Sony ICF-CD815 AM/FM Stereo CD Clock Radio with Dual Alarm

Great deal on this! For my 10 year old daughter, who loves to listen to cd's and LOVES her mp3 player, this has great sound and is easy to operate. She can easily hook her mp3 up to it, and it is compact to fit on her small end table. For $39.99, I wish that I had gotten one for myself!!

We were looking for something simple for our grade school children to wake them up in the morning, and this was perfect. No iPod hype, has all the basic features, easy to use, large digital display and good sound quality for a unit of this size. We didn't feel a battery back up was necessary, as our own clock radio has one. We can wake the kids in the event of a power outage.

The title says it. I was tempted to title it "Usual Sony Junk" as it's not the first Sony product that has just crapped out for me early in its life. In this case, the CD no longer spins or plays.

Also, I found the controls quite complex and niggly -- poor UI is the modern term. But finally having mastered that, it broke. Now it's just a bulky clock and traditional alarm.

Not recommended.

I've had this unit for over 6 months overall it works fine but I had to give it to my daughter as there a few annoyances:
1. The analog tuner is sensitive - you can tune in a station one night and the next night it has to be adjusted (ever so slightly) again. If reception is important spend for a digital tuner.
2. When in the 'OFF' setting, there is a very low 'hum' reminiscent of cheap electronics of 30 years ago. I found this too annoying to remain next to my bed, near my head.
3. I thought this unit would play MP3 formatted CDs (it does not), but it only has an AV input (short cord included). I have a Sony boombox in my workshop that does play this format on CD and I find it quite useful.

Overall for the price I guess it works fine, just be should you know what you are getting...

This radio gets such poor reception sometimes it simply "blinks" out. You think you lost power or the radio died but then it comes back on. Also when I had it plugged into one of my kitchen outlets I would get static whenever the automatic outdoor light would go on. I had to move it to another room. I bought two because of the price and I wanted a radio for each room. It is huge--way too big. Finding a clear signal for a particular station is also difficult. Like I said in the title, don't waste your money!