Home > Consumer Reviews > Fm CD-r/rw Clock Radio- Buzzer Alarm-bass Reflex 20

I don't understand why nobody has reviewed this fine little clock-radio-CD-player-with-mp3-hookup. It does SO much, and so well. Takes almost no room on the table, and the horizontal piece is a convenient "shelf" for your iPod when you are using it that way. The clock readout is large and easy to read, the sound is quite good, considering the size of the speakers. Radio reception is digital, which was really important to me, and I can play CD's on it too! What's not to love? I confess I hesitated when I saw that it had no reviews, not here or anywhere. I have no idea why that's so. But I decided to take a chance and buy it anyway. I am so glad I did, I'm thinking of getting another one! :)

So one... Amazon doesn't title this product correctly. It comes in white or black, if the model number has the "B" on the end it's in black.

Anyways, I bought this a few days ago from a competing eTailer, as they had the black one in stock for a decent price with free shipping. It was to replace my old Timex which seemed to be crapping out. Here's my thoughts:

Pros: Environmental packaging (no foam) uses molded cardboard, I always like seeing companies doing this. Fairly small size and decent design. You can wake to a CD and pick between 20 tracks. Fairly easy to use. Advertises some good features: Dimming LCD, gentle wake volume, battery backup (2 AAA's), programmable CD tracks to wake to... The unit does not make any popping noises through the speaker just before the alarm goes off. My old Timex electronically clicked to turn on the speaker just before the fake onboard nature sounds would start, and it was enough to startle you awake before nature released her gentle furry! The Philips CD doesn't make any noise in "snooze mode" or before the CD starts playing, I've heard other units make noise while the CD spins in idle during your snooze. This CD player is the quietest running I've ever heard. It's virtually silent during operation.

I found using and programing the Philips to be be easy, but then again technology makes sense to me. I did find that the buttons you press on the side of the unit to change the time were odd. You sometimes had to press them a little hard or a couple of times before they'd engage.

Cons: I bought this so we could wake up to nature CD's since most alarm clocks with nature sounds on them are pretty cheesy. Plus they don't have gentle wake modes! The Philips does come with "gentle wake" which is supposed to ease the volume in slowly (about 15 seconds for this model). Well, as with many gentle wake clocks the initial volume when it starts is quite loud. Not gentle in my opinion. I think gentle wake should start at zero volume and rise over at least one minute if not more. But since we're waking to a CD it doesn't really make a difference. I burn my own nature CD's and set the volume on the CD to fade in over 5 minutes.

The LCD display is a white blue color, not green, with black numbers and letters. It's large and easy to read. The LCD display has 2 settings. Super bright and bright! At night the dimmed mode lights up the entire room! That's rough because we're quite sensitive to light when we're sleeping at night. I put a colored gel over the screen and now the illumination is perfect and I can change the colors depending on what color of gel I use, but the jury is out one whether or not I'm still going to ship this item back. 2 alarms is good and works for us. My old Timex had 4 alarms which could be set to independent nature sounds, but I never used all 4, usually 2 and the nature sounds were junk, and lets not forget that darn speaker clicking on and waking us up startlingly before our time!

The really really really odd thing about this Philips is that there's only digital FM tuning. No AM stations! It doesn't matter much to me, since I don't use the radio on it, but I find it really odd that there's no AM radio tuning?! It would be a nice option incase we need to tune into any emergency info or news stuff. The sound on this unit is okay. A little thin with the bass, but hard to get good sound from such a tiny speaker. It still sounds better than my old Timex, but the Sony Dreamstation's are much fuller for dynamic sound. I think the Philips only has one speaker as well, so your sound is in mono. If power goes out this alarm clock will not function at all (even with the battery backup), but you won't have to reset it once the power comes back on thanks to the battery backup, but if the powers off and you need to wake up you might miss your appointment! Not to boast about my old Timex junker, but the alarms still worked on that unit even when unplugged! Was not good when it was in storage as I could hear it going off. This unit does make a good electrical click sound when you turn off the sound or put it into snooze. There's also no date display on this, so if you wake up and don't know what year you're in, you're out of luck.

So... all in all, the Philips CD alarm clock works for us. We just want to be able to wake to a CD, but if we wanted to do anything else we'd definitely take it back. I still might, but in this price range the choices aren't really that great, but I would like fuller sound.

UPDATE: December 22, 2007

I ended up shipping back this alarm clock. I found a good selection of alarm clocks in our neighborhood, and I always like buying local, not to mention it's easier to try things, or return them if they don't work out as planned. Anyways, it's a bummer, as I like Philips products, but I ended up with an RCA RP5620 for $15 bones less than what I paid for the Philips. The RCA is not perfect either, but it does feel like a step up from the Philips and I don't have to cover the screen in dimmed mode! The RCA also sounds better, maybe because it has 2 speakers. I think the deciding factor was that the alarm (the buzzer) will still sound if the power goes out. I'd hate to miss a meeting or something important because my alarm clock didn't go off!

I purchased two of the AJ130 alarm clock/CD/radios on December 4, 2007,
from another online retailer, and was excited to do so, as my wife and I are owners of other Philips clock radios with the "Gentle Wake" feature (She has the AJ3965 and I have the AJ3980). My intent was to buy two matching, smaller, sleek models with similar functions to the ones we were replacing. Both of us really like the "Gentle Wake" feature of the Philips line. I set both of the clocks up, and, to my dismay, the Gentle Wake feature, which is advertised as included on this model, does not function. I figured that, perhaps, one was defective and that I might have to return it, but then when the feature didn't work on EITHER of them, I thought better and wrote to Philips, asking them whether or not he Gentle Wake feature, said to be one of this model's features, actually exists in this model. A phone call solved nothing -- upon my suggestion that they consider bench/lab testing this model for that function, the tech support guy told me that they weren't able to do that. How about that?!?! The MANUFACTURER of the darn clock can't even test it. Makes you wonder.

Really, my only complaint about the unit is the fact that BOTH new units lack the touted "Gentle Wake" feature. It is not a misprint or an error on the website -- it is advertised on the unit's packaging. I'm also very familiar with how the feature works. On the other two models I mentioned, the Gentle Wake gradually increases the volume of whatever the wake-up setting is (radio/CD/buzzer) until it reaches a maximum level. In fact, on the AJ3965, you can even set what the maximum level you want it to reach IS. On the AJ130, the Gentle Wake is only applicable to the BUZZER setting, so CD and Radio do not gradually get louder -- they stay at whatever level you have the volume set at before you go to sleep. When the alarm goes off, though, if you have it set on "Buzzer," the volume goes straight for the jugular -- there ain't NOTHIN' "Gentle" about that "Wake."

It's a sad situation, because Philips makes good products, but I think they really goofed with this one. It might turn out that they just happened to manufacture a "bad batch" of them, but I have a feeling that this is more than just a bad batch. I question whether or not the Gentle Wake feature REALLY IS supposed to be promoted as included on this model.

I've written to Philips Consumer Electronics about this problem. I'm somewhat leery of sending them my clocks for an exchange, as I'm afraid that the two that I receive in return will lack the same functionality, and what's more -- I'll be out whatever it cost me to ship them.

I don't know. Buy at your own risk. I only say that I would NOT recommend it to a friend because of the fact that the feature is absent when it is supposed to be present. If they fix that issue, then I would recommend it.

First of all I'd like to say that i think this is a decent product. Reasonably priced and I'm (for the most part) happy with it.

Size: it's much smaller than i thought. It is literally the size of the discman. It seemed to me from the image that the transparent part was the size of the CD and the unit about twice that, but that's not true. I'm actually quite happy with the size. It looks like a letter L from the side.

Display is large and pretty easy to see. I haven't found it too bright like some other reviewers. It is a bit brighter than the usual red lighted digits on alarm clocks (I had one like that before) but still pretty dim.

The way the whole button layout is made and the logic of it is a bit of a mystery to me. It's, of course, pretty easy with the manual, but i have seen and used much simpler and more intuitive alarm clocks. I wouldn't give it a negative point over it, it probably just takes some time to get used to. At least the "Snooze" button is well placed and of proper size for that random slam on the alarm clock in the morning.

My biggest complaint is that even though you have batteries inside, it will not sound the alarm if there is a power outage. Whoever thought of that "feature" should be forced to rethink the idea of "must wake up and get to work even though i'd rather sleep until noon". I'm not saying it should even turn the radio on, but in that "power out" case, at least a buzzer would and should wake you up.

Slow increase in volume (alarm) works only for buzzer. Since the whole thing is completely digital, I just can't understand how hard would it be to have that enabled for radio and CD alarm too.

The rest is just your decent average CD/radio/alarm clock with good sound quality and better looking than most of it. I really like that the package is eco friendly. Two alarms feature is also very convenient and I never listen to AM stations anyway.

So, if they haven't messed up on those two points (battery and volume increase) it would really be a perfect alarm clock for me. It still is a good buy IMO, but could have been much more...

Edit: i just had to drop it down to 3 stars now because of following "feature" i discovered yesterday: if you want to fall asleep with some light music on (on radio) and set up a timer to automatically turn off after 15, 30,...90min...well, when the radio turns off, there is a very loud "pop" or "crack" sound out of your speakers (and it doesn't matter how quiet your sound setting is at that time) sort of like a quieter version of firecracker right next to your ear. And i'm pretty sure it will wake you up...at the point when you should be falling asleep. Really disappointing :-(

I read some mediocre reviews for this product, but didn't want to believe it. I liked my old Philips alarm clock so much, that I assumed the reviewers were wrong. However, after using it for a couple months now, I think i'm going to buy a different one. Another reviewer said that the gradual alarm didn't work, but I didn't believe them. Now I do. If if does "work", the starting volume is too high, and there's no way to control, as I could in the last model. Also, it's way too bright, even at the "dim" setting. I have to point it away from me at night, so that I can sleep. Maybe I'm alittle sensitive, but I definitely think it's too bright. Lastly the controls are much worse than before. If you set the alarm, you have to wait until it stops blinking before doing anything else. In previous models, you could set the way you wanted to hear the alarm (radio/cd/buzzer) after you had entered in the alarm time. Now if you try to do that before it stops blinking, it goes back to the last alarm time, and you have to start all over again. This may not seem like a big deal, but it's annoying to have to wait 10 seconds or so, in the middle of setting the alarm.