I bought this about 6 months ago and attached it to a table lamp in the living room with a 14 Watt CFL bulb. Twice during this period it lost the settings and had to be reset. Finally it just died. Very disappointing. GE 15089 7-Day Plug-In Digital Timer
I bought two of these timers for our screen porch lights. The directions for setting the timers were a little confusing to me, but once I figured it out, they work like a charm. Come on and off within 1 minute of each other.
This item works fine once you figure out how to program. Not particularly intuitive. Don't lose the manual or you'll never figure it out.
Mine died after about a year of continuous use. It appears that the battery died. There are weird screws on the case (head shaped like a "Y"), so you can't open it to see if you can replace the battery. Just threw it out. Seems like quite a waste.
Wouldn't buy one again.
After only a year of service, this timer did an accurate impression of an IED. The bang was quite loud and disconcerting. I discovered there is a battery inside the case, and apparently Chinese batteries (this whole product is made in China, thanks GE!) are downright un-American and want to go on a Jihad and tried to burn my house down. How this product could be sold as a safe device is beyond me. Time to go back to the old fashioned dial models...
Do NOT buy this timer unless you have good home owners insurance!
I've had one of these operating a CFL light in our home for the past week, and it works great..no flickering or buzzing of the CFL (this timer is CFL compatible, unlike the older mechanical style timers). The unit is small, quiet (no clicking of whirring of the gears), easily programmed and is energy efficient itself (draws less than 1 watt, vs 3-4 watts for the traditional mechanical timers) It has a manual override button, which is handy if you need to turn something on outside of its programmed schedule. It also has a variety of programming options (single day, weekday/weekend programing, every other day, random, countdown and some I don't remember). If the power shuts off, it has an internal battery so that you don't have to reprogram it. It claims to have a daylight savings offset, but I haven't used that yet.
I'm giving it a four rating vs a five because the instruction sheet that comes with the unit has almost unreadable small print and useless figures. In addition, the manual override feature on this timer requires that you must also manually turn it off and put the unit back into auto (timer) mode (with the mechanical timer units, you can manually override, but the units automatically go back into timer mode after 30-60 minutes.. a nice feature).
We use timers to control many of the lights and a hot water circulating pump in our house to save energy, but I was surprised to discover that the old mechanical timers themselves draw 3-4 watts. I cannot detect the power draw of this device using a Kil-A-Watt unit. With the high utility rates in our area (southern California), I estimate that it will take about 18 mos for one of these units to pay for itself when used to replace a mechanical timer. Not bad for something that is superior in just about every way. - Programmable Timer Switch'
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