We use timers throughout our home, mostly when we're on vacation and want the house to look "lived in" by turning on various lamps.  The GE 15076 24-Hour Big Button Timer is our latest addition.  It has some nice features and a couple dumb features.

This is an inexpensive, plastic timer.  It works the same way they all do: plug your lamp (or any appliance) into its plug, set the lamp to the "on" position, then plug the timer directly into your wall outlet. 

The timer contains a dial that represents the 24 hours in a day.  First step is to set the timer's "time now" arrow to the current time by spinning the dial until the current time lines up with the arrow.  As only the actual hours are marked, anything in between is an estimate.  You can pretty easily estimate 8:30 or 8:15.  But you can't, for instance, tell the timer that the exact time is 8:03.

Each half hour slice of time has a plastic pin that can be up (appliance is off) or down (appliance is on).

Pressing down consecutive pins allows you to set a block of time for the appliance to be on.  As soon as it hits a pin that's up, the appliance will turn off.  The next down pin will again cause the appliance to come on. 

This timer is very flexible by allowing several on/off events throughout the day, depending upon how long you leave it on, each time.  A typical usage would be to have it come on and turn off twice in a day.  Perhaps come on at 6:00 am and off at 7:30.  Then on again at 8:00 pm and off at 11:00.   To achieve this pattern, simply press down the plastic pins at 6:00, 6:30, and 7:00 am.  As well as those from 8:00 pm through 11:00 pm.  All other pins would be raised - meaning that the lamp is off at all other times.  I like that the pins are permanently attached to the dial - in other timers you have removable "start" and "stop" pins that can be lost.

In addition, there's an "override" switch that simply tells the lamp to ignore all plastic segments, and work as normal.  This is very convenient because when we're at home, we want to be able to use this lamp, without having to touch the timer.

Our timer has been in use for several months, and has always worked perfectly.  But it does have a few flaws that make it less-than-perfect.

The pins are not so easy to raise and press down.  You would think that this very basic function of the timer would be simple, but it's not.  The pins are stiff and don't move easily.  The directions even state to use a pen to help press down the pins.  I can do it, with my fingers, but it is definitely not so easy to do.

Half the dial is white, the other half is gray.  Many timers have this color scheme.  It's supposed to make it easy to differentiate between the AM hours and the PM hours.  If I were designing a timer, I would follow the actual definition of AM and PM.  Everything from 12 am (midnight) until 12:00 noon is AM (and thus I would color this section white).  Everything from noon forward until midnight is PM (and thus I would color that section gray).

But GE didn't do that with this timer.  They attempt to shade the "dark" hours as gray and the "light" hours as white.  So their dial shows gray from 7:00 pm through 7:00 am.  And they show white from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.  I get what they're trying to do, but I find it way less intuitive than just following the actual definition of AM and PM.  As a result, I have to actually stop a second and figure out where, for instance, 5:00 PM is on the dial (it's in the white zone).

It's not the worst problem a timer could have, I just find it annoying.

Still, the timer works great, and I'd recommend it.

Recommended: Yes