Just bought a bunch of these, so it’s too soon to say how well they last. HOWEVER, the instructions don’t tell you how to turn off that annoying hourly chime.

To do so, hold down the “C” (left mouse ear) button and press the Mode button. When the lines under the days of the week blink out, that’s when you’ve disabled the hourly chime.

I’m not sure who thought that feature was a really swell idea, but they were wrong. Irritating!

While holding the top left button, press the top right button so that the little radar (alarm) icon in the top right corner of the screen disappears. If you get rid of that little icon, the alarm should turn off. Also, as stated earlier, while holding down the top left button, press the mode button so that all the dashes beneath the days fade out. Somehow a combination of these solutions should turn off the alarm, which otherwise goes off every 5 minutes or every hour.

This stop watch is just fine — a little difficult to operate unless you use stop watches on a regular basis. I bought it to use for games we play at family parties and hard a hard time figuring out how to use it just the way we needed. But this item was a very great value for the money!!!