Functional, but has issues.
As a portable noise generator for taking on vacation or to put pretty much anywhere, this is a great little device. But it's not perfect. First, some background:<br /><br />So, I use a noise generator to sleep every night. Right now, I have an older gen 4 iPad running a noise gen app (in the background with a full screen clock app in the foreground, since it's useful). This iPad is then plugged into a small sound system via the headphone jack so it sounds better then coming out the tiny iPad speakers.<br /><br />I was eager to give the Renpho Noise Machine a go, since I know my current solution's days are numbered (the apps are starting to crash regularly and can't update anymore due to how old the device is, etc).<br /><br />Hence the Renpho device. And it works fine. Up to a point.<br /><br />The first thing I noticed is that while you can have a single color and adjust the brightness to whatever level you like which is good, if you turn on color cycling it jumps back to full brightness and you can't adjust the brightness in that mode. If you try to, it switches back to single color mode. So, that's a bummer as I like to have my glowy things always cycling through their colors, but don't want to have this thing searing my retinas every night.<br /><br />The next issue I found is when trying to plug in my sound system to the headphone jack of the Renpho. The sound level coming out of the device is maybe 30-40% the volume of the iPad's headphone output. Even with the Renpho noise gen at max volume and the stereo at max volume (25 according to the stereo's display), it's not even half as loud as my iPad's headphone output at 100% and stereo at med volume (15 on the stereo's display, for reference). That's a non-trivial difference, and kinda makes it unusable for that specific use case. Granted it's a very specific use case most people won't care about, but still...<br /><br />I could always use the built in speaker, but like all tiny speakers the sound is tinny and lacks the depth of a proper sound system. I really like to hear the boom of those thunderstorms, ya know?<br /><br />I'm hopeful that at least the lighting issue can be fixed via a firmware update, but ideally both could, depending on how they implemented the headphone interface. So, if things change, I'll update the review to reflect it.<br /><br />Note:<br /><br />Updated to 4 stars since I was contacted by the makers saying they would take my critiques under advisement. So, that's a star just for response time. And if they actually release some kind of firmware update to fix any of my issues, that's star number 5...<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />J^2
Rating: 4 stars