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Ever since the introduction of the first and only 7-day alarm clock in December 2004, American Innovative has been logging feature requests and product improvement suggestions from our customers. Nearly every aspect of the neverlate executive is fully customizable. We've introduced the concept of alarm banks - three in all. The two 7-day banks provide two, completely independent seven-day wake schedules - his and hers for example. In addition, we've included a daily reminder bank. We are also pleased to introduce the first-ever preferences menu in a clock radio. Everything from the backlight brightness, to the alarm duration is fully adjustable. Wake to NPR news at 7:00am weekdays, your Saturday morning talk show on a different station and the buzzer on Sunday. There's no other clock radio in the world with this capability. Line-in, headphone jack and more - a powered USB port on the back accommodates an electric fan or laptop boom lamp. Each time you hit the snooze button the snooze time is cut in half until finally the neverlate executive won't let you snooze any more. You can even disable the tempting snooze button.
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Technical Details
- No other clock radio in the world has this capability; nearly every feature can be adjusted to suit personal preference- Two 7-day banks provide 2 completely independent 7-day wake schedules, his and hers, for example
- Wake to NPR at 7 am weekdays, a morning talk show on a different station on Saturday, and the buzzer on Sunday
- Other features include descending snooze time, up to 7 daily reminder alarms, calendar display, and flexible inputs and outputs
- Easy to set, a simple twist of the patent-pending rotary dial makes complicated push-buttons a thing of the past; ac powered with battery backup
See more technical details
By Levi Smith (Austin, TX United States)
This little unit has a lot going for it. Here's a summary of the features that I think set it apart:
* Snooze duration is customizable
* There's a descending snooze option, which reduces the snooze time each time you hit snooze until it won't let you snooze anymore.
* The alarm volume is separate from the radio/sleep volume.
* The alarm duration is customizable.
* The clock illumination can be turned off, not just lowered (helpful if you like your bedroom to be as dark as possible)
* There are three alarm settings, which can be used in any combination: every day and two seven day alarms.
* There's a nap feature, which lets you set a quick alarm without changing your regular alarm. Default duration is 20 min, but you can quickly adjust up/down from there.
* The snooze button is also a review button. Hit it and you'll see when the next alarm is set to go off. If you want to adjust the next alarm, you can easily do so when reviewing without changing your regular alarm.
* The alarm (beep, radio or media source through axillary jack) can be set to escalate in volume.
* You can easily skip the next alarm if you wake up before it goes off
* When you set the alarm, you begin adjusting from 7 am instead of 12 am. The rotary dial is also quicker than the tradition button hold-down.
* It's small - 5" square
* Has a USB charging port (useful if you want to charge your phone on your nightstand)
* Includes radio station presets
Some may consider it difficult to use, but if you understand what the two rotary dials are for and how the seek buttons work, everything becomes fairly intuitive. If they added a numeric keypad to set the time, required simultaneously pushing two buttons to turn the alarm off, displayed the next alarm information without an additional button push and provided the option to have the time announced when the alarm goes off, I think this unit would be perfect.
By Patrick Kriengsiri
I used this this alarm clock for about 2 years; notice the past tense on this. The title of this review sums it up - the ideas behind the alarm clock are quite nice but the execution is really sub par.
*** Let's start off with what was nice about the clock ***
- The customization really was well above what you'd find on any other alarm clock
- There's a descending snooze feature that I really liked - in fact it was the single feature that sold me on the clock
- It seems (note the keyword seems) to be solidly built
- It's not bad on the eyes
- Aux in lets you hook up your MP3 player of choice
*** Now the neutrals ***
- This point is probably very subjective, but the more I used the clock, I actually kind of had to ask myself why? I have a somewhat regular schedule (I work a 9/80 schedule and on the weekends I wake up when I wake up) as does the GF. The different alarm banks were nice, but in the end it was a pain to set them up and really, it was overkill. I suppose if you're a college student and have a schedule that may differ every day it would be nice
- I never figured out what to do with that USB port on the back
*** And now the negatives ***
- As other have pointed out it's at night WAY to bright, even it its dimmest mode. What's worse, is that at the same brightness setting it's too dim to be read during normal lighting conditions. I personally like it dark when I sleep, so it may have affected me more than others, but it really is like a little torch. For comparison, I've also got a DirecTV HR-21 and Netgear wifi bridge in the bedroom. The lights on those are annoying, but not to the point that it would disrupt my sleep. I can't say the same for this alarm clock. In the end, I set the brightness to 0 (no backlight at all) and just hit the snooze button when I wanted to tell the time. The backlight would then come on for a few seconds and go off. It was fine for nighttime, but a real pain during the day. Why not have a customization option to modify brightness during different times of day?
- Build quality is really sub par. In two years, I had three different units. The first unit I had had an issue with the LCD backlight where it would constantly flicker. I had to RMA that one (more on that later). The replacement one that they sent me had issues with the rotation knob. Whenever I turned it it would first go into some default display then to the one I wanted. The third and final one finally died today (I had this one for about 16 months). Doesn't power on or anything. Tried replacing the battery; nothing. Unfortunately it's also well out of warranty. I'm sorry, but $60 for an alarm clock that doesn't last more than 2 years is a joke.
- Customer service was rude and unresponsive. The first clock I had to RMA had the issue almost immediatly. I submitted an RMA request on their website within the first 90 days (the length of the warranty) but never got a response. I tried again after about 5 months and then just got a reply saying it's out of warranty and to take it to my local electronics shop. They were completely unwilling to help until I produced evidence that they never replied to my original RMA request. The second clock also came with the issues above and that one had to go back too. Both times, they wouldn't reimburse me for shipping costs even though it was their fault (and it was their policy to do so, according to their website).
- Warranty is a joke. $60 alarm clock has a 90 day warranty? You've got to be kidding me. If these units were well built then this wouldn't be an issue but 3 alarm clocks in 2 years shows there's some serious quality control issues.
*** Overall Conclusion ***
I've said it earlier. This alarm clock is packed with neat features that could make it a great clock niche markets, but the reliability and the brightness issue end up making this a product you should avoid!
By A. W. Cureton (Maryland USA)
The idea behind this alarm clock is wonderful. A week's worth of alarms, always set, always ready to go. Love the battery back-up.
However, I cannot believe that there is not a brightness control for the display. We have had to turn the alarm towards the wall so that we can fall asleep. It just doesn't make any sense to go to all of the trouble of creating this super-duper alarm system and then forget to add a feature that other alarm clocks DO have. We will be returning this alarm clock. It's too bad. We were really excited for it.
By D. Mackintosh (NC)
This clock is billed as "innovative" and "executive" and is neither. It is fairly (and unnecessarily) complicated to set-up with too many difficult-to-interpret instructions for a myriad of personalization settings.
The display has a dark-ish blue LCD background with white numbers and is hard to read unless your fairly close up. The backlight can be adjusted, but it's just not a "clean read."
When I shut the alarm "off" on the first use, it silenced, and five minutes later the radio turned on and blared - a feature I definitely did NOT set and could not find an answer for the reason. In addition, an alarm I thought I had cleared (and the instructions are NOT clear about this) went off after I was asleep. I could not find where the setting might be.
The pads used to set features are NOT backlit, but are impressed on grey rubber keypads. You will have to have bright light to see the words on them and set them. They are all dual use pads (two instructions/uses per pad) and you'd better have small fingers, too.
Lastly, the "battery backup" is extremely misleading. If the power is lost, it retains the settings, but does NOT DISPLAY - so if power is lost, your clock simply does not work. (We lose power fairly often where I live, so this is useless.) Lastly, it is an ugly white - only option available.
I purchased this clock to replace a dual alarm with AM/FM radio and headset jack, battery backup and small footprint - all necessary features for my needs. The clock I am replacing has unfortunately died and after 10 years and must be replaced. It is ALL of the things this is not, but is no longer available. Stay away from this clock unless you are a gadget fiend and want to waste your precious time messing around with it!
By Christopher D. Krenz
The Neverlate Executive Alarm Clock is one of the most ambitious alarm clocks I've seen, but don't let all the fancy features and supposedly user-driven innovation fool you--this is a poorly designed, buggy alarm clock that happens to have a few nice (and very rare) features. There are certain scenarios for which this alarm clock may be uniquely fitted, such as two people sharing the alarm clock (it allows for two sets of alarms for each day of the week) and needing a wide array of highly variable alarms. However, even at this, it would be very difficult to overcome the bugs. I've used the clock for over a year (with a great deal of trouble) and have been forced to use the absolute minimum features of the alarm clock. I will be getting a new alarm clock soon and, were it not for those rare features, would have found a new alarm clock a long time ago. My recommendation--don't buy it.
Pros:
-High speed buttons allow you to alter alarm times very quickly (forward and backward) with a single finger, which is vastly better than having to hold the "Alarm" button while repeatedly pressing the "Minute" button 45 times (and then another 60 when you go over your target time) like with 90% of other alarm clocks.
-Allows you to set separate alarms for each day of the week, which is very useful, particularly for college students when classes start at very different times each day.
-Numerous alarm sounds to choose from, all of which are far more comforting to wake up to than the all too common and ungodly annoying screech that comes out of most alarm clocks.
-Other various fancy features such as a radio that some people find nice--I won't go into detail as you can read about them plenty of other places.
-Battery will keep track of alarms and the time even when you're on vacation or in a power outage, which I've found handy.
Cons:
-The biggest problem is the quality. In under a month of usage, the display started doing these weird freakouts whenever I turned the dial, which you may have read about in other reviews. Apply too much pressure (or just when it feels like it) and the display starts flashing all kinds of things (including showing that an alarm is set when it is not); you can't tell what you're doing.
-Potentially linked to the aforementioned problem are the inexplicable ghost alarms--alarms that I did not set and that it does not display as being set that go off anyway. It doesn't happen all the time, but once is too many for me (it's happened maybe 10 or so times since I've had it).
-However annoying excess alarms may be, they are not as annoying as alarms you set not going off--beware the Beta ONE TIME feature (they don't provide ample warning that this is in Beta so watch out), it is buggy and can result in the Review button (which is supposed to show the next upcoming alarm) displaying an alarm that will not go off.
-Brightness: with all the features it has you'd think they could get brightness nailed down, but you'd be wrong. The minimum brightness is way too bright for me, so I have to have it off, which makes it hard to see.
-The "collar" that lets you adjust the times makes a loud clicking noise and requires a lot of work to crank around--to avoid this, just use the simple "seek/scan" + and - buttons instead; it's faster and easier.
Bottom Line:
It has some nice features, but the instability of the alarms themselves and the poor interface make it not worthwhile. As disappointed as I am, I'll still keep my eye on American Innovative because if they can get these bugs in order and get the basics down, this could be a very good alarm clock. As it stands now, it's just not worth it.
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