I've purchased 4 of these timers for the kitchen because I like them so much. It has all the features I want: large numbers, loud ringer you can hear several rooms away (which you can modify), count up, count down. Another feature I like is that when the time counts down to zero, it beeps and continues to do so for one minute unless you shut it off. After one minute the beeping stops, but the timer continues counting up from zero so that when you do shut it off you can see how much time has elapsed since is went to zero. I find this feature very handy when experimenting with recipes. For example, If I think something is going to thicken in 5 minutes, I set the timer accordingly. But if at the 5 minute mark it HASN'T thickened, I let the timer continue until it does and then I can see how much time it actually took. Another feature I like is that if I set the timer for 5 minutes and I press Stop, it automatically resets itself to 5 minutes. If that's not what you want, just hit clear. The timer is an of/off button, but to be honest, the button has never worked for me. One more "feature" some of these timers appear to have is cycle mode -- not that the directions ever said that. If it gets into cycle mode, you won't get an arrow up or down symbol when the timer counts up or down, instead you'll see a cycle symbol. When this happens, if you set the timer for 20 minutes and you hit stop when the alarm goes off, it will AUTOMATICALLY reset itself to 20 minutes and begin counting down again -- ad nauseam until you clear it. Again, I didn't see this in any of the instructions and I don't even know how I got my timer into cycle mode, but the only way I could figure out how to go back to normal count down/count up mode was to remove and reinstall the batteries.