Product Review: Chumby One




Product Review: Chumby One





	This is my Virtual Chumby!

Just the other day I was telling a friend that I got a Chumby One. First thing he said was "What?". You see he has never heard of the greatness of the Chumby One, and quite possibly a lot of people have not heard of this super cute device. First of all what exactly is it? Is it a super cool clock radio? Or is it an always on Internet portable cable of accessing things like YouTube or your Gmail account or to catch up on the latest David Letterman Top Ten? Well in short it's both! You see there are over 1500 widgets available for just about anything you can think of. Well before I go on let's take a look at the hardware. What you get in the box is the Chumby One. It's a small device that has 3.5 inch touchscreen. It has 802.11 B/G WiFi, FM Radio Tuner, 2W speaker, integrated volume knob, 3-axis accelerometer, a top button for control panel access, a 2.0 USB port and a headphone jack. For the technical geek out there reading this review here are the specs of what's running the Chumby: 454 mhz CPU 64mb DDR SDRAM 2gb MicroSD Firmware Card Also compared to the original Chumby, this one has a spot on the bottom to take a battery. It's not included but it's a nice option to have.


First off if you have visited www.chumby.com and seen photos of the device it is a very good/cute looking device. When I opened the box for the first time I was surprised at how small it was. I think this is because all the photos on the website make it look huge. But the size it is in person is in my opinion the perfect size. I use my Chumby One on my nightstand beside my bed. If it would have been much larger it would take up too much space. When you power on the Chumby One for the first time there is a great little intro video that details how to use the device. What I found great about this intro is that they have different people from the company narrating different sections. Everyone from the CEO right down to an intern discussing her favorite widget. It's very well done and a great intro into the device. After you have watched the video it's time to set up the wifi. It's pretty easy, you just choose a wi-fi network and hit connect. If you have to enter a password a slider comes up allowing you to choose numbers and letters. Once you are connected to the Internet you need to go to your computer to authorize your Chumby. From there you can start adding widgets until your hearts content. You can set up channels that can house different widgets. For example I have a channel with all clocks, one with social networking stuff like Facebook and Twitter. The possibilities are almost endless.



So that leads us to what do you really do with the device. Well that's not an easy answer because I think the Chumby One can be different things to different people. For instance let's say you're into to cooking. Well you could put the Chumby on you're kitchen counter. There is a egg timer widget you could use to keep track of time. There is a widget that gives you a new recipe every day and then if you like the recipe you can e-mail it to yourself. While you're cooking you could turn on one of thousands of Internet radio stations and you could also check the weather for that day to make sure you're prepared when you go out. As you can see it's a very useful device. I use mine mostly as the ultimate clock radio. I have a default channel set up with tons of different clock faces. Everything from Big Ben that gongs hourly, to a clock that looks like the computers used on Star Trek. It's great to have so much variety and makes it fun and interesting to see it cycle through the various clocks. But it also has the most advanced alarm system. There are Weekday alarms, Weekend alarms, 1-time alarms, or custom alarms for every day of the week. So if you do shift work this will be perfect because you won't have to change the alarm every day. You could have the alarm sound with a variety of different sounds like a bird chirping to a very loud horn. Or you could have it log on to your favorite radio station. You can also set it to display whatever "channel" you want once the alarm has been canceled. So for an example you could set it to wake you up at 6:45 am to your favorite shoutcast station then have the snooze be 8 minutes long and then when you cancel the alarm rather than hitting snooze it could display traffic cams so you could see what your drive to work is going to be like. Like I said there are endless configurations for your alarms. I also thought I should talk about the single speaker in the device. I was amazed at how loud and clear it sounded. Definitely nicer than any alarm clock I have had plus it's louder than my macbook as well.



There is so much the Chumby One can do that I have just touched the surface. There is a very strong community behind the device and new widgets are being developed all the time. So now that you're sold on the device where can you get one and what does it cost? Well all you have to do is head over to www.chumby.com and order one. They are currently retailing for $119.95 which is a steal compared to the original Chumby which was over $200. Do you need a Chumby One? Probably not, but I have nothing but high praise for this device, it is definitely the most fun I have had ever with an alarm clock. The gadget freak in me loves it as well. The biggest sell I could probably give you is that my wife even thought it was cool and wanted to know all about it. The Chumby One is now part of my daily routine and it certainly makes waking up more fun. Just as a side note this product is not available in Canada as of yet, please check Chumby.com for more details. This product receives my highest recommendation!