, and one by her chair in the living room.Only two slight quibbles:Expensive for what it is - but no worse than any other similar clock, and cheaper than a number of them.And my mother finds the "before dawn" slightly confusing. (But I see that, in the early hours of Saturday, you couldn't describe it as Saturday night. Don't know what the solution to that would be ... ).Overall, very pleased with this clock, despite the price.UPDATEAfter using this for a time, another slight problem has come to light - these clocks do not seem to keep good time (in these digital days, I had almost forgotten what that was like!). One gallops, the other lags. My mother gets very disorientated when one dementia clock is five minutes ahead, other clocks in the house are are correct, and the other dementia clock is five minutes behind. I have to reset the time on both by several minutes each week. Surely that should simply not happen in this day and age - particularly at this price; I recently bought a wristwatch for myself, costing £5, and it keeps perfect time ...

Very good. Was much cheaper than others, possibly as the screen frame is wood colour instead of white or black. Very pleased and would buy another when I can for my office at my workplace. I use it in my home office. It had a European plug, but I later found a cute adapter so it doesn't take up so much space on my socket rail.

My 96-year old Mum loves her clock. She has dementia and glaucoma, as well as being a bit deaf. She loves being able to easily see the day, time of day, month and year, although from her chair she can't always make out the actual figures of the date. She almost prefers to watch the clock rather than the television. Her Occupational Therapist had given her the loan of a day clock a couple of months ago. It was the most expensive one on the market - all singing, all dancing, with the capability of setting many different programmable alerts and alarms, photos and videos etc. We thought long and hard about it before concluding that most of the functions would not be helpful to her as she dozes a lot during the day and would either miss the alerts or they could easily confuse her. We haven't set any alarms as there are carers who go in 4-times daily and they prefer to supervise her taking her meds. We have been thinking of purchasing one for her bedroom as in winter she sometimes wakes up in the dark and can't tell if it's day or night. For Mum this clock is invaluable and gives her that little extra piece of independence she strives so hard to keep hold of. We found it easy to set up, packaged well and arrived on time.