Waking up to the vibe

If you’re a deaf or hard of hearing person looking for a decent new alarm clock with a vibrating pad, the HearPlus 333cl from Doro electronics could be for you says Jamie Trounce

As soon as I got it out of the box, I could tell that the HearPlus 333cl is a much more fancy looking clock than my old one, which is grey and ugly. It has a white body with black face and white hands, making it quite retro looking.

Setting it up is a little complicated at first as I realised that when you adjust the time, you have to wait for 30 minutes for the clock to complete the time adjustment properly before you can test the alarm, otherwise you might think the alarm was not working.

Once the alarm is set, the pad goes off with perfect strength. It woke me up slowly and gently, with a long vibration.

On my old clock the vibrating pad is too powerful when the alarm goes off which I don’t think is suitable for older people or those with heart problems. Every time I’m sleeping very soundly, the alarm goes off and it vibrates like a hard fire alarm, which always makes me wake up suddenly with my body up in the air for a long second!

The pad itself on my old alarm clock is also a rather odd shape, almost like a flat egg, which is slightly uncomfortable as you can feel it under the pillow.

Occasionally, the pad on my old clock fell off my pillow while sleeping which made me late for work, with an unhappy boss waiting for me.

The HearPlus 333cl has a big low round pad with rubber feet, which prevent it from falling off my pillow.

The only problem I found with it is that it has a flashing light underneath the alarm clock that is very weak so I never see anything. However, this is not that important to me as I only require vibration.

There are four different combinations of ways to wake you up– vibration only, sound and flash, flash only, and sound only – all connected with vibration if needed although as I already mentioned the flash is not very good.

As for alarm tones, there are low or high frequencies, though I have no idea how loud they sound as I am profoundly deaf. Finally, if you have a phone, you can connect your phone to the alarm clock so when the phone rings, it will wake you up – which I think is a very good idea in case of emergency with your family/friends or anything else!

I would definitely buy the HearPlus 333cl as it is ten times better than my old clock without any hesitation.

INFORMATION

HearPlus 333cl, vibrating amplified alarm clock costs £49.99 – to buy from bigeasyphones.com/hearplus-333cl-51-p.asp Also check other online and high street electronics stores