Timex Dual Alarm Clock Radio for Mp3 Songs (Black)
by Timex
|
List Price: Category: Network Media Player See more product details |
|---|
(Click here)
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Timex Dual Alarm Clock Radio for Mp3 Songs (Black)
Customer Review: Love it!
Summary: 5 Stars
Had this alarm clock for a couple of weeks now, and I love it. It's pretty small, about 8" x 4" x 4", and it looks pretty good. Not exactly high design, but tolerable. Mildly retro.
That said, the user interface is simple and intuitive. Flash drive and SD card inputs work well, with easy controls and navigation. Both can remain plugged in at the same time. Flash drive folds down for inconspicuous storage. The sound is OK, for an alarm clock, but I rarely have the volume above about 5. It has a small subwoofer in the back that maybe adds a tiny umph. 8 FM and 4 AM presets. A built in equalizer allows you to choose from about 5 different settings. I find this useful. The remote is very small and thin, and has amazing functionality for its overall simplicity. It can control both sound and alarm functions, allowing you to hit snooze from the other side of the bed.
The dual alarms work well, with the caveat that they must both be set to wake from the same source (radio, mp3, etc). Snooze is 9 min and not adjustable. The snooze button is also used as a dimmer for the display backlight (off + three levels). If the display is too bright at night, it is easy to dim or shut off. This is a nice feature and easy to use.
I have not used the line in jack, because I bought this to play from a flash drive, not an external mp3 player (too much mess on the nightstand). I did a lot of research, payed $75 for this model, and have been very happy with it.
Customer Review: A little gem! Why isn't anyone else doing this?
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently moved to a home outside Boston, located on the wrong side of a hill. My FM radio reception is lousy. I can't get a decent signal from either of the two radio stations that still play classical music.
What I needed was a device that could play my classical .mp3s without having to deal with Apple, overpriced docks, chargers and lots of wires and bother.
This little Timex is EXACTLY what I was looking for. It's basically a clock radio with a USB jack and an SD card slot. Just fill a USB flash drive or SD card with .mp3s and this thing will play them, in sequence or randomly. No extra wires, no docks or chargers, no Apple, no fuss.
I took my library of 320 Kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo .mp3s and converted them to 56 Kbps, 22 kHz mono. At this bitrate, I can fit over 75 HOURS of classical music on a single 2 GB SD card that costs $15. The resulting sound quality is like a super-high-quality FM broadcast ... without any commercials or pledge drives. It's a personal radio station on a chip!
The radio has a single 3" driver, ported out the back. The quality is pretty respectable for an $70 unit. It's not as good as one of the high-end table radios from Bose, Tivoli or Boston Acoustics, but it's noticeably better than a typical cheap clock radio, and more than adequate for casual listening.
I now enjoy my Sunday mornings listening to ONLY the music I like, without interruptions. Way to go, Timex!
Customer Review: Good replacement for a clock drive with a CD player
Summary: 5 Stars
I needed a small CD/clock radio to take the place of a much larger, less user-friendly CD/clock radio...the CD player on my RCA clock radio was beginning to make enough noise that it was difficult to enjoy the music. This USB flash drive/clock radio was perfect. The Windows Media Player on an XP Windows computer will convert an entire CD to a file in less than 60 seconds that can be used in this clock radio. A very inexpensive USB Flash Drive or SD Card can hold the equivalent of many CDs. This works so well, that the days must be numbered before CD players become obsolete. It would be nice if the radio was stereo, but then it would be larger. The sounds quality is as good or better than one could expect from a player this size.
I general, the the radio is fairly intuitive to setup and use. However the row of buttons on the top are difficult to read, but fortunately, they are not used as frequently as those on the front or on the remote; however, I solved the difficult to read problem by placing color coded labels in front of those buttons I was likely to use. If a small size clock radio with a "CD player" is what you want, and you own a computer with the right software, this will likely be the best you can find....for now.
Customer Review: very disappointed
Summary: 1 Stars
I was really hoping this would work okay, since it offers about the only opportunity to make your own nature sounds machine. It can take the USB flash drive and play MP3 and WAV files, or so the theory goes. In fact this device did not work right out of the box. Did not recognize that there were files on the USB flash drive. Tried different memory drives, different files. Tried MP3 and WAV files. At best it played a few files a while, then would stop.
I see that others have suffered similar problems. I guess you take your chances when buying this unit. I decided to get my money back rather than bother again. My guess is that even if it works okay for awhile, it will go bad on you sometime and the unit's design must have some fundamental problems.
If it had only played the files, I would have given it a 4 star rating. Sound is pretty good for a unit this size. It picked up FM decently. The transformer brick on the electrical cord is pretty big, like the old days. I suspect you'd use $10 a year in electricity on that energy vampire. But I would have lived with that.
When a unit just does not do what you need it to do, and is supposed to do, it has to get a 1 star rating.
Customer Review: not totally satisfied
Summary: 3 Stars
I purchased this clock radio about 11 months ago and everything seemed to be working fine until last month. All of a sudden the numbers that are located in the bottom right corner of the screen started disappearing. Most of the time those numbers show the date, but what's annoying is that those are also the numbers used to set the alarm. So setting the alarm has been challenging and stressful since I can't tell what time I'm setting it for -- I can see the hour I'm setting it for, but the minutes are almost impossible to see. I haven't done anything strange to this clock -- I've taken very good care of it (I've barely even touched it, except to set the alarm). This problem literally happened overnight. Just all of a sudden the numbers disappeared. So I don't know if I got a lemon or if any of the other clocks have behaved this way... I'm hoping the rest of the display doesn't fade and completely disappear. I've tried changing the batteries (which didn't help). Overall, I like the design and the remote control -- I'm just very disappointed that the numbers have started disappearing -- it's not functional anymore. Based on its performance, I would not purchase this again.