After Simple Set-up, Easy Voice Commands Control This Personal Reminder/Daily Alarm Clock
I love this voice-activated clock!  It's extremely easy to use, and lets me record daily or one-time reminders for absolutely everything (time to leave for an appointment, time to take medicine, time to turn off cooling fans after they've run for 30 minutes, etc.).  It speaks with a pleasing, polite female voice, and easily understands both male and female voice commands.  If there is moderate background noise, it may not understand some spoken commands, but muting the TV took care of this for me.<br /><br />The clock is very easy to set up.  You insert batteries (to hold your custom settings during power outages); plug the clock in; and use the manual setup ONCE to set the month, day, and year.  After that, you simply say "Reminder assistant".  The clock will respond, "What can I do for you?", and wait for you to answer with one of the 12 standard commands (for example, "What time is it?", "What day is it?", "Record reminder", "Play reminder", "Set alarm", "Snooze").  If you can't remember a phrase, you say "Help", and the clock will explain all of the commands.  To perform any function, all you need to do is follow the clock's voice prompts.<br /><br />You do have to use exact command phrases (which is why my clock is named "Jo", after the strict, do-it-by-the-book cop in the SyFy series "Eureka").  I would like to be able to record my own command phrases, but of course that would make the clock harder to set up, and would probably make it cost more, too.  You record reminder messages--anything that fits into six seconds--in your own voice, tell the clock the time for the reminder, and whether or not it is a one-time or recurring reminder.  At the assigned time, the clock plays your message, and repeats it until you say "Reminder off". Reminders apparently do not turn off until you issue a command--I tested one reminder for 10 minutes, and it did NOT turn off automatically.<br /><br />The clock's big, blue, digital display is very bright, even when set to "dim".  All of the clock functions can be performed manually, using buttons on the clock back--but it is rarely necessary to use manual commands.  There is an on/off switch on the clock back that controls the daily alarm clock, which I have set to permanent "off", because I use the clock for short-term reminders, and to keep track of the day of the week (it's easy to forget the day, when you work from home).<br /><br />For short-term reminders, I much prefer to use this clock instead of my Talking Timer ([[ASIN:B002VSZP18 Tel Timer Talking Countdown Timer]]), because the Talking Timer has a distracting vocal minute-by-minute countdown for the last ten minutes (useful for cooking), and is a single-event timer.  The iTalk Reminder Assistant Voice-Activated Clock allows you to record up to ten reminders, which run simultaneously, and it simply plays your recorded reminder when "Time's Up!" (without any countdown).
Rating: 5 stars