Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony XDRC705DAB Clock Radio

The Sony XDRC705DAB is an excellent alarm clock radio. I use mine for listening to mostly speech based radio stations and it has an expansive sound giving character to voices.

It has excellent build quality, stylish and compact. The major criticism that other reviews had were that the alarm went off randomly are no longer valid. I checked with Sony before purchasing mine and it has been fixed. I've owned mine for six months now and never had any problems with it.

I have no reservations in recommending this excellent product.

This looks great, sounds great,and would be 5 stars if the alarm didn't decide to go off at midnight every 2-3 nights despite being set for 7am! I've tried unplugging it, re-setting it, and complaining to Sony (who advised me to change the alarm settings!) all to no avail. Maybe I've just been unlucky because otherwise I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

This alarm looks great and sounds very good. Having had the same Sony Dream Machine FM alarm clock for 11 years, I decided to upgrade to DAB a few months ago. The problem is, it goes off randomly at midnight. There is no detectable pattern - it goes off whether you've used the sleep function, got one or three alarms set... the connection appears to be DAB. Sony 'customer care' at first denied that there was a fault - then advised me not to use the DAB and to only use the buzzer alarm (handy that). Don't buy it - especially if you work early mornings like me. You'll end up being very tired.

As I couldn't decide between this and the Pure Chronos II Clock Radio I did the logical thing and bought both! They had both received decent reviews and due to Amazons excellent return service I decided I had nothing to lose. So, tonight, I've pitted them against each other. Placed side by side I started them off scanning the airwaves. The Sony won this first round, capturing quite a few more stations than the Pure. Next, came the sound quality round. Again, the Sony won. The Pure sounds far more woolly with less resolution. As for ease of use I have to give this round to Sony again. I found the layout of the Pure's butttons confusing and although the menu system on both is very similar, the Pure's small display compared to the Sony's did make things less clear. Oh, and the Sony is smaller too so takes up less space on my bedside cabinet. So there you have it. If you are undecided like me between these two units, go for the Sony.

I have also had a problem with this clock radio. It randomly goes off at midnight although it hasn't been set and doesn't show an alarm setting for this time. However great the product is in other respects this makes it unuseable. I will be sending it back