Zazoo Photo Clock Review

I am guessing pretty almost every parent has had a moment where your little one has decided to wake just at the sight of sunlight in the morning, ready to take on the day hours before you would like him or her up.  Zazoo Kids has created the Zazoo Photo Clock to help alleviate some of these moments.  The Zazoo Photo Clock has recently received 2011 awards from The National Parenting Center and the Parent Tested Parent Approved organizations.

The Zazoo Photo Clock is for toddlers on up.   As the child becomes older, the Zazoo Kids Photo Clock can function as a digital picture frame and highlight personal photos.  You can also play videos, songs, and audio books with this device.

The photo clock has images to help recognize when it is time to get up or stay in bed.  There is also an optional nap time feature.  It features a USB port and SD memory card slot so you can personalize it with your own photos.  These photos can be associated with alarm times and be made into visual cues.  You can also use the two sets of awake and asleep images that are pre-loaded.  The Zazoo Photo Clock also comes with some pre-loaded songs, but a “ring” or “beep” are only allowed as the alarm tones.  The music setting for the audible alarm is functional if you download a music file from your computer and select to use the downloaded file for alarm music.

I placed the Zazoo Photo Clock in the bedroom for my two daughters, ages 3 and 5.  It’s a small room, so it was a little difficult to set up with needing to be plugged into an outlet and having a stable location that they could see and not yet disturb it.  I wish this clock had the option to be powered by batteries.  With going through daylight savings time a few weeks ago, my kids think 6:30 or 6:45 a.m. is their now normal wake up time.  I set the photo clock for 7:30 a.m., but so far they haven’t caught on to staying in bed with using the photo clock for the duration we have used it, which is less than a week.

The set-up options are fairly simple.  With the remote, it would sometimes scroll by my choice too quickly and I would have to go back and try again.  I was a little bummed to find that the pre-loaded MP3s could not be used to set the alarm and that they were only present to listen to as songs.  Otherwise, it’s attractive in design and has nice pre-loaded images.  I’m not sure if it is enough to get a child to stay in bed though, due to my personal experience with it so far.