Cube4You 3x3 Clock

This has no reflection on TheCubicle. TheCubicle as always has great customer service.

Onto the clock. This cube4you clock was just junk. The moment I opened it. There was something inside shaking inside the clock. After a couple spins of the RL dial a metal rod fell out. And there was still shaking inside. I opened the clocks and there were springs and metal rods all inside. There was no way i could put it back together. Save yourself the money and stay with the Qiyi clocks or even the Sengso. Cube4you needs a look at there product and go back to the drawing board.

This thing is trash don’t sell this any more off the shelves

I only own one of these because I won it as a mystery puzzle at a competition; I'd never buy this on purpose for $30, let alone like $15. I was delighted to receive it, though, as I was incredibly curious how it would feel, considering it is almost entirely 3D printed. I also wanted to compare it to the unique-feeling Cube4You 5x5 Clock, which I do own (willingly). I hope this review answers questions people might want answered without shelling out over $30 on this weird thing.

As soon as I had a chance, I cracked this thing open. The puzzle is held together with screws that very easily loosen themselves and fall out. Two easily-removable frosted plastic faces cover the two sides of the puzzle, a bizarre choice considering they are not transparent and limit readability; the colors are quite nice without them, despite the clock faces being exposed. The plastic is ridgy but nice-feeling on the outside, and the faces have that classic 3D-printed wavy texture which I really like. The turning is not great and requires gripping the puzzle a little harder to apply sufficient force to the gears. Due to its incredibly bizarre and poor alignment system (which I'll come back to later), it is remarkably crunchy and snaps to half hours just as well as hours. However, because the pins are not designed for those states, they can easily get stuck on one side until you have aligned all clocks connected to the stuck pins to the same "halfness polarity" as that side. This can be difficult, as the connections between clocks through pins are quite poor, making it difficult to align cross clocks using the corner clocks. A way around this is to continuously push the pin to the other side while moving the corresponding gear back and forth until it gives. Speedsolving isn't that fun as a result of this handicap.

The mechanism is unlike any clock I've ever seen. Opposite cross clocks are pushed apart from each other by central repelling magnets. The pins are magnetic, ShengShou style, with magnetic rings to hold them. The clocklets and clocklet rings themselves, however, are not magnetic. Cube4You instead opted to put 12 divots in each of the rings where the clocklets sit, place holes that go through the clocklets laterally underneath the faces and are aligned to 12, and insert two ~5mmx1mm metal rods with a spring between them into the holes. The rods and springs together are barely longer than the diameter of the clocklets, causing the ends of the rods to stick out; when the clock is turned, they are pushed into the aforementioned divots from the force of the spring, thus aligning the clock. Incredible.

Disassembly and assembly (oh God) are, as a result, nightmarish. Removing any clocklet from its ring results in the tiny metal rods inside being ejected out from the force of the spring, sometimes flying up to 10cm away from the puzzle, and in my situation, often onto the floor. They are not held in by anything either, so tilting the clocklets makes the non-ejected components fall right out, also onto the floor. The corner clocks weirdly have two alignment holes, one on each clock face, but only one of the holes is actually populated with the rods and springs (or at least I think; they were ejected too quickly for me to actually see which holes had the mechanism, and like, how could I have seen such a thing coming??). Assembly involved putting a rod, spring, then rod into each clocklet's alignment hole, carefully placing it into its ring, using a small screwdriver to help keep the rods in as I lowered it, inserting the pins, and even more carefully putting the two halves back together. It took a few tries, as a small springy explosion occasionally ensued at my desk. It took about 45 minutes. I do not recommend it. I hope you like hide-and-seek and magnet fishing.

Also, please don't do this, but for no reason other than morbid curiosity (morbid because it was deadly to my sense of fun), I decided to lubricate it and set it up properly just to see what would happen. I applied Weight 5 and MoYu lubricant to the insides of both halves and the rings before reassembly (after using a flashlight to find the multiple microscopic pieces I'd dropped). I was hoping it would help the alignment system not get stuck on half hours, but unfortunately, it didn't really do anything but make it faster and smoother I guess. Nothing else really changed. Womp womp. I find it incredibly funny that I quite possibly have the best Cube4You clock in the entire world, though.

There really isn't a great reason to buy this if you want a clock. There are better options for far more bang for your buck. The mechanism is poor and not well thought out, the turning is mediocre, and it faces problems that make it rather frustrating to even solve casually. As a museum or collector piece, I think it's hilarious. An almost entirely 3D-printed clock with a one-of-a-kind alignment system? Fascinating! Other than that, PLEASE no.

2/5 because it actually ...