Most helpful customer reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Functional But Has A Few Problems
By Avid Reviewer
A problem was immediately apparent when I removed the Polder Digital Hourglass Kitchen Timer from its packaging: The reflection from the clear plastic covers over the LCD displays makes reading the time from more than couple of feet away very hard or impossible.

(What the picture on the product page doesn't show is that there are actually plastic coverings over the LCD screens. The picture has probably been photoshopped, and shows no indication of the problem with reflection.)

A few more complaints:

(1) Although the aesthetics of the timer is quite appealing overall, the timer looks a lot more plasticky than it does in the picture from the product page. While the construction of the unit isn't exactly shoddy, it doesn't scream quality either.

(2) The timer malfunctioned on me once -- the display froze up (not sure what I did to cause that) and the only way I was able to unfreeze it was to remove the battery and put it back in.

(3) The unit is poorly packaged -- when I took the unit out of the package, it already had a few scratches on one side (probably came from the unit being bumped around in the package).

There *are* a couple of things I really like about the timer, however.

(1) When stood on one of its ends, the timer displays the clock; when it's inverted, the timer displays the countdown timer. Nifty!

(2) It continues to keep track of the time elapsed after the timer has counted down to zero.

The timer comes in silver and black as well.

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The Polder Digital Hourglass Kitchen Timer serves its intended purpose very well. But I would have to give it an overall rating of 3.5 stars because of the issue with the hard-to-read LCD displays and the slightly less-than-satisfactory quality of the build.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Silly product, but it works.
By Ken from New York
Revised Jan 2010 - Well, my replacement timer has been working fine. No more reviews on this.

Revised October 16, 2009 - It broke today! - I'll try another one. I hope this was a quirk.

OK - so kitchen timers should just work, and this one is OK. It is a bit quirky.

Downsides
- The display is a little hard to read due to glare when in direct light.
- The time "+" or "-" buttons are a bit stiff, and you have to hold them down for too long to get the time to increment without multiple pushes.

Upsides -
- The darn thing is just fun to have around and play with.
- The alarm is nice and loud and gives you a few bursts at a lower volume first so it won't surprise you if you are right next to it.
- You can't lose it! The bright red color is really easy to spot in a drawer.

Overall, I like it and use it regularly.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
A disappointing product from an excellent manufacturer; avoid this model
By Amrit Tiwana
I bought this timer hoping that it would be reliable, loud, and well built like the other Polder timer that beeps, vibrates, and blinks. The build quality on this is flimsy and the beeping alarm is not loud at all. Avoid this one and buy the other Polder model sold on Amazon.com. Search for "Polder 212-00"...that is an excellent, reliable, and lower cost alternative to this one.