Sdi Technologies Inc. Ih4b Alarm Clock for Apple Ipod

My brother gave me this iHome a few years ago for Christmas and I like it a lot, and I am surprised that other customers rated it so poorly. I do not think it was too hard to figure out--the buttons are clearly marked on the side, the night-light is not too bright and has 3 settings, and the sound quality and volume are great (way louder than both my laptop and my phone). I may have had to look at the manual at first to understand the button set-up, but I was not inconvenienced at all. This iHome takes up barely any space on my dresser and comes with different docks for differently sized iPods/iPhones. Definitely worth trying.

I was excited to get this iPod dock/alarm clock when I ordered it. Unfortunately, I'm guessing that I received a refurbished item or a dud. For two weeks I was able to wake up to my favorite tunes playing through my fancy new alarm clock. Then one night I was awakened by a horrible screaching and the alarm clock was blinking crazily. The only way to get it to stop was to unplug the whole thing! This happened to or three more times. Each time I had to reset the clock and all the features.Lately the screaching has stopped, but the darn thing also won't play music through the speakers. I just use it as a dock to charge my phone.I'm pretty disappointed

I loved the ihome alarm clock until it stopped working 8 months later... We purchased this product at the Navy Exchange after having the larger version ihome that broke after our dog knocked the nightstand over. This was a happy replacement with a small footprint, different backlighting options, dual alarms, easy to set and use, etc. We gradually started having problems with the alarm not going off when set to our Ipod music, then it stopped recognizing the ipod altogether---and now the regular 'beep' alarm doesn't work either. I tried to get a new one from Kmart to replace it, but it was Dead On Arrival. So after another trip out to the store to return it, I have sworn off of ihome products, since they seems to make cheap products with poor quality control.

My wife and I have been trying to find a good iPod alarm clock for a while. After out first generic one died on our nightstand, we decided to try something maybe a little less so. After perusing a bit through Target's electronics section, we came across this. We had heard some good things about iHome and liked the small size and the built in night light. First impression: Had a good weight, felt solid, and looked neat. Set up: Thin side buttons labeled with tiny white font made figuring out what to press when a puzzle. Has a daylight savings time switch on the bottom. Handy. Some confusion setting up the alarm to wake up to iPod. Had to sacrifice a little bit of my manliness and consult the manual. General interactions with: The light bars have three settings- Shadow Puppet Theater, So Much For Sleeping, and Gee, That's Handy Now That I Have To Pee At 3:00 In The Morning. These settings also affect the LCD screen. The snooze button is a long bar along the bottom, as it should be, with a small volume up button on the right, and a small volume down button on the left. The first morning with this thing left me groggily hunting for the 'alarm off' button at 5 minute intervals. Which is about the diameter of the of a #2 pencil. On the left. And that is a mean trick to play on someone who has just woken up. The over all wedge shape of the unit seems really handy at first until you realize that the corners closest to the bed are facing away from you and puts the power cord in an awkward position. But hey, it worked. For about two months. Then one day, as this clock would tell you, we had breakfast at 7:10pm, lunch at 7:10pm, and dinner at 7:10pm. I unplugged the unit, took out the battery to reset it, replaced the battery, and plugged it back into the wall. The LCD/Light bars came on full strength and it was no longer 7:10pm. It was now the-end-of-the- world o'clock. The LCD now perpetually displays a backwards 6, an 8 with a '/' through the middle of it, :88 and all of the side icons for PM, Low Bat, DST, Alarm, iPod, and Sleep hanging out next on the right. I thought maybe some wires had gotten crossed or something so I opened it up (two screws hiding under pads on bottom, four hiding on the sides under plastic doodads) and was met with the marvels of mass production. A smorgasbord of ill-spaced and overlapping circuitry adorned with blobs and strings of haphazardly placed hot glue, wires bent at all sorts of strange configurations. After wrestling all the innards back in and looking at it for a while, I think there are a few lessons to be learned here;1- Save your money, time (pun!), and frustration: Get one from a company that has had firm roots in the consumer electronics industry for a long time. You will spend more initially but you will wind up spending that much and more replacing the cheap ones that keep breaking.2- iPod alarm clocks are not guns. Weight does NOT equal reliable.3- The shift from creating long-lasting, well made, and beautiful things from solid reagents(hardwood, metal, *real* brick) to stamping out shiny black plastic clones of everything will be the downfall of modern society. (I don't carry around a soapbox and megaphone or anything. Just saying.)