Sony XDR-C706DBP > Reviews (1)

The alarm can be set to wake you up to the radio or to a buzzer. I prefer the radio to wake me up and it was getting the stations set using the preset that confused me.

You have to press the “Preset” button and then tune the station in to the number you desire (from 10) and then press and hold the Preset button for it to save. Unfortunately you do have to be quick – if you don’t press and hold the Preset button within 7 seconds it fails to store and on some occasions it still failed to store when I was setting my preset stations. I did eventually get the hang of it but the instructions could definitely be better – they also suffer from “poor English syndrome”, something I tend to find more frequently when I buy things these days.

When the alarm rings in the morning you can use the Sleep function if you want a little more time but I don’t use this – I either listen to the radio for a few minutes or turn the alarm off altogether. It’s easy to do this – you just press the Radio On/Off button which is located on the extreme right of the radio.

The radio has been designed so the controls are on the top but sit at an angle. I must admit I don’t really like this as above the button you press to turn the radio off is the switch for FM radio and in my befuddled early morning state I regularly hit this in error, to be met with the radio switching to loud hissing from the unturned FM radio which I do not use.

The sound quality on the radio isn’t brilliant, which is to be expected from a single speaker radio. Output is pretty weak at 0.4 watts and while the signal is always crystal clear and the sound isn’t tinny, it’s can’t be compared to stereo output from a DAB hi-fi system. The volume control is good and allows a wide choice of options so if you want to be woken by music blaring you can be, but I prefer something a little more quiet.

I can also have some problems with interference on the radio and have to have the radio at one side of my bedside table and my cordless phone on the other as the phone interferes with the radio signal. I also find if I have my iPad on the bedside table and it’s powered on that can interefere with the radio signal too. If you can put a phone and other electronic items on a bedside table on the other side of the radio alarm this won’t be a problem.

The aerial also has to be completely unwound to pick up the best signal – I find having it hanging down in front of my bedside table gives a better signal than having it on the side of the table next to the wall.

The styling is a bit of a mixed bag – I quite like the shape of it but not the way the top of it is at an angle and I really don’t like the white casing much – I really wish they had either made the whole thing black or put a grey plastic frame around the black as that would have looked classier in my opinion. The white just looks cheap. The plastic also makes this a bit of a dust magnet - especially on the black parts.

The display on the clock is brighter than on the Alba but I don’t find it disturbs me. You can dim it but even at its dimmest setting it’s quite bright but not annoyingly so. If it’s going to be a problem you can always just turn the clock radio around so you can’t see the time if you are facing it but I personally think this almost defeats the purpose of having a clock radio beside the bed.

Once you have mastered the instructions and got this up and running however it’s a great little clock radio which doesn’t take up a huge amount of space on your bedside table and more importantly reliably wakes you up in the morning as requested to. I’ve had this a month now and it’s not let me down.

For the money this is a decent enough radio alarm but I wouldn’t have paid more than £39.99 for it. Argos claim the RRP is a shocking £69.99 and there’s no way this radio merits a price that high. The sound quality isn’t good enough and the functions don’t have much in the way of bells and whistles either so I can only assume you are paying for the brand.