Your Ears Instead Will Be Welcomed By Your Favorite Ringtone, An MP3 File Of Your Choice, Or For The Connected Model, How About A Net Radio Station With Your Favorite Shock Jock Digitally Playing Tunes In Your Bedroom?

The humble alarm clock has certainly come a long way from being your average awakening tool nowadays, the aggravating din of metal clanging against one another is a thing of the past. Your ears instead will be welcomed by your favourite ringtone, an MP3 file of your preference, or for the connected model, how about an Internet list of radio stations with your favorite shock jock digitally playing tunes in your bedroom?

That’s what the Altaz Net Clock Radio offers, and I managed to spend a while with it. One thing I can say though if you’re ever going to get to work on time, it’s best not to switch alarm clocks overnight like me, probabilities are, you will not even awaken to be on time for work, as your ears have not begun to be conditioned to the new sounds. Read on about the Altaz Net Clock Radio hands-on after the jump.

But I digress. Just how did I this new gadget in the bedroom? Well, it is tough to commend it as a “must buy”, even though it would make for an engaging knick-knack to possess. I’d imagine if you know of any current day luddites, getting this could be a method to warm up their toes to the consumer electronics revolution.

Seriously, your smartphone should be able to do what Altaz’s offering does with the right app, and plenty more, but if you’re the type who would rather leave specific functions for dedicated devices, then it may be worth your while.

With a 3.5″ touchscreen display at 320 x 240 resolution, it’s not likely to win any awards for being the nicest looking screen around, although it does its job pretty well. Other hardware specifications include MP3 playback capability, an SD memory chip slot, 128MB of built in memory, a mini USB input, a 1-watt speaker, a JPEG spectator and Wi-Fi connectivity to get you connected.

Audio quality is decent even though it isn’t suggested to sleep with this alarm clock too a great distance from your bed, otherwise a pillow covering your head might just drown the sound out during those drowsy mornings, resulting in you missing a crucial appointment or perhaps worse, getting the sack for being late for the umpteenth time.

You will be able to utilize the touchscreen display to manipulate all of the settings inside, and occasionally the clock appears to hang but if you wait long enough (more than 5 minutes for me), the software did not freeze, it just took a really, really long time to sort things out, particularly when you’re searching for categorical radio stations.

Setting up a listing of radio station presets is painless, and you may also opt to do it when the Altaz Web Clock Radio is attached to a computer through USB if you find the touchscreen a wee bit hard-to-use.

In fact inputting characters via the touchscreen display was an intensely exasperating experience for me no thanks to the virtual keyboard that seemed to be less than electrifying. You’d be better off hooking it up to a computer and getting the job done via a genuine keyboard as an alternative.

Setting up the Wi-Fi connection may also be quite the annoying experience entering your WPA key wrongly will require you to remove the whole string rather than the offending personality, which should not occur in this present time.

Apart from that, there is no option for you to view your password in plain text as you are entering it to stop mistakes, so practice is essential here. Hopefully a future firmware update will fix these issues. On the brighter side, firmware updates give the clock a longer life-span in your home, do you not think so?

Apart from the touchscreen display, there is the play / pause button, volume control and power button at the side which are pretty much self-explanatory. A large sleep button at the top does its job well,

The alarm clock has 2 default audio files to get you out of bed a crowing rooster, and that of chirping birds. Of course, you can always upload your own MP3 files to replace those, and for folks who like to awaken to a morning Web radio station talk show, you’re able to do that too.

I let the Altaz Web Clock Radio run for almost 4 hours straight, being attached to my favourite Web radio station, and playing it back at fifty percent volume loudness. This is a good return, but I would suggest you just leave it connected into a power outlet.

The asking price of $99.99 makes it harder for me to commend it to anybody, but if your want to dip your toes into the world of Net alarm clocks and digital photograph frames, there could be better paths to begin. A bit too late to the game, I have got to say. Hopefully a future version (if ever) from Altaz will be well placed to address all of its issues and make good then, writes tagza.com.