Sony you done good!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Impressive, full featured clock radio

Cons: Keep the operating instructions handy for presetting some features.

The Bottom Line: 
If you can live without a CD player, "atomic time" and stereo sound you'll love it.

Author's Review
Here's an inexpensive ($30) am/fm clock radio that short of a CD player and atomic time, has all the bells and whistles you could ask for.

For starters, it's three window design let's you check the current time and both alarm times without lifting a finger or pushing a button. The display backlight is a cool black on green LCD dimmable in three steps. The time digits are a very readable 5/8" high.

The dual alarms can be set to wake you with radio (you can choose which preset station you want to wake to), buzzer (get's louder and faster progressively) or two tunes, Vivaldi or Beethoven.

The snooze alarm is adjustable in 5 steps from 10-60 minutes. The nap timer is adjustable in 6 steps from 10 to 120 minutes. The sleep timer is adjustable in 4 steps from 15-90 minutes.

The radio is digitally tuned (PLL) and has 5 presets for each band, Fm1, Fm2 & AM total 15. I live in a poor radio reception area yet this unit surprised me by pulling in some fairly distant stations and thanks to the PLL, not drifting off them.

I conducted a test. I unplugged the radio for about 90 seconds to simulate a power outage. When I plugged it back in it came back with the time and all presets intact. Since Sony chose not to mention this in the operating instructions I was mildly and pleasantly surprised.

If you have a crowded nightstand, no worries, this unit's footprint is 6 7/8" X 2 3/8" X 5 3/8"

There's a 1 year warranty on the unit.