Clock-Radio Reviews

I've tried two of these clocks, and both ended up being unreliable. The first clock worked fine for a few months; then one of the alarms stopped functioning (on the dual alarm function). I did like the clock overall, so I purchased another one, thinking perhaps this was a fluke. After just one use, the alarm on the second clock failed to go off. I'm very disappointed in this product.

I purchased this item with high expectations since it sets and resets itself as needed. I was very pleased with this item, except for the fact it is too bright, until after approximately nine months the radio quit working. All I get, AM/FM, is white noise. I will be replaceing this item with a different brand.

I have had one of these clocks for about 3 years and love it! It's so great to have a clock that will keep running when the electricity goes off and it resets itself for daylight savings time..even knows when it's leap year and adjusts. I wish all of my clocks could do this. I bought one for my elderly father and he loves it as well.

The only reason I keep this clock is for display reasons in the living room. First of all, the alarm buttons are in a place that makes it difficult to press down. You have to actually pick up the entire clock to set the alarm with the buttons because the way it is set up, there is no leverage when try to press the buttons. Two, its not very intuitive where the alarm on/off buttons are. It took me about 30 seconds to find the off button each morning when I used it as an alarm clock. That can get annoying if the person next to you isn't waking up with you. Third, the radio quality is so poor. I like to wake to music, but all I got was static. Yes, the display is nice, but you can find better clocks for cheaper if all you want is the display. That's my 2-cents.

What do you do with a clock that keeps advancing one minute each second? That's what happens when I use the "sleep" feature. Then, to correct the time, you have to press the time button through 24 hours...and if you over-correct...OOPS...press another 24 hours. There is no backward time adjustment. It's not cost-effective to send it back for replacement...so I just cannot use the "sleep" feature. Otherwise, the large display is great for us myopics. The radio is very adequate, and the alarm is LOUD! I like the radio...I just wish I was able to fall asleep to music.

The display on this thing is great, very clear and large enough to see from anywhere. The radio isn't the best but big deal it's a clock radio! The alarm buttons are more difficult to get to than on an average alarm clock making it an effectie wake up system seeing as it's difficult to turn the alarm off when you're drowsy. As an alarm clock it works great.

Everything on the clock works exceptionaly, and the user interface is intuitive, making it difficult to misset the alarm and oversleep. However, the viewing angle on the LCD ends at about 20 degrees above horizontal making it completly worthless unless you put it on the floor or sleep standing up. It order to tell what time it is and not just see a complete wash of green I have to nearly get completly out of bed. Makes you long for the days when little pieces of plastic fell over revealing the next digit, and I wasn't even alive then! :D

Pros: 1) Setting and resetting the time, alarm(s) and radio presets is extremely intuitive and takes about two seconds. 2) It gets fantastic reception--better than any previous clock radio I've owned. And 3) The NAP BUTTON. Find me another small profile alarm clock with a nap button for the price. I bought two of these--one for the bedroom, one for the office--just for this feature, which I often use as a timer as well.



Cons: I will be the first to admit that the viewing angle is not great--but think of it this way: when I toss and turn in bed at night, the last thing I want to do is look over and see 3am flashing at me. At least I know the alarm will go off at the right time. But if you need to see this clock from across the room, keep looking.

This is the best alarm clock I have seen on the market. The instant that I spotted it, I was sold. Crappy alarm clocks are a pet peave of mine, and this one is great. Setting the time takes seconds. Setting the digital presets takes seconds. It looks fabulous and I can rest my beer or a cup of coffee on it (I don't recommend it) if I wanted to. No batteries? Not a problem because it takes only seconds to set- no holding down a button for two minutes while it cycles through. I am buying one for by brother right now. Oh- the brightness control (3 settings) is wonderful if you like your bedroom very dark (or very bright!)

I loved this product for its many functions. It is not yet one year old, however, and has had a complete failure of all systems. The warranty is only for 90 days, so I'm out of luck. The Sony people gave me an address to take it to for repairs (parts, not labor, are still under warranty) but could not give me a phone number for the service center! I was told they did not have one and left to fend for myself. It did not cost enough to track down this service center and hope the repairs cost less than the purchase price.

no problems with it, works perfectly

This is actually a review of Sony CFD-E75 CD/Radio/Cassette Boombox (Silver), exact thing except color. I "borrowed" this from my wife when I found I didn't have any cassette players (except in a car) and had to listen to a cassette. I was impressed by the sound quality for spoken word cassettes. Everything sounds normal like a human is talking! I've also listened to music cassettes and music CD's and am just amazed at how good this sounds. The "wheel" for selecting CD tracks is a great idea and is used for tuning the radio when in "radio" mode. That makes it easy to find your station.Speaking of which, this model has a "real" three section, rotating antenna, not a skinny little wire hanging out the back What won me over though was the FM AND AM reception on the radio section of this item. We live in an area where the big broadcast antenna are on a hill real close to our home so we've always had problems with radio reception. A good adjustable Bass with the Sony "Mega Bass" button does change the sound noticably. I like the styling and I keep the thing on the night stand next to my head so haven't needed the remote. I guess I'll let my wife keep that. HA HA
I don't know why others are saying the sound is poor, but mine sounds great!

This was a good purchase. She swears she got it for considerably less than the price shown. But even at the price shown, I think it's darn well worth it!
Highly Recommended!
John Row

Thank goodness this clock has been discontinued. What a piece of junk. While the unit is physically sturdy, the display is small and awfully hard to read. The display light is inefficient at letting you read the black digits. The buttons on my clock became hard to use; they started to require more and more pressure to make them work until I have to brace the clock on the bed....jamming my fingers on the buttons. I'm ready for a new one!

I like quirky tools, and this alarm is quirky.

First the down sides.

- The indiglo light is horrible and you can't see this alarm from across the room, or even a few feet away when your eyes are all beary from sleep. The light sensor isn't too great either, so I pretty much leave it on or off.
- The switches & knobs (alarm on/off, am/fm, brightness, frequency) on the side are, well, on the side, and you have to sort of figure out which is which, though I remember vaguely which is which.

- The buttons can be hard to push, but I think they're easy to push.
- It can be hard to tune in your favorite radio stations.

What I like about it:

- Two Alarms! YAY. I set the 2nd one for 14 minutes after the first, which gives me 9 minutes then 5 minutes then 4 minutes snooze (then alternating 5 and 4 minute snoozes).
- The layout of the buttons on the front is pretty good. The slow back/fwd fast back/fwd on the left side is great and makes it very easy to set the alarm time. The alarm button also stands out enough that you hit it without accidentally hitting the time button.
- The snooze button is easy to hit. Then again, I'm not a morning person, so maybe that's a down side.
- Backup battery.
- Heavy-Duty construction.
- The light dims, so it becomes a regular LCD display.

If I were Timex, I'd improve this clock by adding/changing:

- Better backlight, they should user-test this. I realise Indiglo is a big brand and probably helps sell this product, but they really need to improve on this for this particular application.
- For the size & weight you'd think it would also do nature sound or something (not that I'm a fan of them), but it doesn't.

That's about it. I like this alarm a lot, if you want a dual alarm clock and can deal with the indiglo (which dims so you don't have a light blaring in your face all night), I highly suggest this one.

Good:
-Shows date and alarm time on the display ALL the time.
-Great battery backup (see story below).

Bad:
-Display is hard to see from far away, because it is a backlit LCD (it looks cool, though).

The Story:
When an ice storm hit Kansas City, my power was out for almost a week. The Timex, because it has an LCD display, continues to display the time. When the power is out, instead of the radio (if you have it set to radio), it beeps--so you won't sleep in. After a week of no power, it still had the time on the display! I couldn't believe it. Timex did a great job designing the internals of this.

I've had this clock for about 9 months. I got it because it had CD, nap, & headphone capablilites. The features are great, but the quality of the unit is not very good. I found:

1. Controls confusing to use (& remember at 6 am!)

2. It made a humming sound on FM stations at low volume when using headphones.

3. CD player made clicking sounds when playing. At low volumes this is really distracting.

4. It began making random clicking sounds at all hours of day and night about a month ago. Bad wiring?

5. The "automatic" time feature is misleading because it only works if there are batteries in the unit. They install these at the factory, set the time, & ship it out. It uses the batteries to keep the time until you buy it. If you unplug the unit and remove the batteries, it has no idea what time it is when you turn the unit back on. You have to manually re-set the time.

6. Today it fell off my 12" high nightstand (cat) & the LCD display packet broke. So, now I can't tell what time it is.

I'm not buying another one.

I had to return it for a refund, the 2-3 CDs I most wanted to play all in the morning caused such bad clicking, there's just no way I could put up with that. Here's what someone wrote about another similar product, and it's exactly the problem I had:

Clack-clack-clack! That's the sound you'll hear too often when you put a CD in this player. The CD itself seems to sit on the turntable fine, but the part of the lid that rests on the CD is loose and often misaligns. So when you lower the lid and spin up the CD, it clatters.

When setting it up no hassle, just plug in and set the time zone underneth. Has full back up of the time. There's evin a place for headphones or better sounding speakers. Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This clock is a piece of junk. It has a good set of features, but the alarm doesn't always go off. Perhaps 1 in 20 times, it just makes a faint click. If the alarm can't be depended on to work without fail, it makes the whole thing kind of useless as an alarm clock.

I already own one of these, purchased 7 months ago. It broke aweek ago, which makes me wonder about the quality of the production.However, the functionality of the alarm is great! All other alarmclocks become background noise for me after awhile, allowing me tosleep through them (and through the first few hours of work!). Thisone has woken me up every day that I've turned it on.

The Napfunction is also fantastic, allowing me to powernap for a designatedperiod of time without disrupting the settings of the other two dailyalarms.

Even if it breaks, I've gotten more than my $... worth.

The two alarm settings come in handy for my school schedule. I set alarm one for M/W/F and alarm two for Tu/Th. And the nap function is wonderful. The alarm sound is pretty mellow--I much prefer it to being jolted out of bed, but use the radio for an alarm and turn it up loud if you are a heavy sleeper. I have tested the battery backup and it works great. I highly recommend this alarm clock.

I purchased this item and received a damaged unit. The CD player just doesn't work. The display is a horrible readout. May look cool & funky in the pictures, but it is so not practical, not to mention the far left character doesn't even light up. The second one is no better. You can purchase the same thing from Timex cheaper. NOT recommended.

... The readout is very hard to read. Not recommended.

I would definetly give this item a 5/5! First of all, you got your radio, cd player (no need to buy another boombox 4 your room), 2 alarms (one wakes up to your preferred radio station and another to either your inserted cd or the default sounds), a "fortune" (ask the player a yes or no question and have funky guys n girls answer : NNNoooo!! or Maybe or SSuuuurrre...((many answers)), and to top it all off, 3 different light settings for the background. This alarm/radio/boombox/magic 8 ball (lol) is a great, easy device that can be used by ages 6 to adult! (my brother who is 6 can use it!) So, if you want a funky, fun, versatile alarm clock that takes up very little space on your nightstand, spend a few bucks and get this wonder! Happy buying!

An alarm clock with no buzzer, hmmmm......I bought this clock because it was cute and you could play cds in it, but that's about all it's good for. The mystery phrases are silly and although it's nice to be able to wake up to a cd or the radio, there are times when a nice, loud buzzzzzz it all that will wake me up. This clock is all style and no substance. Look elsewhere is my opinion.

The most important thing you must know: this CD player is CDR *and* CDR-W compatible!! That means that you could record your own alarm and wake up to it. You could record (in your own voice) on a CDR-W, the things you have to do the next day, and set the alarm to repeat that track. Then there's no way you'll over-sleep! Well you could do that with a regular CD... but since this set is CDR-W compatible, you can use a RE-WRITABLE CD... and record over it over and over again, with no waste. That is what I hoped for, and that is what I got. Another thing... Don't expect Bose sound on this thing. It's your standard CD player. But the set also comes with extra cables to hook up to external speakers... Also, the top that covers your CD is one of those clumsy, push-to-open, push-to-close doors, which I see breaking apart in the near future. About Mystery phrases-- unless you are a ten year old, they will sound less than fun-ny to you! Very surfer-speak, "waaay cool" 8-ball: yes, no, maybe type phrases. What a totally radical trip.
Being able to set the alarm and work with the options requires skimming through the owner's manual. Once you do that you are fine.
There's a LED light that indicates if your back-up batteries are low on power or not.
Overall I think this is a good buy. Waking up to music is SO much better than waking to a beep. I can't believe you're reading this.

Maybe the yellow/orange LED display is a little harsh. But you have to concede that this is a stylish little piece of electronics. We bought this as a gift for a teenager, and she's been delighted with it's abilities ranging from radio to CD player to nightlight to lullaby machine. It's a good value for the money. If you want better sound or more options, look for something more expensive.

Bought this at Christmas 2001. By mid-March, it would not work. IF the time displayed, it was 18:88. (Since this is in another review, it must be a common failure mode.) The radio and CD player would not work either.

DO NOT buy this product. Select another clock/radio/CD.

After only 4 months of use, this product shutdown completely. I woke up one morning and in the time display showed 18:88. After unplugging the radio and waiting a good 2 hours, I plugged the radio back on the same thing appeared on the display. Everything stopped working, the CD, the time, the radio as well as the on and off button. NOTHING was working! I must say, I was extremely disappointed in this product and I felt as if I was cheated.

The industry behind this machine is fine - the parts, the labor, the detail, all no problem. But the design is weak. In particuarly, the sound is too narrowly directed. The front-loading of all the speakers is a poor choice for an instrument whose audience might be less than a foot away. Nonetheless, the sound is clear, and the placement of controls is better than some other models.