Good but not great quality

I bought this lamp quite a while ago and it still feels as if the sun is streaming in through the window when I wake up so in that sense it is great.

The downside though is that the interface is very plasticky and clicky. To regulate the volume or light there is a roller switch which can take some time to get to the value required.

There is no fixed alarm setting so if in bed reading the light intensity for the alarm needs to be reset before going to sleep which is quite time consuming when you're ready to just turn the light out and go to sleep.

However, for me waking up in this way is fantastic. The light and the radio (or any of the sounds) come on very gradually which doesn't launch a person into awakens. If you can put up with the clicky, plastickiness of it then it is worth waking up with this.

good sound

Nice crystal clear balanced sound.

Weirdly, however, I found that the sound degraded when the aerial was raised. Possibly something to do with noise in my area - difficult to say.

A negative point is the very bright light on the display. I have to cover it up with a book sometimes when i sleep. Buttons are a little small and fiddly, and could do with more presets. Would have gotten 4 or 5 stars if not for these points.

Otherwise a very good digital radio, and seems like an excellent price especially when compared to people like Pure.

excellent all rounder

I previously had a liteon dvd recorder but the timer packed up so started searching for a replacement with more features. decided after reading loads and loads of reviews of various makes and models to go for this phillips unit. I certainly made the right decision, what a fabulous piece of kit. Very versatile, plays divx seemlessly from hdd, usb or dvd and you can transfer the file between any of the formats.picture quality is excellent, set up and use very easy, not crashed at all as mentioned in prevoius review and the response from the remote seems very normal not slow at all. money well spent and you would be hard pressed to find a better unit for the price.

Woken up every 15 minutes with weather forecast

The radio controlled clock is good and the radio has a nice sound quality for the size of the case. Weather forecast is of dubious use: temperature is OK (and works with the remote sensor) but notice that the measurement of humidity is only internal. So the device reports that it is likely to rain after you have had a bath or boiled some pasta nearby, despite cloudless skies! I didn't find it accurate at all.

This would be bearable, but what made the device unusable for me is that every 15 minutes it updates the assessment of weather and shines a very bright LED for 15 seconds to let you know (blue for rain, yellow for sun). This goes on all the way through the night and I couldn't find any way to stop it.

If you are at all sensitive to light when sleeping, I recommend you avoid this clock radio. A surprising number of modern clock radios seem to fail this test, many having too bright/unswitchable LCD backlights --- this model doesn't have that problem so the LED weather torchlight was a real disappointment.

Ok but limited if used with batteries

The clock has a cool design and has plenty of features including clock projection. The problem is if you need to use the clock with batteries rather than plug. The clock takes 4 batteries however there is no continous projection. On top of that, there is no backlight with batteries which means you can only read the time during the daytime, even then its not very bright! If you want to use batteries look elsewhere.

not bad

The sound is okay (and, while it is indeed okay, read this in terms of radio alarm clocks). The 'gentle wake' system sounds good but the reality is limited. I'd imagined waking to the gradually increasing volume of the radio but instead, it only works on the alarm, which is something of an old-school alarm clock buzzer getting slightly more frenetic. The radio presets are on the side, which is not ideal, though it depends how much you change them. You can alter the display and dim or turn off the backlight (reviewers of certain other clock radios seem to be having tape over over-bright displays). While turning the display off is useful, it's a shame there aren't more steps in the brightness cycle, so you could adjust to your own sense of how much light you'd like while sleeping. So, overall, sound isn't bad, you can see the display without it seeming like daylight. It's a neat, compact unit and seems not bad for the price. However, these surely must only be entry level criteria for a radio alarm clock, it seems like some serious evolution is required in the field.

Pricey, but very nice!!

After reading the two reviews on here, I must admit I was a little worried about purchasing this radio/alarm clock. But I'm pleased to say I'm very happy with my purchase. The dimmer switch does only have two settings, but neither setting is particularly bright, it's certainly not a problem. It's very user friendly, I managed to set it all up with no problems without reading the instructions. It has a very clear radio on it for a radio/alarm clock. It's very slim and takes up very little room on my bedside table. The only reason I'm giving this product a 4 and not a 5 is due to the price, it's expensive compared to other radio/alarm clocks with similar features, but I guess you pay for the design! An excellent purchase and highly recommended!!

Good build quality , but poor sound.

One of the better looking DAB radio's on the market, however I found the sound quality very poor. Way too much bass drowns any treble and having no means to adjust the tone gives a completely dull experience. I've now taken it back for a full refund and won't be buying another DAB until someone brings out one with good looks and quality sound at a reasonable cost. If Philips fix the sound on this one then I'll be first in line to buy it.

MCM 119 Review

I bought this system yesterday and found it quite okie. I would not say that it is mind blowing cause I am not very happy with its bass depth. Otherwise its nice set. I use with my laptop as pc speakers mainly...

DO NOT BUY ONE OF THESE!

This is a nice system, apart from one very bad 'undocumented feature'. If you play a CD where there are no gaps between tracks (e.g. a piece of classical music such as Strauss's Ein Heldenleben), the CD player pauses at each track number change and 'blanks' the sound for two or three seconds. I tried a number of CDs with continuous music on them and they all behaved the same. On any of the other CD players that I have access to the music played seamlessly, as indeed it should. I spoke to Philips about the problem and they said it was the way the CD player worked, that they had had lots of complaints about it (I bet!) and that they will be doing something about it - but they gave no timescale. Unless and until they fix this issue I would not recommend this system at all. I bought mine on a Sunday and took it back for a refund on Thursday. The retailer didn't bat an eyelid, which makes me suspect I wasn't the first disgruntled buyer of this item...

A lot more useful than it looks

I only bought this clock because I wanted a nice looking clock that was going to be accurate. This one is one of those radio controlled clocks that sets itself automatically, and it's very nice looking so I picked it up.

The weather aspect of it (the top left corner glows different colours for different weather, e.g. Red for Storms, blue for clouds, white for snow, orange for clear skies etc), wasn't a reason I bought it, but now it's the part I like the most. You put two AA batteries in a little box that you stick outside, and from the humidity and temperature the clock shows the predicted weather with different colours. This turned out to be really useful, waking up in the morning to the radio and seeing when you open your eyes if it's going to be an umbrella day or not.

And it looks very nice, the colours are bright and cast a nice light onto the clock, and the display is adjustably backlit which is handy for bedside lights.

Very nice clock/weather station, also very solid build quality. Def. recommended.

dont waste your money

2 main complaints.

1 - light is way too bright, cant dim it - so you end up moving the alarm clock away from you - when you wake up you then have to move it back - and even then its still too bright.

2 - its now starting to"hum" - so much so I have to turn it off - so now its facing towards the wall and turned off - not what you want on an alarm clock.

not bad...

i bought this cd player at the beginning of the year from a leading supermarket and had to take it back 4 times each one had a faulty or broken remote, the play button didnt work at all, the one i have now finally worked but goes tempremental, other than that it is a smart little cd player.....

Too bright

It sounds like a great idea and is built to the usual high standard you expect of Philips but...... have you tried sleeping with the TV screen still on right next to your face? Sorry Philips you need to take this back to the drawing board. Your dimmer setting is still far too bright. We have tried it on 2 nights and ended up switching it off so we could get to sleep. We could have covered the screen up but how do you see the clock?
Also the screen emits a faint humming noise.

This machine is a WOW

After searching for a micro hi-fi with MP3 capability and deliberating many, I read the reviews on this one and decided to buy. Not only was the price better than reasonable, the sound quality is simply supreme for such a small piece of kit.

It's an excellent discreet piece of equipment, not dominating the lounge and of course it doesn't have the annoying cassette deck which so many manufacturers insist on providing in these days of MP3.