Customer Reviews

Philips AJ3950 CD Stereo Clock Radio

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I was looking for an inexpensive alternative to a Bose Wave alarm clock I had on loan. This product is an excellent choice. Here are some of the highlights I especially like:

- Display has three brightness levels for easy viewing day or night.

- Display is easy to read even though my bed is slightly lower than my nightstand.

- Plays CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

- Radio reception picks up stations in my area I can't get on other radios.

- Sounds great.

- Alarm sound is a nice repeating beep rather than an annoyingly loud buzzer.

- Gentle Wake feature keeps me from being startled out of bed in the morning.

- I can adjust the minimum and maximum volumes of the Gentle Wake feature.

- Dual alarms and weekend sleep functions give me plenty of alarm options.

- Sleep time for radio or CD gives me 10,20,30,60, and 90 minutes options.

- Snooze function gives me 9 minutes. The alarm will not be completely disabled till after an hour of snoozing.

All in all a great buy.

After MUCH research and reading online reviews & Consumer Reports, I decided to purchase this item. I am very glad I did. Here's why:
1. Pretty good sound!
2. Gentle wake feature. Volume for the alarm begins from gentle volume and gradually increases to a higher volume.
3. Repeat alarm. Switches off the alarm for a 9 minute period.
4. Headphone jack.
5. Small size.
6. 3 levels of brightness control for the display.
7. Weekend sleeper. Deactivates alarm 1 and/or 2 for the weekend.
8. Nice price.

Drawbacks: Memory backup is only for 3 minutes. Buttons are small. Once you figure out how to set it up, it's actually pretty easy. There are VERY few CD Stereo Clock Radios out there with all of these features, that sound good, for this price. Hope you found this helpful :~)

The radio sounds wonderful. You can turn it all the way up to 32 on the volume scale and it sounds like a small stereo boombox. You can set the alarm so that you can wake up to the sounds of your favorite CD. The clock radio is small and compact so that you can take it with you on vacations. It has a headphone jack on the side (and the radio sounds even better with stereo headphones).

So why didn't I give this excellent clock radio 5 stars? Because the gray digital numerals are a little hard to read. With the radio on the dresser right next to where I sleep, it's no problem. And the 3 fluorescent light settings help a little bit, too. But from more than 5 feet away, you have to squint or have the clock radio aimed right at your line of vision to see the time. So when I'm in front of the mirror getting dressed and I glance over to see the time, sometimes I can see it and sometimes I can't.

So if you want an easy to read display, I would look for a clock radio that has a clearer numerical display. But if you keep the radio close to the bed, then this shouldn't be a problem. And the radio sounds so good that I had no problem with obeying my wife and moving my Panasonic boombox to the office.

I spent a lot of time researching different clock radios -- read lots of reviews on Amazon. I've had this one for a year now and it was a great choice. I haven't had any problems with it functioning properly.
Pros:
*Great sound quality
*"Gentle Wake" feature (alarm is softer at first then the volume increases) is pleasent -- you can choose the beginning and ending volumes for the alarm/cd/radio
*The alarm has a lower tone than most that I've heard (much less startling, in my opinion)

*It beeps once in a distinct tone when you turn the alarm off (this has saved me on so many occasions -- I often accidentally press the off button instead of snooze... not because of poor button placement, but because of my own sleepy confusion)
*You can choose which cd track you wake up to
*The buttons are easy to navigate
*The display has three brightness settings
*You can set the alarm to go off Monday through Friday but not on the weekends
Cons:
*The tuner is not digital
*The cd player has no repeat or shuffle options
-- Neither of these is really an inconvenience for me, but I thought I would mention them anyway.
This is a quality product with some excellent features -- it has made waking up much more enjoyable.

I love this little gizmo. For the price you are paying, the sound is really quite good, although it's obviously not what you'd get out of even a modest home stereo. I tried a number of different models in this price range and the Philips was hands down the best in terms of sound quality. The designers were much more savy about understanding the constraints of its tiny speakers and manipulating the sound accordingly. Mids and lows are boosted as much as possible and high frequencies are somewhat muffled. It's a very similar effect to the "megabass" or "bass boost" options one finds on most portable cd players. It's not 5.1 surround, but it's surprisingly good given the small size and low price.

As far as the display goes, it's not great, but not horrible either. Most alarm clock displays have red or green glowing numbers on a black background. The Philips has a greenish glowing background with black letters. You can adjust the glow of the background (thus improving the contrast), but it still can be a little tricky to read in indirect light. Also, in the dark it is quite a bit brighter than a typical alarm clock because the whole display glows instead of just the numbers. Of course, the upside of this type of screen is that it has the ability to display little icons such as alarm bells, compact discs, and the AM/PM sign, so you can tell whether it is set correctly without having to turn on the light to read markings on the clock itself. If Philips had used a more traditional digital display, it would have been limited to using little dots to indicate all this stuff, which, to me, is far more annoying than the slight readability problems with the current display.

The other nice thing about the Philips is that it is very customizable and packed with features. The 24-hour reset button is wonderful as is the fully customizable "gentle wake" feature.

Overall, it's a great value and I would recommend it to anyone.

We've had this unit for almost 2 years now. The brightness of the display is adjustable, and the dimmest setting is plenty dim enough, contrary to reviews that I've read here. The brightest setting gives the room about the same illumination as an Indiglo-style night light.

The sound quality is quite good for a clock radio.

Two problems:
1) As has been mentioned before, there's no battery backup.
2) I haven't seen this mentioned, and it's super-annoying... regardless of the volume setting or mode of the alarm, when you push the button that cancels the alarm, you're treated to a non-adjustable, full-volume BEEP. Want to wake up to a nice, soft alarm an hour before your wife needs to? Fine. Just don't try to turn it off, though, because doing so will wake the household with the alarm-cancel beep. Really, truly stupid.

Other than that, it's a great alarm clock.

Compared to its competitors within the lowest price range for CD clock radios, this good looking unit for me was the one to buy. Unlike many others, it happily plays homemade CD-Rs and produces a clear, loud, pseudo-surround sound. I find setting the multiple alarms extremely easy and have mastered the procedure in the dark. The weekend sleeper feature is useful, as it allows for weekend lie ins without messing up your all-important weekday alarm settings, and the alarm is really good, because it starts off gentle, but gradually gets so loud that even the heaviest sleepers can't ignore it. The repeat alarm (snooze) bar is large and easy to strike whilst you're still trying to emerge from a state of comatization, and the display brightness has three useful settings, depending on how bad your night vision is.

On the down side, opening the CD chamber requires both hands. Tuning the radio accurately is tricky, as the tuning wheel is small and crude, and even tuning in to the strongest AM and FM stations is sometimes a problem. I understand a higher priced CD clock DIGITAL radio version is available in the Philips range, so check that out if you like to listen to loads of bedside radio. But if you're not much of a bedside radio listener, you'll get along with this unit just fine.

This was a bargain. Almost everything was great. I just do not understand why people complain about the buttons in front of the clock. They claim that you must use 2 hands in order to use the clock. Well...hello!!!!??? If the buttons are on top of the clock, then you would have to sit up and look at the top of the clocks and find where the play / alarm and every other buttons are, instead of conveniently laying on your bed, turn over, and push a button. I have never used 2 hands to operate it. My only complaint is that there is no way you can repeat a track while playing a cd.

I like this radio--the sound is surprisingly good for the small format and the CD player's operating sounds (when spinning) are not loud and obnoxious--something that was an issue with the last bedside CD player I owned.

The numeral display can be dimmed to an acceptable greenish glow, so I don't have to throw a t-shirt over a glaring clock at night.

The footprint is LONGER than wide, and narrower at back than front, meaning it fits on a small night stand very well, something I appreciated.

My only objection is that the model has NO provision to install a 9 volt backup battery, or any backup battery for that matter. There is a small residual charge so that power blips don't clear the display, but a minute or so power outtage means your clock could fail you if there is a brief power interruption --so not as reliable as one would hope. If you ABSOLUTELY have to get up some morning and MUST be awakened, and if your power is unreliable, this model might not be the one for you.

I've owned many clock radios over the years, starting with a simple Sony model back in the 1970s. Most were adequate, but left me wondering whether the people who designed them actually used them, since the products consistently lacked features that would have added significant convenience. Late in 2003, I set out on the search for the perfect clock radio. After reading the descriptions and reviews of countless models, I settled on the Philips AJ3950. It has exceeded expectations on all counts. The perfect clock radio for you will depend on your specific needs; for me, the features that make this product a hit are the following:
- Excellent sound quality for a $45 multi-function product
- Dual alarms (either one can be set to alarm, radio, or CD)
- When using CD for wake-up music, you can pick which track it starts on
- Crescendo alarm volume -- you can set both the starting volume of the alarm and the volume it rises to, and the volume levels can be set independently for the two different alarms
- Weekend reprieve, so the alarms don't go off on weekends
- Easy to read display with adjustable brightness
- Built-in power saver for short power interruptions

With this functionality, you have tremendous flexibility in setting alarms. The price of this flexibility is complexity, and the manual is unforgiveably unclear on some points. However, the controls become intuitive after the first few uses. I wish the manual was clearer, and I wish the power failure battery was bigger; but overall, I have been very pleased with this product for the past year. It offers dramatically higher quality, flexibility, and ease of use than the comparable Timex product, for which I paid twice as much.