La Crosse Technology 513-1411 Review: Color-Changing LED Wall Clock

The La Crosse Technology 513-1411 is a color-changing digital LED wall clock with 3-inch digits, a calendar, and an indoor thermometer. La Crosse pitches it at desk setups and game rooms — RGB for people who already have RGB everywhere else — and prices it at $35.99 list.

It earns that. The digits are genuinely bright and the colors are saturated rather than washed out, which is the failure mode of most cheap RGB clocks. The indoor temperature reads accurately. And the unit that showed up has a feature La Crosse doesn't advertise anywhere: a color-adjustable underglow strip along the bottom edge, with its own dedicated button.

What you don't get is any kind of smarts. There's no WWVB atomic sync, no Wi-Fi, and no app. You set the time by hand with buttons on the back, and you'll set it again twice a year for daylight saving. The clock is also 12-hour only. For a $36 desk accessory that's a fair trade; if you wanted a self-setting clock, this isn't one.

Pros and cons

Quick specs

Figures come from La Crosse's product page and the setup manual, except where noted from the unit itself.

Spec	La Crosse Technology 513-1411
Digit height	3.00 in (7.62 cm)
Time format	12-hour only
Secondary display	Month/date with indoor temperature, or seconds
Temperature range	32°F to 99°F (0°C to 37°C)
Color modes	22 total: 5 animated cycles, 10 gradients, 7 solids
Underglow	Separate color-adjustable strip (on this unit; not in La Crosse's spec sheet)
Brightness	4 levels plus off, with adaptive auto-brightness
Alarm	Up to 90 dB, 2-minute duration, 10-minute snooze
Power	5V USB-A to DC adapter included, 72 in (6 ft) cord
Battery backup	2 × AAA, not included; 3+ years when run on the cord
Mounting	Three wall-hanging holes or built-in kickstand
Dimensions	11.00 × 4.51 × 1.35 in (27.9 × 11.5 × 3.4 cm)
Construction	Plastic case, glossy lens
Warranty	1-year limited
List price	$35.99

The display is the whole product

Three-inch digits on an 11-inch-wide face means the time is readable from across a room, and that is the main reason to buy a clock like this instead of glancing at a phone. The lens is glossy black, so when the LEDs are off the face disappears into the case. When they're on, the segments look like they're floating.

The layout puts the time on the left two-thirds. On the right there's a row of day abbreviations — MON through SUN — with the current day lit, then a secondary readout below it. That secondary panel toggles between the month and date with indoor temperature, or a running seconds count. A small house icon marks the temperature as the indoor reading.

Brightness is the part that separates this from bargain-bin RGB clocks. There are four manual levels plus a full-off setting, and holding the SNOOZE/BRIGHTNESS button switches on adaptive brightness, which uses an ambient light sensor to dim in a dark room and brighten in daylight. Leave adaptive on and the clock is bright enough to read in a sunlit kitchen without becoming a nightlight at 2 a.m. That's the setting most people should use. If it still glows too much for a bedroom, the off setting kills the display entirely and any button press brings it back at full brightness.

22 color modes, and an underglow that isn't in the manual

The color system splits into two groups. Five animated modes shift colors left to right across the digits: Rainbow 1, Rainbow 2, Cool, Warm, and Energy. Then there are 17 stationary options — 10 fixed gradients (Rainbow, Cool, Warm, Energy, Fire, Sun, Garden, Forest, Twilight, Petal) and 7 solid colors (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, purple, pink). There's also a plain white LED option if you want a clock instead of a light show.

The colors are the strong point. Saturation holds up at every brightness level, and the gradient modes put a real spread of hues across the digits rather than tinting everything one shade. The animated cycles move slowly enough to be ambient instead of distracting.

Then there's the underglow. A strip along the bottom edge of the case throws color down onto whatever the clock is sitting on, and it has its own UNDERGLOW COLOR button separate from the one that controls the digits — so you can run white digits over a rainbow wash, or match both. On a countertop or a desk it reads as a genuine accent light.

This is where the documentation falls apart. La Crosse's product page and the setup manual for the 513-1411 both describe a single color-selection button and never mention an underglow at all. The hardware has seven buttons — minus, DISPLAY MODE/SET, plus, SNOOZE/BRIGHTNESS, DISPLAY COLOR, UNDERGLOW COLOR, and ALARM — and a working underglow strip. The published material is describing an earlier revision than what's shipping.

It's a nice surprise rather than a problem, but it's worth knowing before you buy: the spec sheet undersells this clock, and if the underglow is the reason you want it, check the listing photos for that seven-button layout rather than trusting the manual.

Buttons on the back are the one real ergonomic miss

Every control sits on the top rear edge, with the labels molded into the plastic facing up and back. Mounted on a wall or sitting on a shelf above eye level, you can't see them — you reach over the top and feel for the right one. The labels are dark grey on black, so even with the clock in your hands they're hard to read in dim light.

In practice this matters less than it sounds, because after setup the only button you touch regularly is brightness or color. But the initial time-set walk — hold DISPLAY MODE/SET, step through hour, minute, year, month, and date with plus and minus — is a lot easier if you do it at a table before mounting.

Indoor temperature

The thermometer is accurate, which is not a given at this price. It's spec'd for 32°F to 99°F (0°C to 37°C) and switches between Fahrenheit and Celsius.

The usual caveat for any clock-integrated sensor applies: it's reading the air at the case, not the average of the room. Mount it above a radiator, in direct afternoon sun, or on a wall shared with a bathroom and it will read high. Give it a normal interior wall and it tracks the room. If you want temperature data you can actually log and trend, that's a different category of device — our Tempest weather station review and YNAK 16-in-1 air quality monitor review cover what that costs.

Setup, power, and mounting

Setup is genuinely quick. Plug the included 5V adapter into the barrel jack, set the time and date by hand, pick a color, and you're done in under five minutes.

Power is the constraint worth understanding. The clock runs from the wall — the 6-foot cord and included USB-A-to-DC brick are the intended power source, and the two AAA batteries (not included, so add them to the order) only act as backup to preserve the time through an outage. The LEDs don't run on batteries. That means placement is limited by outlet access, and mounting it high on a wall means a visible cord unless you're willing to fish it through drywall.

La Crosse did think about that: there are three hanging holes on the back and a channel that routes the cord out of a chosen side, so the cable exits toward the nearest outlet instead of dangling from the center. A fold-out kickstand handles tabletop use, which is how most people will run it.

Who should buy the 513-1411

Buy it if you want a big, bright, colorful clock for a desk, game room, kitchen, or dorm and you're spending accessory money, not smart-home money. Brightness, color quality, and the underglow are all better than the price suggests.

Buy it if you specifically want RGB that coordinates with a PC setup. The animated modes and the separate underglow control give you more to match against than the single-color clocks in this price range.

Buy it if you need at-a-glance legibility. Three-inch digits with adaptive brightness solve the "I can't read the clock from the couch" problem better than a phone dock or a small alarm clock will.

Who should skip it

Skip it if you want a clock that sets itself. No atomic sync and no Wi-Fi means manual setting, plus a daylight-saving adjustment twice a year.

Skip it if you need 24-hour time. It's 12-hour only, with no setting to change that.

Skip it if it has to run on batteries, or if there's no outlet where you want it. The AAAs are backup for timekeeping, not a power source for the display.

Skip it if you need real environmental monitoring. One indoor temperature reading with no humidity, no history, and no export is a convenience feature, not an instrument.

Verdict

The 513-1411 does the two things a color-changing LED clock has to do, and does them well: the digits are bright and easy to read, and the colors look good instead of looking cheap. The indoor temperature is accurate, adaptive brightness means you can leave it in a bedroom, and the undocumented underglow is a real bonus at this price.

The limits are all in what La Crosse left out rather than what it got wrong. Manual time setting, 12-hour only, and mains power are the compromises behind the $36 price, and none of them are hidden — they're just the cost of a clock that spends its budget on the display.

One caveat on the listing itself: Amazon shows a 4.5-star average across a handful of ratings, which is too small a sample to mean much yet. Judge this one on the specs and the photos rather than the score.

Where to buy

La Crosse lists the 513-1411 at $35.99 on its own site and it has shown up cheaper on Amazon, including used-condition offers. Confirm you're getting the color-changing version rather than the red-digit variant sold under the same listing, and pick up a pair of AAA batteries while you're there.