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Provides: Voice activation for alarm and time settings
Developer: Moshi Lifestyle
Minimum Requirements: AC wall outlet (3 AAA batteries for backup), voice
Price: $49.99
Availability: Now
What does an alarm clock have to do with Apple products? Not much, in this case. There’s no iPhone dock, no iPod compatibility at all. This is just an alarm clock, but with one fairly unique feature; it’s almost entirely voice activated.
So, let’s say you’re getting a little to used to calling up your music by simply stating the name of the band and the song. Or maybe you use voice dialing on your iPhone pretty much every time you make a call. You can now carry that simplicity over to setting your alarm at night and waking up in the morning.
The conversation goes like this:
You: “Hello, Moshi.”
Moshi: “Welcome. Command Please.”
You: “Set time.”
Moshi: “What is the current time?”
You: “3:45 p.m.”
And there you go. The time is now set. It’s just as easy to set an alarm, or even turn it off. You begin all dialogue with “Hello, Moshi,” then tell it what you want it to do. The following commands are recognized:
You can see where all of this would be quite helpful. I have to reset my clock so infrequently that I have to remind myself what buttons to hit in what order every time I have to do it. Not so, with Moshi. But there are a few design problems.
The chief issue comes from the light. It’s all or nothing here. You either have it off so you can’t see the time if you wake up at night (hence the “Time” command), or you have the nighlight on. This is very bright, and is probably overkill for most rooms. You can set it to change color in a looping pattern, but it’s a harsh change instead of a nice, subtle fade, and is therefore not conduciving for lolling off to sleep. Even if you have the nighlight off, the blue light on the adapter is bright enough to keep you awake. You’ll either have to plug it in under a desk or behind your bed, or cover it up with electrical tape or something.
Even if you do decide to leave the nightlight on, it may not do you much good. The viewing angle on the clock is terrible. As it sat on my bedstand, I couldn’t read the time when lying down; I had to sit up in order to read the numbers inside the blue field.
The talking bit is cool, of course, but potentially troublesome. The “Time” command is bound to annoy anyone with whom you share a bed. Rolling over to see the time is not going to wake up my wife. Having a conversation with some strange female voice likely will.
The same goes for the alarm. My wife can sleep through the series of beeps my current alarm clock makes befrore I shut it off. She’ll have a harder time sleeping through me and the clock talking about waking up.
Not everything needs to be initiated with voice commands, thankfully. You can touch the display instead of saying, “Hello, Moshi,” and touching the display when the alarm is going off sends the clock into snooze mode. Also, there are some manual buttons behind the LED if you want to control it the old fashioned way. Oh, and the voice commands are listed back there, too, in case you forget.
Beyond all of this, you’ve got your fairly standard alarm clock features: battery back-up, three alarm sounds, three sleep sounds (white noise, chirping birds and running water, all of which have a fairly harsh loop restart), and volume control.
Utlimately, the Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock is cool, but the novelty will quickly wear off if voice control isn’t something you need. For the blind or those who can’t see well without glasses, it’s exactly what you’d want an alarm clock to do. But if you’re sharing your bed with someone else or would prefer to just have a subtle glow let you know the current time instead of hearing it from a disembodied voice, you’re better off sticking with something a little more conventional.
Buy the Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock
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