Clock Radio

It has what I want. It has an easy to set and turn on alarm. It’s dimmable. It has what I need.

Radio is ergonomically right and functions well. Footprint and Dimmer are both the best in recent years.

Well-designed clock/radio. I love the big numbers. Once I read the directions, the setting made perfect sense. The use of one button to turn alarm off and on was easy to remember.

I like the style of this clock/radio very much EXCEPT that the owner cannot select the volume of the alarm. Why does Philips presume to know how loud I need the radio to be to wake me? (They don't.) The design of starting the alarm at a low volume and gradually increasing it just makes it easier to sleep through, as I incorporate the lower volume music or talk into my dreams. Very poor feature.

My Dad got me this alarm clock to wake me up for school. It was really loud and got me up, and that’s saying something since I’m a heavy sleeper! I also really like how big it is. It fills up space and I can see what time it is from miles away! Unfortunately, I live in an area prone to thunderstorms and the power goes out 1-3 times a month. Once that happened, it was really hard to set the time correctly. I tried and tried and eventually I just gave up. For a while the alarm clock showed a display of: —:— because I could not figure it out! Eventually I returned it. I don’t know if it’s just me having difficulties setting the time because I’ve seen other people in my household really enjoy this alarm clock, but personally, it’s not my first choice.

I bought an AJ3400 at an estate sale. The default sound level (07) was too loud for where I wanted to use it. I'm an electrical engineer, so I "could" have added/adjusted components, but it's not worth the trouble. My hack was one sheet of toilet paper. Fold it in half one way and then the other, making it 4-ply. Place it over the speaker in back and then tape a 3-inch square of notebook/printer paper over the toilet paper. The default volume is reduced to what I want. This will probably muddy the fidelity for music, but for listening to NPR news, it's just fine. If I need it louder, it still gets plenty loud for me when I raise the volume level above 07.

The design of this clock radio is smashing. Smooth, clean, large, easy to read, lots of style. But its functionality is really poor. The buttons are recessed and barely stick up so they are hard to feel in the dark. And they are too small and too close together. Plus, several are toggles, that is, move them left they produce a different result than when you move them right. Like the Volume/Alarm set button. Really, you set the left alarm by toggling left to turn the volume down and the right alarm by toggling right. No where on the clock does it indicate that is how you set the alarm. You simply have to remember that from reading and learn it. When you set the radio alarm, the volume defaults to 7 which blows your partner out of bed. So, you have to remember to turn on the radio, toggle left to turn the volume to 1, turn off the radio, and toggle left ONE TIME to set the radio alarm. Twice sets the alarm sound! To turn off the alarm early in the morning, you have to find either the radio button in the center of a row of buttons, or feel for the left side of the volume/alarm button and push it once. If your old/fat fingers find the wrong button, your partner will smash you on the head and you can get up, turn on the light and find the switch. There are several OTHER weird things like this that I can't recall because I only do a limited number of things with this alarm for fear I will inadvertently turn on the toaster or the blender. While I am a buyer of well-designed things, this great design has a very poor user experience. One can only hope that the designer of this clock has to live with it him/herself the rest of their life!!

I like to begin my day by waking to the news. When the station comes on it increases in volume to the point where it is too loud. In order to control the volume I have to shut off the alarm and turn on the radio. That seems unnecessary, I'd rather be able to have the alarm volume controlled.

Save your money. I'm always skeptical of 1 & 5 star ratings so I gave this two stars hoping more people read it before wasting their money. PROS: Large display with choice between Light and Dim and this justified my 2 stars. This is the reason why I bought it, but I didn't realize all the drawbacks until it was received. CONS? UGH... let me count the ways: 1) CONTROLS. All controls come from seven rice kernel size buttons, all the same size, same shape, all in a line and all on top of the display where they're unidentifiable unless looking down on it and have light to read them. Philips, did you realize people view this from eye level when waking up? WOW! BRILLIANT! 2) DISPLAY. Blinking colon on the display. Solved by using bits of electrical tape over it. 3) VOLUME. When turned on it's preset by Philips and is always LOUD. There is no way to change the default so the radio must always be manually adjusted. 4) VOLUME #2. Even on softest setting it's still too loud. 5) PRESET STATIONS. How do you erase a station that you incorrectly preset? Can't even find an answer to this either. 6) PRESEST STATIONS #2. To change stations through the presets you must toggle through all ten to find the one you want and you must memorize which each number is. ie- As you toggle, stations are ID'd as "P01, P02, P03... ". It takes five seconds for the station to be identified before the "P01" numbers change to station frequencies. 7) FM only? My local NBA team and the university sports are on an AM station. I knew it going in, but was this so difficult or expensive that AM should be eliminated? Philips cut corners. And my #1 complaint?... 8) It's hard to comprehend that a product is designed this way. The radio volume on the wake alarm is preset LOUD by the factory. THERE IS NO WAY TO CHANGE IT to default to a lower volume. There is a DIY workaround on YouTube for dismantling the clock and soldering in a diode. Maybe Philips will reimburse me for a soldering set? I'm not sure what century this was designed in, but modern electronics are designed to at least be minimally configurable to users' preferences. Philips failed. All around this Philips product is one of the more terrible designs of an electronics product that I've encountered.

Looks good but the blinking minute hour separator is really annoying - why did Philips think that was a desirable feature, it constantly flashes. I’m sure it’s losing time too. I set it to the time on my phone and this morning it’s 2 minutes slower.