This is a brilliant alarm clock, and a great gadget. 5 out of 5 for being a good gadget, 4 out of 5 for being an alarm. With an alarm with the volume of a car-horn (or at least a little louder than it is) I would give it 5. If you are the kind of person who doesn't need a car horn by your ear to wake you up in the morning, then this alarm clock is excellent for you.

Features:
* Projection of the time onto the ceiling
* Alarm with snooze function
* Date, day, and time views: 12/24 hour clock modes
* Pretty transparent blue and silver casing
* Radio controlled automatic time setting
* Battery and/or mains operated
* Large backlit (blue) LCD display
* Quadlingual day display

First of all, the projection...
The main selling point of this cute little alarm clock is surely its time projection feature, and in short it works really well. There is a little round, angled window on the front/top of the unit on the right-hand side that projects the time in an easy-to-read red LED style. In a dark room, the time is not only bright, but well-focused too. It's basically very good, and I'd give the time projection 5 stars. It displays the time frontways as opposed to sideways, so if your bedside table is on the left of your bed as you lie on it and look up, and the clock's face points towards you, when you look to the ceiling you will see the time rotated counterclockwise 90 degrees. This can easily be remedied by rotating the clock away from you or putting it on the windowsill behind your head or whatever. Be warned, the little dial on the left side labeled "time projection" is slightly ambiguous: when I got it out of the packet and ran it just from the batteries I thought the unit didn't work properly. When it's running just from batteries, and the projection switch is on, it never projects. When the switch is off, however, it projects for 5 seconds when the 'snooze' button is pressed (the backlight also comes on during this time). When the power supply is plugged in, it behaves more logically: the projection is permanently on when this switch is on, so you can leave it on all night, and when this switch is off the time is only projected when the 'snooze' button is pressed - pressing 'snooze' projects the time for about 5 seconds as well as turning the backlight on.

The display and controls
There are 6 buttons and the projection switch: snooze, alarm on/off, adjust up, adjust down, mode/time set, and display toggle/alarm set. When any button is pressed, it emits a cute clicky sound.

There's a two-line display - the top line is large and the bottom line is smaller. The top line displays the time and either the second or a 2-letter day abbreviation (available in four languages, thankfully); this is toggled by pressing the mode/set button. The bottom line displays the date and the alarm time, toggled by pressing the display toggle/alarm set button.

The time and alarm can be set by holding down either the time set or the alarm set button. In the time setting, you can change the language.

The radio controlled self-setting function can be turned on or off by pressing and holding the up or down button respectively. If on, it sets itself every hour on the hour, and the little transmitter icon flashes. If there is no reception, it just leaves the time as it was. It seems to take about a minute to set the time.

The casing
The casing is dark blue, transparent plastic. It's thick and the unit is rugged, and if you look from behind you can see its innards, including the nice graphite (or whatever) rod with a coil around it - fantastic for enthusiasts or geeks (but this really is an alarm clock for anyone who will have a digital clock). The snooze button is nice and large, and on the top. It withstands great forces, although this has not been systematically tested. The LCD is set back from the plastic, so there's no chance of damage there. The unit has a slightly high center of balance, but this is forgivable. Maybe.

The clock has two oblong feet, silver in colour and rubbery, so it grips the table well.

When you are at home, you can use the mains 12V supply that comes with it; it has a small L-shaped plug that goes into the bottom of the unit at the back (in the middle). It's very convenient. If the supply is taken out, it seems to last forever on normal AA batteries, so it's good for traveling.

Most importantly, the alarm...
The alarm is not designed for musicians. The alarm cycle happens in 10s, not 8s. The alarm sounds for 2 minutes: there's ten lots of 1 beep, then 10 lots of 2 beeps, then 30 lots of 8 beeps (ok, so the 8 here is a good number). It's quite obsessive. The backlight comes on at first when the alarm sounds, for its five seconds - as if you are ever going to see that happen... If this hasn't woken you up, 8 minutes later it repeats the whole pattern, and it will do so until you press the alarm off button. Of course, hitting snooze at any point shuts it up for a bit.

The alarm's fairly decent, but I still set 8 alarms on my mobile phone and use the clock as a cool gadget. Personally, I need an alarm that won't just stop for good when you press an off button - I need an alarm where you have to manually delete all of your reminders on a calendar...

Recommended: Yes