Easy Home 24-Hour Mechanical Indoor Timer

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Aldi sold this again in November of 2024 for $7.99. 

There is a scene in the famous Christmas movie Home Alone when the two villains, parked on a street, watch as the house lights come on one-by-one. The houses are empty because the families are on vacation, and the villains have figured out the timers for each home.

There’s more to the movie than that, of course, but it just goes to show that the notion of mechanical timers ha a bit of history, especially around the holidays. Most people don’t need timers for an entire house — in fact, around the holidays, most people only want them for one particular living room fixture. Aldi sells such a timer.

The Easy Home 24-Hour Mechanical Indoor Timer is an ALDI Find, which means it’s not around for long. At the time of this post, the timer could be had for $3.99. You won’t find too many timers cheaper than this, although, as we’ll see, this is a pretty basic timer compared to some.

There is no warranty listed on the timer, although after-sales support is offered through Eurocentra, a common Aldi after-sales support company.

The timer comes with the timer itself as well as instructions in both English and Spanish.

The timer contains the following features:

• The ability to set on-off times in 30-minute increments across 24 hours
• An override switch to leave it always on
• A single plug

The plug, incidentally, is a 2-prong non-grounded plug. If you need a grounded 3-prong plug, this isn’t for you.

There are a number of warnings on the packaging and in the manual, including:

• The unit is only usable with a 120 V, 60 Hz power source (a standard American plug)
• It is not usable with high power devices. The total capacity is 15 A 1875 W Resistive, 1250 W Tungsten (lighting) 1/2 HP. Do not exceed rated capacity.
• It should not be used with any appliance that exceeds the timer capacity or timer ratings.
• It should not be used in an extension cord, power strip, or other electrical adapter. It is only for plugging directly into an outlet.
• Plugs should be fully inserted into the timer
• It is for indoor use only.
• It should not be used with devices that have heating elements, like space heaters, irons, or cooking appliances.

To set it up, you set the current time to the arrow that says TIME NOW. Next, you pull all the tabs up. After that, you push down the tabs when you want your device on. Any tab that is down is on, while every tab that is up is off. The color-coding on the timer roughly corresponds to daytime and nighttime, so the white 6 and the black 7 correspond to evening, while the black 6 and white 7 correspond to morning. (The sun in the white side is noon, and the moon on the black side is midnight.)

We tested it out with our Christmas tree, and it did what it was supposed to. It turned off when it reached the off time, and it turned on when it reached the on time. Simple as that.

The Verdict:

If you need a cheap mechanical timer for a single lamp or Christmas tree, this is a cheap mechanical timer. It is only 2-pronged and it only has one plug, so it has limits, but as long as you’re fine with that, you can get a timer for $4.