Sony

Sony’s Dash, designed for the bedroom or kitchen.Sony’s Dash, designed for the bedroom or kitchen.Sony’s newly released “personal Internet viewer,” the Dash, is a sort of sleek alarm clock in overdrive. Designed for use in the kitchen and bedroom, the Dash hooks into a home’s Wi-Fi network to deliver news, weather, YouTube and other content through a thousand or so free apps — from Netflix, CNBC, Weather Channel, CBS Sports — from the Dash store. The Dash itself costs $200.

“It’s for folks who just wanted to sit down at the computer for five minutes, but with Dash, you don’t need the computer,” Andrew Sivori, director of Sony’s personal audio group, said during a demonstration of the device earlier this week.

“It’s a new way to get information that customizable and important to you,” Mr. Sivori said.

Dash has a seven-inch touchscreen, but is not portable; it must plug into an AC outlet. There are no batteries. The built-in stereo speakers sounded better than it seemed they would, and there’s also a headphone jack. The USB port provides additional access to music, video, photo or whatever content might be stored on a USB flash drive. There is some internal memory, but no ability to add memory or to slot in an SD or Memory Stick photo card. There’s also a touch keyboard for reporting your activities to Facebook.

Because of its handsome touch screen, the Dash is fairly instinctive to use, and is an efficient way to keep track of bits and pieces of information you seek out daily. For all that, though, there is no way to search the Internet with Dash, which does limit its usefulness.

But, did we mention that it’s an alarm clock?