JBL ON TIME : Read reviews and compare prices at Ciao.co.uk

Author's product rating:

Radio Quality	Excellent
Sound & Volume	Excellent
Range of Features	Diverse
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great sound, Great looks
Disadvantages:	No remote control

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The JBL On Time is a stylish, high performance iPod dock, RDS radio and alarm clock, available in black or white finish. It's one of the more expensive iPod docks on the market, but as with most things, you get what you pay for and the sound quality is FAR superior to cheaper alternatives (I also own an older Intempo iPod dock which was much cheaper but the sound quality is awful).

JBL are specialists in audio and it shows, the "Halo acoustics" system produces a rich, full sound from any direction and is more than enough for a bedroom or small to mid-sized living room. Before buying it, I'd only heard it inside a large, noisy department store and the sound didn't completely convince me, but I took the risk and bought one. After trying it at home, I'm more than happy with both the volume, and the quality of the sound.

My iPod Classic and my wife's 1st generation Nano both dock perfectly (even without using any of the 8 or so adaptors provided) and the On Time permanently charges them whilst docked. The On Time also has a aux jack and accepts any other kind of CD or mp3 player...of course, it doesn't look as nice without an iPod sitting in the middle of it!

It's also possible to connect a subwoofer if you intend to use the On Time as more of a full-time stereo.

Radio:

The On Time has FM and AM tuners and can set the clock time automatically by searching for a radio station which is broadcasting the time (not a huge plus, but it's a lot less fiddly than setting the time manually). The radio performance is good, picking up stations very quickly and the sound quality is on a par with any 'normal' radio I've heard. Of course, you can set presets for easy access to your favourite stations.

Alarms:

The On Time has two alarms and several options for how each will work. For example, you can set each alarm to ring every day (7D), only weekdays (5D) or only weekends (2D), so you can set different times for weekdays and weekends, and never have to remember to change the alarm time. You can also set the alarm to use your iPod, the radio or it's own ring tone. Each of them get progressively louder if you don't press snooze, or turn off the On Time.

The snooze interval can be set manually (one of my bugbears with another alarm clock I have, and also my Nokia E65 phone which has the snooze interval set to 5 minutes and can't be changed!).

Any downsides?

Yes. Where's the remote control??? This is a serious omission in my opinion, of course, we all want to snooze for a while after the alarm rings early in the morning but unless you keep the On Time right next to your bed, you need to get up to press the snooze button.

And with such a nice sounding iPod dock, maybe you want to lie in bed on a Sunday morning and listen to music without having to get up to skip songs every time a bad one comes on.

A remote control is a must for the next version...I was almost put off buying this purely because of the lack of a remote.

Overall:

Despite the remote control problem mentioned above, would I recommend it?

If you love music and can't bear to listen to it on tinny, useless little speakers, and you want an iPod dock which is quite stylish. Yes I would. My only reservation would be if you really are too lazy to get out of bed to snooze or skip songs.