iLive ICB352B Bluetooth Alarm Clock Radio with Dual Alarms - Black

• Clock radio with Bluetooth capabilities
• Wake up to the radio, music from a Bluetooth-enabled device, or the regular alarm
• Supports Bluetooth v2.1 with a wireless range up to 33 feet, enhanced data rate (EDR) and A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile)
• Battery backup for clock requires a CR2025 battery (pre-installed)
• Power adapter included

This Bluetooth clock radio arrived today from Amazon. It seems to be a decent little unit. It is very attractive sitting on my bedside table. The sound quality is OK nothing spectacular, but it *is* stereo, and it sounds about as good as you would expect from a clock radio. Besides, a clock radio is typically for playing music or the radio at lower volumes if you want to crank your music up, I would look elsewhere. Otherwise, this should do just fine.

Some things I really like about this unit:

* The face is angled at about 45° from vertical. That makes it easily read from not only a lying-down position in the bed, but also while standing up.

* The LED numerals are an icy blue-white and their intensity can be set to three different levels. At the lowest level, it does not give off any ambient light into the room. This is nice because my old clock radio was too bright & bothered my wife.

* Bluetooth connectivity makes this unit non-connector dependent. I have both an iPad as well as an older iPod Touch & a new iPhone 5. The first two use the older Apple standard 30-pin cable connection, while the iPhone 5 uses the new, much smaller Lightning cable connection. With Bluetooth, I can use this unit with any of the three devices and with any future device regardless of it's cable connection type (assuming it supports Bluetooth). Nice. As an aside, Bluetooth paring was easy, and the unit even "spoke" to me to tell me it had entered pairing mode & again when the pairing was successful.

* USB charging connection in the back of the unit. This charging-only USB connection charges both my iPad (2nd generation) as well as my new iPhone 5. I was thinking of buying another $20 A/C USB charging adapter for my iPhone 5 from Apple so I could have one in my office & another in my bedroom. But, for only twice that price, I got this unit instead that does the charging & a whole lot more!

* As I stated before, the unit is attractive. I particularly like the black cloth fabric over the speakers' grills.

One thing I do not like about this unit is the buttons feel kind of flimsy & cheap. They work fine now (while the unit is brand new), but I have had electronic items with similar-feeling buttons in the past and, after some time, sometimes the buttons are harder to get to do what they are supposed to do, or they quit working altogether, probably from dust contamination (if not from the cheaper internal components wearing out). Still, the unit itself was fairly affordable & the jury is still out on if these buttons will last. Nonetheless, I wish they felt more substantial.

One last note for those still considering this unit and worried about ambient light. When the radio (or Bluetooth audio) is on, there are two small blue LED lights on the base of the unit that shine down onto the surface upon which the unit rests. They are not *that* bright, and they could be covered up with electrical tape or something if they are too bothersome. I have yet to play the audio at night, so no word from my wife if they are too bright for her yet... ;o)

All-in-all, this is a nice little unit that, at this time, I would recommend to those seeking a Bluetooth clock radio with device charging capabilities...

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The radio works great for FM stations. I love that the FM tuning is digital no fiddling with the dial to get it exactly right!

Bluetooth setup is easy. Haven't tested the AUX-in and USB connections or the alarm yet yet.

Audio quality is probably good enough for such a cheap device Frequency response is practically nonexistent below ~120 Hz and above ~12000 Hz, and fairly flat in between, though 2k-8kHz are louder than the lower frequencies and with a pretty strong dip at 6 kHz, at least to my ears with a quick test. The volume is loud enough to fill a decent size room, and even at the loudest (which is quite unpleasant to me) doesn't start cracking or distorting as far as I can tell.

There were some glitches with the clock initially (it didn't advance, and then seemed to be slow) but I'll chalk them up to user error. Resetting the device (unplug, remove battery) and setting the time again seems to have solved the problem. (Be aware that doing this will also wipe the stations stored in the memory.)

Taking off one star because the Product Description mentions (as of the date of this reviw) AM/FM radio, although the radio isn't capable of tuning AM band stations. Oh well, at least the bluetooth connection lets me listen to web streams of AM stations through this thing!

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I had high expectations of this alarm clock, since it seemed to have just about every feature I was looking for in an alarm clock except automatic time synchronization. However, that seemed to be one fatal flaw since after having the alarm clock for almost two months, I have realized that it can NOT do the simplest thing right....KEEP TIME !!!

At first I thought I had set the time wrong since I noticed that it was always ahead of my cell phone time. I can understand some slight time creep, but this thing was creeping literally 15 mins every few weeks! Totally unacceptable.

Aside from the time creep, the other complaint would be the extremely small buttons. It is extremely hard to find the buttons in the early morning to simply turn the alarm off.

Unfortunately, I'll be sending this thing back and starting my hunt for a new alarm clock.

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I echo another review of this item. I'll set the time on a Monday morning and by the weekend, it's 5 minutes fast. I have no idea how in 2013 a digital alarm clock has a hard time keeping time. Crazy. I've sent iLive an email about it and will update this review if/when I get a response.

Outside the fact that this clock can't keep time, I find the function of it clumsy. The bluetooth piece works great and has great range, but if you're wanting to listen to ther radio, navigating between presets is not intuitive at all and if you hit the wrong combination of buttons to do so, you have to start over. I would prefer there be 5 or so preset buttons like 90% of clock radios out there.

I was really looking forward to this thing because of the bluetooth capabilities (which work fine), but the rest of the device needs a serious engineering makeover.

UPDATE Contacted support about the time issue. They replied 5 days later with this, which didn't work. The clock is still fast after performing these steps.

Please try these steps

1. Disconnect the unit from the wall socket and remove the battery from it.

2. While the unit is unplugged ,press and hold the power button on the unit for 30 secs.

3. Reconnect the unit back to the wall socket and set the time again on it and check.

UPDATE #2 After telling them their steps didn't work, I heard back again another 5 days later. Apparently, my only option is to pay them $25 to send it back and get a replacement. This thing isn't worth $5. Changing my review to 1 star because of worthless customer service. This will be my first and last iLive product.

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I like the two speaker sound and the Bluetooth connection. Nice. Problem is the radio wake-up alarm turns on at level 15. Even when I had turned it off at level 3. So its quite the loud wake-up call. Then when the radio station is on a minute or so, it fades to static. You would think digital tuning would hold the station. But no, stations fade in and out all the time. So, basically, instead of waking to a nice radio music, i'm waking to loud, really loud static. Not really the plan.

Sorry, its going back to Amazon.