Sangean RCR-30 FM-RBDS/AM/Bluetooth/Aux-in Digital Tuning Clock Radio with USB Phone Charging and Sound Soother, Gray

I've had clock radios for 50 years and this is the best-thought-out design I've ever seen. It is a refinement of a product that doesn't try to be all things, focuses on what you will actually use and addresses chronic complaints that users have had for years. It is a balance of one-touch features, flexibility and true ergonomic design. It doesn't try to re-invent an old thing: it refines well appreciated features. I use it in the bedroom. Don't most people? Let's be specific:1. Go look at a car radio from the 1970s. Two dials, a bunch of push buttons for radio stations. Love the independent, large dials for volume and tuning. Easy to find and use in the dark. A physical/tactile design makes it easy to find in the dark and operate. My kids are satisfied with their phones but they require me putting my glasses on and fat-fingering around through dozens of icons. Some things still require physical controls.2. Clock illumination - Almost 10 different settings, simply adjustable by using the snooze button. SIMPLE. A nice, soft LCD illumination. My old radios had two settings: high and low, and usually used the colors red or blue for the display which would nearly illuminate the entire room. Another ergo feature others cheap out on.3. FM Radio - Pulls in weak stations - I live in the country, most of the good stations are 50+ miles away. This is when a radio with that wire that comes out the back (the antenna) is most useful. If you live in the burb or city, it may not be important to you - most radios do without this external antenna. AM Radio - I listen to distant AM stations late at night, have not yet tried these features.4. Time inaccuracy claim - Huh? The radio employs a feature that most radio stations transmit, the actual time (DTS) and automatically corrects your clock time, if you enable the feature. If you don't use the radio, why don't you just get a clock?5. Battery Backup - Now, I appreciate the battery backup on radios dating back 30 years ago but none of these ever really kept the correct time. Have not tested this.6. Case - it's substantial, unlikely that I'll drop it onto the floor during the night and have to wake up to retrieve it. It's also big because there are some sizeable speakers inside it. I don't use the speakers at all, using headphone so that my partner will not be disturbed by my nocturnal listening habit.7. USB charging port - Nice. lessens the number of things to plug into the inconvenient power outlet.8. Bluetooth - suppose I might use this to stream music or programs from another device (i.e., phone) to be played by the clock radio, but I don't think I would use this.9. Remote Control - unnecessary - one more thing for me to lose, one more set of batteries to replace or leak. The on-radio buttons control all I need.10 Radio preset buttons - individual buttons. I like dedicated buttons. They are also well placed, making it easy to locate in the dark. The buttons are backlit, but can't see them when my head is on the pillow.11. Aux input - I might have used this before the advent of Bluetooth, but no more.12. Power button - doubles as a sleep timer - with multiple pushes, it will keep the radio on for 60, 30, etc. seconds so you can listen before you fall asleep.In summary, an excellent case-study in usability and simplicity. what it does it does in an uncomplicated manner and addresses all the clock radio inadequacies of the past fifty year. Well done.

I wanted to replace my old am/FM clock radio that I have had for years. Well before I got married....The fast forward button to set the clock or alarm was broke, so I would have to continually hit the slow button forever until it got to the time I wanted. I started looking for something to replace it, and came across this item. I LOVE IT!!!!! It came with actual directions on how to set it up which was great. Once I figured it out, it was pretty easy to do. Not hard at all. What I love about this radio is it actually has AM and FM on it. Most that I looked at only had FM. I listen to AM radio more, so I really wanted AM as well. I also like that to set the clock or alarms, you turn a dial. No more clicking buttons forever. All of the buttons are lit up so they are easy to see. I think the directions forgot a step when connecting the radio to Bluetooth. The radio does have to be turned on to do this. Then you need to hit the "source" button. I also like that I can plug my phone into the radio to charge. I was skeptical on paying $90 but it is worth it. The sound is good and once you know how to set everything, it isn't hard at all. I also like that you can dim the display if you think it is too bright. Another great feature is the alarm clock settings. You can set your alarm for "once", "daily" or weekly. So if you get up at the same time each day, you can do daily. It has 2 alarms, so that is nice if you need another alarm for whatever reason. It also has a remote, but I haven't used this yet since getting it. This really is a nice radio. I'm not disappointed in it at all. If you are thinking about getting this, go for it. I don't think you will be disappointed.

I almost didn’t buy this clock radio after reading several of the negative reviews. Two problems I read about were the clock doesn’t keep good time, and the device is hard to operate. I ended up buying this unit because it is similar to my old iHome iP87BZ clock radio. The form factor is similar, the controls are similar, and it has good sound quality.I had to replace the iP87BZ because it died. I thought that the wall adapter broke, so I bought a new one. That didn’t fix the iHome device, so I opened it up and discovered to my disgust that almost all the electrolytic caps on the main board had leaked their guts out. Electrolytic caps can fail when they get old, but picking good quality parts and having a good design margin mitigates this. The fact that so many caps leaked on the iHome unit really soured me on the idea of purchasing anything else from iHome…ever. So after a long search, and finding not other contenders but iHome products, I crossed my fingers for luck and bought the Sangean RCR-20.With the negative comments about the RCR-20 clock accuracy, I decided to check it. I set the clock via time.gov. After 6 days, the RCR-20 clock is still within 1 second. As an aside: I initially tried to set the time via the FM radio RDS system. This sort of worked, but the local station I used was five minutes off. My speculation is that radio stations use the RDS technology via some PC which accurately provides the song information, but that never has the clock properly set. Your mileage may vary. I recommend using the RDS to quickly set year, month, day on the system, but then change to manual mode to set an accurate time.This gets to the second complaint about the RCR-20: it is complicated to operate. If you are not comfortable with computers and/or remote controls there may be some truth to this. I found that I was initially somewhat confused. After I understood that the controls have dual setting modes, things made more sense. What is confusing, is that most controls on electronic devices do something if you press them briefly, and do something more complicated if you press and hold them. On the RCR-20, there are two extended modes. For example, pressing and holding the alarm setting for two or three seconds, results in a beep and then the alarm is toggled on or off. If you keep pressing another five seconds after the beep, another beep occurs, and the alarm enters the settings mode. I oversimplify this in my mind and think of it as the double-tap system, but in truth there is just a double-beep system. I was compelled to deduct a star in my rating, because I think not everyone will be able to easily adapt to this.Another complaint I saw in the reviews was that having the AC adapter too close results in AM radio interference. My AC outlet is a bit less than two feet from the RCR-20, and I didn’t notice any issues with AM reception.Here are some additional observations with the RCR-20. The unit has a high quality look and feel to it. The tuning and volume dials are particularly nice. The dials are dampened and have a good feel. (For reference, the feel is noticeably better than my dead iHome iP87BZ.) Something I noticed during the unboxing is the wall adapter. Almost all wall adapters I’ve seen have flimsy wires. It’s an easy way to cut cost, and people don’t complain about it. The adapter for the RCR-20 has a nice thick cable to the radio. This gives me a sense that the engineering team for the RCR-20 made an effort to design and produce a top quality product.More good things about this clock radio have been covered in other reviews. The time display is nice and big. The sound quality is as good as you can get for something this size. The alarm buzzer is nice as it starts off soft and then gets louder. It also has a secondary beep pattern, if you haven’t turned it off after the volume has ramped.In summary, this is a great clock radio. It appears to be well built, and it has all the features I wanted. The only minor negative point is the unorthodox setup system. I’m fine with it after getting used to it, but I think it’s the only valid complaint I saw in the other reviews.