OXO Good Grips Triple Timer
by OXO
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Our Price: $19.95
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Category: Kitchen
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Product Summary
Manufacturer: OXOBrand: Oxo
Model: 1071501
Color: Gray
Product features:
- Three 100-hour digital timers allows 3 events to be timed simultaneously or long events with secondary interval
- Distinctive alarm sounds for each timer
- Easy-to-read LCD display
- Soft, comfortable buttons and angled face
- Nonslip feet for stability and surface protection
Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of OXO Good Grips Triple Timer
Customer Review: Better than most, but it has flaws
Summary: 3 Stars
In the summer of 2010 i spent considerably more time than anticipated shopping for a good standalone digital kitchen timer. It turned out to be a difficult task because most timers are so poorly designed. I considered about twenty, and bought and returned a half-dozen. This timer was the best i found, and has some very nice features, relative to the competition. Alas, it falls short of the ideal kitchen timer due to a couple design flaws, one of which is very annoying (thus the 3-star rating).
The 10-key pad makes it quick and easy to enter a time. Very few timers available today actually offer this feature. Unless you always want count down for a certain fixed amount of time, this is an important convenience feature to have in the kitchen. Tools, like timers, should be easy to use.
A clear/memory button toggles between zero and the last time used on that timer. The memory feature is convenient for many applications, especially repetitive tasks like cooking pancakes. I find that cook perfect pancakes in my cast iron skillet, i need to cook each side for about two minutes and 45 seconds. So i key in 245 and click start. When it beeps, i click stop and flip the pancake, then i hit the clear/memory button twice, which resets the timer to 2:45, and click start.
If you stop the timer, you can resume it again by clicking start/stop button, or reset it by clicking the clear/memory button.
The seconds operate in an intelligent way. You can enter a seconds value from 1-99. So entering 90 seconds is the same as entering 130 (which is displayed as 1:30, or one minute thirty seconds). You could also enter 190 (1:90, or one minute ninety seconds, or 150 seconds). All in all, that all operates in an intelligent and intuitive way.
The display automatically switches to time-of-day/clock mode a minute after all timers have stopped. This is the first design flaw. Few people will even care that this unit has a clock, and most people will find it annoying that it keeps switching to a time-of-day display. The unit has a button to switch to the time-of-day display, and that should be the only way clock mode is invoked.
In timer mode, all three timers are displayed concurrently on the screen, and this is quite nice. (Some other triple-timers use only a single timer display, and require awkward toggling between timers.) Since the 10-key pad, the stop/start and clear/memory buttons are shared by all three timers, it is necessary to "focus" on one of the timers, so that you know which timer will be affected by pressing those buttons. Timer focus is indicated on the display by a set of parenthesis around the timer currently in focus. Timer focus is set by three timer buttons to the right of the screen. The focus is also set when a timer has hit zero and is beeping at you. All this is intuitive and easy enough. The problem is that a timer easily loses its focus, causing timer operation to become unnatural, unintuitive and inefficient. Aggravating the problem is that when the timer has no focus, hitting any of the shared buttons have no effect, but give you the same audible feedback you get when a key press has been accepted and invoked. So it gives you audio feedback telling you it's done something when, in reality, it hasn't.
A timer will lose its focus if you haven't touched a key within the last 60 seconds (unless it's beeping). So, for example, if you set your timer for timing the cooking of your spaghetti, and you wait for the water to come to a boil before starting the timer, when you return to the timer to start it, chances are pretty good that you'll be looking at the time-of-day. Unless you have another timer running, in which case you'll see all three timers. But in either case, the timer you set will have lost its focus, and you'll have to hit that timer's select button again, to bring the focus back to that timer, before you can start the timer. Chances are you'll forget to hit the focus button, and just hit the start button, because you expect to pick up where you left off with the device. It'll beep at you when you hit the start button, just as it does when the timer starts running, but that beep is meaningless. The timer didn't start because it lost its focus while you were busy doing something else. That's not what you expect. And the beep you get has lied to you. You think it means the timer has started running, because that's the same sound it makes when a timer starts. Bad design. In a busy kitchen, you've more important things to do than coddle a timer that lies to you about whether or not it's started running. What's more, the display is small, and the lighting near the timer may not always be the best. More than once i've come back to check how much time was left on the timer, only to discover it wasn't running! Well engineered devices are practically effortless to use. This device requires extra effort to ensure it's working as you expect.
And it's particularly aggravating to use to time repeating events (like cooking pancakes), where the timer loses focus so quickly after being stopped. By the time you're ready to start it again, it's lost its focus. So you have to hit the timer select button again. That design mandates an unnecessary key press. But because that's unintuitive, and you get false audio feedback, in reality you'll probably make a number of key presses before you realize it's ignored each and every one of them, and that you have to do them all over again. Very vexing. Especially when the problem wouldn't exist at all if the timers didn't lose their focus. One doesn't expect that. One naturally expects the device to be in the same state that you left it in a few minutes before. Nothing is gained from a design where the focus is lost after a minute of inactivity. Product design should always be vetted by real-world users of a product.
Make no mistake about it, this is a significant and vexing design flaw which diminishes the overall value of what would otherwise be a very good product, and the reason i can't give it more than three stars. It's unfortunate because in many other ways, the design of this product excels. For example, the timers will sound continuously for 30 seconds, after which they only beep twice at 10 second intervals. This conserves battery life, if someone is outside of earshot, and avoids annoying someone who can hear it, but is too busy to hit the stop button at the moment. Automatically counting up after counting down to zero allows you to know how much time has elapsed after a timer has gone off. That feature is missing on many timers, and can be quite useful. And being able to independently set three timers, and see them all at once, has proved more useful than i would have imagined.
This product is designed for the countertop. Because of the incline of its display, it's not practical to mount it to a vertical surface. Although the base has four rubber feet, the unit is so lightweight that it rocks/slides about too easily on the countertop. Even so, most users will find ways to adapt and be able to punch the buttons without too much aggravation. More of a design weakness than an outright design flaw.
Another design weakness is that one has no indication when the batteries are getting low. It's possible for a timer to ring, draining the battery enough to reset the unit; all timers simply stop and you don't know about it until you smell something burning. Although the batteries don't die too often, it can create a bit of chaos in the kitchen when they do.
The alarm isn't overly loud. However it is loud enough for me to hear in the other room with the TV on. I'm happy with its volume. But that is very subjective, and your mileage may vary significantly, depending on the acoustics of your environment, and how well your ears work at the frequency range of the timer's audible alarm.
Pros:
* Auto count-up after time elapsed
* Alarm automatically subsides beep-rate after 30 seconds
* Three independent timers
* All timers are displayed concurrently
* "Last time set" memory for each timer
* Count-up timer feature
* 10-keypad direct-time entry
* Uses standard AAA battery cells
Cons:
* Timer gives misleading audio feedback on some key-presses
* Timers lose their focus causing wasted keystrokes or incorrect operation
* Designed for countertop use (no fridge mounting)
* Rocks/Slides around on the countertop too easily
* Small numeric displays
* Weak batteries can unexpectedly clear all timers
* Clock doesn't offer 24-hour format
Description of OXO Good Grips Triple Timer
Time three events at once or long events with secondary intervals with the Oxo good grips triple timer. Setting the timer is easy and intuitive with the soft buttons on the number keypad. All three times are 100 hours in duration and each have a specified line on the easy-to-read LCD. Simply press the corresponding button (t1, t2, t3) to set each timer. Each timer has distinctive alarm sounds to differentiate between them. The LCD conveniently converts to clock mode when the timer is not in use. The angled face provides better visibility on countertops and shelves and a nonslip bottom provides stability and surface protection. Batteries are included.Timers
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