I must admit- I am a bit obsessed with constantly knowing what the weather is and will be like... Just a bit! Generally relying on online weather forecasts, I was über-delighted when asked if I would like to trial the crystal weather station, especially due to its fascinating illuminating 3D weather icons!

My first impression when unpacking the product was that it looks so funky, sleek and fancy, that I would need to be extra careful when holding or touching it!

The manual was easy enough to understand, but a person who isn't very good with manuals might need more time and patience to figure out how to plug it together and set it up according to one's preferences.

After about 7 minutes, the crystal weather station was up and running. The AC power adapter was plugged in, the digital clock with LCD display showed the time and, more importantly, one of the three laser-engraved weather icons was glowing. The illuminated icon- being a red sun, blue clouds, or green rain drops- predicts that this is what the weather will be like within the next 12 to 24 hours. Initially, I thought that was exciting! After a while, however, I realized that this type of weather forecasting is actually quite vague, especially if the sun icon is glowing around midnight. Also, the icons do not illuminate at the same time. This means that if the day will switch between being cloudy and rainy, sunny and rainy, sunny and cloudy, or even cloudy, rainy, and sunny, the weather station won't tell you that; it only chooses one of the icons. As you might have gathered, there is no icon for thunder, snow, hail etc.

Another disappointment is that there is no indication of temperature/degrees for the next 12 to 24 hours. However, you are able to find out what the current temperature is if the weather station is placed as closely to a window as possible; I think that will give you a combination of the room temperature as well as what it's sensing from the opened window. You can either get the temperature by setting the device to switch between time and temperature regularly, or by setting it to display the time and only switch to temperature (for a few seconds) when you hold the palm of your hand against the digital display. I opted for the second setting, and found myself doing the hand motion quite frequently. Though, sometimes the device seemed to mistake me being very close to it as a hand motion, as well.

One thing to note is that the icons are quite bright, which is especially noticeable in a dark room. So, if the weather station is in your bedroom, be prepared to have a corner of your room lit with a red, blue or green light- combined with the red light from the digital clock.

I should also mention that the device comes with a radio-controlled clock function, meaning it can pick up signals to show the accurate time. However, I cannot confirm this, as I just simply set the time and left it at that.

Overall, the crystal weather station can act as a funky little accessory to a room. However, my expectations haven't been met, and so I would not buy this product, especially being around the £100 mark. What a pity, as the idea is great, and the gadget could have had so much potential!

See Oregon Scientific for more details, also available online at Amazon