Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips AE5900/05 - DAB Clock Radio

Bought this a few weeks ago, so far it's ok. The unit is attractively designed and the sound quality is good. Unfortunately, the screen is too bright at night which sort of defeats the purpose - if you are afraid of the dark or looking for a night light this could be the clock for you. Another minor gripe is the alarm - it seems to increase in volume until you acknowledge it has gone off by adjusting the volume manually. Also, needing to flick through several menu options to turn the alarm off for weekends is a hassle. In summary a great product that is let down by some very simple design flaws; might have been a good idea to get the engineers to use it for a week or two. I am sure there are better thought out products on the market.

I love everything about this radio. I have had it for over a year. The only complaint I have is that you CANNOT adjust the volume that the radio when set as an alarm comes on at. IT IS TOO LOUD. Consequently every morning for the past year barring weekends and holidays we have woken with a jump and a scramble to turn the volume down. I have contacted Philips and they say there is nothing thast can be done about this. SO unless you don't mind being woken with a start every morning...don't buy it!

We bought this radio to replace our Evoke Pure 2 which has a very annoying fault on the volume knob (it needs to be warmed up for ages before you can run it below shouting level). On plugging the Philips in, it pulled in 16 local DAB stations but none of the mainstream BBC stations (1,2, 4, 5, 6 or 7) which our Pure seemed to get no problem. Anybody know why? A check on the DAB section of the BBC website shows these mainstream stations in a separate box - does that mean they're not actually DAB stations, and our Evoke was just getting the FM stations (you can't tell the source on the display panel)? More seriously, the Philips' FM reception is feeble, I can only just scrape onto Radio 2 and 4 by manual tuning with the aerial fully out and walking around the room in hopes of improving the signal. Even the normally omnipresent Radio 1 is (thankfully) invisible. The Philips preset mechanism is also very poor. This is all a massive shame as the sound quality is excellent but as it is I am on the point of sending it back and going back to the Evoke.

bought this because of the the low price and am very happy with it. manages to pick up a good signal although i live in an area with only mediocre digital reception, my walls are 3 feet thick and i live in a valley. i don't know if this would be any different with any other make/model but i can say this has a great sound for it's size; it's easy to use (apart from the mistake in the instructions regarding preset stations detailed in other reviews) and i reckon it looks nicer than most other digital radios on the market. if my house burned down and i got a big pile of insurance money i'd get exactly the same again.

I was attracted to this radio because it looks very cool and retro and I didn't want something nasty looking in my bedroom.

The set up was intuitively easy and the sound quality was really excellent. If you want a nice DAB radio for the kitchen I would give it 5 stars. But the trouble is I have very specific requirements for a clock radio which the Philips radio didn't fulfil.

Firstly, I like to listen to the radio through my headphones when I wake up in the middle of the night to get me back to sleep. But the sleep function was ridiculously complicated to put on, especially in the dark. It took lots of noisy button pushing (the buttons are overly clicky) which isn't great when you are trying not to wake up your partner.

Secondly, the sound quality through the headphones was terrible. I don't know if I got a faulty one but there was a loud electrical buzz which drowned out the radio. Maybe it's because the headphone socket is right next to the power input?

Also, for my taste, the display is much too bright too and lit up the room. But that's a personal thing.

So, I've sent my Philips back and replaced it with the not very pretty Pure Siesta. It might be ugly but it ticks all my technical requirements (and its a little bit cheaper).