Beep Beep! Hello Kitty Wants You to Wake Up!

As you may all be aware of, it is that time of the year where everyone would start heading back to school. I will be taking early classes, so it is pretty much important that I have a good alarm clock that will do the job and will keep waking me up throughout the year. I already had an alarm clock in the beginning, as shown in the deco post here. However, I had been noticing that I did not wake up during the set alarm time. With this in mind, I decided to buy a new alarm clock.

First, I decided to go look through eBay and changed the listings to show "prices + shipping: low to high" so I do not have to pay too much for an alarm clock. I quickly noticed that the ones that were cheap did not look very nice, which was to be expected, so I decided to skip a few pages. Eventually I had found and saved a couple for the "considerations pile". I did not just look through only eBay however, as I usually sometimes check my local stores and Chinatown to see if there is any possible way that I could get one for cheaper. What I had quickly found out was that the ones in Chinatown were too expensive (I saw one that went for $40+!) and that the ones in my local stores did not look cute at ALL. After finding this out, I went back to eBay to decide between a heart shaped My Melody one and a classy looking Hello Kitty one.

During what seems to be eons of deciding, I decided to take a break from the whole thing. Deep down, I had already made a decision and wanted to get the My Melody one. I was a bit hesitant on actually buying it though since it runs on AA batteries. Batteries aren't cheap nowadays, and it might cost me a lot more in the long run if I keep it in operation for a long time. After being practically late to work one day and getting panicky, I decided to just buy a HK alarm clock from my local Toys R Us for $35 for convenience sake.

 Front

Side

  Back 

As you can see, Hello Kitty is nicely packaged.

When you first open up the package, you will have the alarm clock strapped tightly to the cardboard box/stand and the manual in a separate compartment (not shown).

The snooze button is located near/on top of her right ear. The location is very convenient and I have no problems reaching towards it and hitting the button.

This is the front of the alarm clock, which is basically Hello Kitty holding a heart showing the time. The "time" is actually a sticker that you peel off once you start using it. 

A closeup of the heart.

The back of the alarm clock. The rectangular cut-out is where the projector would sit in the back of Hello Kitty's head. There is a speaker on the right side of Hello Kitty's head and the two "switches" below the cutout are the settings for the radio, with the left for FM or AM and the right for Auto toggle. You usually switch to "Auto" if you want to turn on the alarm feature and "On" if you want to turn on the radio. The button on the left side enables you to turn the projector on and off. 

Closeup of the head.

Here are the buttons, which are pretty self explanatory. What I do not really like about this alarm clock (the same thing goes to the switches and buttons on the head for that matter) is basically the button/switch placement. Since the whole thing with the exception of the snooze button is on the back, it is a little more tedious to set the time or enable certain features since you cannot really see what you are doing, unless you constantly turn Hello Kitty around to look at the buttons and switches. 

The closeup of the projector. The lens is where the light shines through and the knob is to change the focus. In the previous photo, there were 3 small black buttons. The buttons are used to change the time on the projector. What I find neat about this projector is that it could display the time on the wall or the ceiling, so you don't always have to constantly turn your head to the nightstand to look at the time.

On the right side of Hello Kitty, there is a knob that enables you to control the volume of the radio. It also enables the regular alarm feature in case you don't want the radio as your alarm. Moving the knob downward would increase the volume while vice versa would decrease the volume. However, if you keep moving the knob upward, you will eventually hear a click and that's when you know that the regular alarm has been enabled, which I find is a neat feature.

Finally on Hello Kitty's left side, there is a knob that enables you to change radio stations. I don't usually use the radio much, so I did not touch this knob.

Overall other than the button/switch placement, I really love this alarm clock. It did a great job waking me up every time at the set alarm time (although I had some moments where I just pushed the snooze button and went back to sleep) and the alarm/radio could get quite loud if you turn the volume knob all the way up. $35 may be too pricey for an alarm clock, but for one that is Hello Kitty shaped, does its job, is only found at a specific place (I had already checked Walmart prior to this and they did not have one), and is a plugin (no constantly buying batteries!), I think that the price is justified. :)

What about you? Have you been thinking of getting a new alarm clock lately?