

Considering that orange and blue are opposites, this is not really surprising but it does mean that if you want to use the backlight feature, you should stick to uncoated tubes. With this surround and the orange coating, the backlight is almost completely blocked. The tubes are surrounded with foam padding to prevent light leakage from around the tube. Earlier I mentioned that I swapped out the tubes with orange-coated GN-4s. You can order other colors (ocean green, deep green, white, purple) and if you don’t like the backlights, you can simply disable them. The tubes are illuminated with blue LEDs which fade on/off every two seconds by default. You don’t notice these details at first but when you start staring at them you quickly appreciate them. The tubes flicker somewhat you can see the flow inside of the tube bouncing around. For example, the top of the tubes are crimped and this causes the light pattern to be different from any led bulb. This was done to match the color of the nixie tubes but it also gives the device some subtle detail. They are not led they are tiny neon bulbs. The tubes protrude slightly but only by a few millimeters.Ī small feature that I wanted to call out is the colon indicator tubes. I am a huge fan of this design it gives the clock a nice luxury feel. The wooden base and metal plate look nearly identical to my X2000. The enclosure clearly follows the design of some of the original Nocrotec clocks. I don’t consider this a problem because it is the nature of all tubes like this. Because of this, the clock will ideally be mounted somewhere around eye level. This means that the numeral 9 is easier to see than a 6 because the 9 is at the front of the tube and the 6 is at the rear (digits are not stacked in numerical order). On end view tubes, the digits are stacked on top of each other in a small cylinder. Side view tubes typically have a wider viewing angle (both vertically and horizontally) than end view tubes. While we’re on the topic of tubes it is worth talking about viewing angle. Nocrotec has a list of substitutes that I have included at the bottom of this review for reference. For example, I have swapped out my tubes for the orange-coated GN-4 tubes (more on this later). Consequently, there are multiple tubes that can work as substitutes. These are 30mm diameter tubes that use a standard base. These are uncoated tubes with proper 5s and 2s. The default set are Chinese QS30-1 tubes. The first thing that you notice is that this device uses end view tubes. The tubes are sold by and the kit components are sold though. Dieter of Nocrotec worked with YanZeYuan (严泽远) to develop the electronics for this device. I’ve reviewed several other Nocrotec clocks before and this one comes to us from a combination of sources.
