Philips DC315/37 Speaker System for 30-Pin iPod/iPhone with LED Clock Radio (Black)

• Supports most iPhone and iPod models with Universal Dock Connector
• Play and charge your iPod or iPhone
• Dual alarms with weekday and weekend settings let you wake to iPhone, iPod or radio
• Gentle wake up with increasing alarm volume
• Built-in FM digital tuner plus auxiliary input

I was looking for a radio that supports my iTouch and iPhone, looks modern, has a small footprint on my desk, and sounds good. I got all of those features. The only feature I did not get was an audio out so that I could plug in my external speakers. Hence, only four stars. I use Pandora and other iTouch apps that play music, and they all work seamlessly. The sound is remarkably good, especially considering the size. Also a plus is the support that stabilizes the iTouch when it is docked. You don't feel like you will break off the connectors when you push on the iTouch.

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There are plenty iPhone docking stations out there and some are quite expensive... so why not add a radio to it and a device from which you can easily use the iPhone as well?

Here were the criteria I went by:

1) Below $100

2) Easy to use Radio docking station

3) Slick design to put on my desk not too big but yet suitiable to put on the desk with decent sound quality

4) While listening to music from the iPhone the music should stop playing so that I can take a call AND after the call is over I want to get the music to be turned back on where it stopped

5) Easy to use the iPhone from the docking station to dial numbers without breaking anything (most of the docking stations are a bit clunky when you try to put in the iPhone and then try to call people you always have to use two hands to ensure the iPhone doesnt break anything on the docking connection).

After using it for a few weeks now all of the creteria are met in my opinion.

My biggest liking is actually how easy I can plug my iPhone into the radio docking station and can actually use the phone, look up contacts, do calls, etc with just one hand. Since it is right next to me I can simply use one hand to operate this little device. Unfortunatley (and I hope to see this feature in the future) the radio speakers are not turned on when someone calls... but I have the staion in arms length and the iPone speaeker do a good job or alternatlively I use the headset.

Also I use the iPhone as a wireless radio and with the iPhone in the docking station it becomes my wirelss radio so to speak. I have Pandora and other online radion service through the Apps provided by Apple. And in that instance the speakers do work!

And if I dont want to listen to internet or online radion stations I can easily switch with one button (the source button) to either an external MP3 Player, or the local FM radio stations.

The sound is quite descent but don't expect an super stereo and deep bass experience. But you can always attach bigger speakers later if you like.

So overall for $80 you get a stylish looking docking station for the iPhone and you can making calls from it, listening to online or local radion stations while charging your iPhone at the same time.

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I bought this unit as a replacement for a Philips DC320 that I had brought home from a local Best Buy and returned within a week (you can find my entertaining review of that thing on the Best Buy site). The DC315 overcomes the major failing of the other unit by providing a readable display that doesn't flood the room with light. In fact the display here is rather beautiful with a nice color and an interesting but still legible font. Actually the entire unit is very attractive with the large glossy black face and the design motif which mimics and blends very well with the iPhone making you just want to look at it. It doesn't take up a lot of real estate, but the large face makes a dramatic impact nonetheless. The display has three brightness settings with a good range, but does not automatically adjust for ambient light. Fortunately even the brightest is not unacceptable to sleep with in a dark room, and the middle one is still very visible in daylight.

As with the other unit I like the alarm with it's ascending volume. It is the gentlest wake-up I've gotten from a machine. The sound is pretty good overall with some amount of bass and decent balance. However although the sound is better than a typical clock radio, it is not as quite as good as the DC320 in terms of detail and stereo imaging. But it is able to play louder than the DC320 without gross bass distortion. There are some other issues. One of the segments in the secondary display below the clock doesn't work. Fortunately it is in a position that is only used for radio frequency displays and I can live with it considering the annoyance of returning a mail ordered item (another review of a similar Philips item I read cites a similar display problem interesting). As with the other unit the snooze bar is right next to and feels exactly like the button to reset the alarm for the next day which is risky when you are half asleep and trying to get another nine minutes in the morning. I will probably modify one button somehow so it feels different. It requires a fair amount of force to properly seat the iPhone in the dock so that it will charge. Unfortunately with the physical design of this item the force required causes the entire unit to tip forward. Stabilizing it with your other fingers on the top of the unit always results in unwanted buttons being pushed. A small pad behind the iPhone (or iPod) adjusts in and out to allow the right angle and support to be achieved with the iProduct you are using. Unfortunately again the adjustment is by a cheap feeling plastic knob in the back which is quite loose and will not stay where you put it. It doesn't appear that the unit has a battery backup for power outages, although I haven't actually tested this yet. And last, and probably worst, the alarm only goes for a half an hour, including snoozes! So if you hit the snooze more than 3 times, then 3 minutes into the last snooze period the alarm simply turns off without warning, leaving you snoozing. Honestly I don't know where Philips found an engineer to design this who had never used an alarm clock.

So this unit certainly isn't perfect, exhibiting a quirkiness and so-so design quality that appears to be characteristic of Philips electronics. I could probably get a much more feature-rich and better designed product for a similar price. But the style is great, especially compared with other iDocks available, it is usable as an alarm clock, and the sound quality is really pretty decent. So I will keep this one I guess.

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I purchased this item at Target on an impulse. I'm reasonably pleased and will keep it.

Pros:

The sound really is surprisingly good, and gets fairly loud without distortion. This, combined with the low severity of the Cons, is why I'm keeping it.

The display is a nice color and brightness. The middle of three settings works day or night.

Overall it looks nice and is a little more understated than it looks in the product photos.

While it doesn't have a backup battery, it apparently has some kind of capacitor instead. I.e., it will keep time during a power outage, even without a backup battery. How long is anyone's guess, and it's not mentioned in the manual, but I unplugged mine for 15 minutes to position it where I wanted it and it kept the time. That's a good thing.

Cons:

The buttons are ridiculous. You simply must memorize where they all are, and you can't tell them apart by feel either. The whole top and left are covered in a bar of buttons (crazy because there are really only three on top and four on the left side), making it somewhat hard to dock the iPhone. Everywhere you want to touch to stabilize the clock is actually a button. Fortunately the unit weighs just enough that you can usually just push down on the phone, as long as you line it up carefully.

The build quality of the face is poor. The face is a plastic sheet that's glued on, and it's peeling up from the edges. It's not noticeable unless I look carefully, but it's not really reasonable on an $80+ clock-radio.

If you have the phone plugged in, and turn on the power (i.e., the speakers, as the clock is always on), it starts playing music on the phone's iPod app. If the power is on, and you plug in the phone, it starts playing music on the phone. There's no way to plug the phone in and turn the speakers on without the phone starting to play iPod songs. This isn't a huge deal, but I plug my phone in and go to sleep to a noise generator app (Ambience) and it's annoying to have to plug in, wait about a second for it to kick on the iPod tunes, and then hit the stop button on the radio. On the flip side, after I go through that nightly button-pushing routine, it sounds very good and fills the bedroom better and with more clarity and less plasticky boominess than the Sharper Image noise machine I used to use (and that machine was twice the size). And I can find the play/stop button now... with middle finger touching the phone, it's under the index finger.

So a mixed bag, but if you want something that looks pretty good and sounds good, you might like it. Certainly most of the other options are horribly ugly and often sound bad too. I just wish they had been smarter about the buttons, both how the work and how they are made. I use it to charge my phone at night while playing sounds from the phone, and to display the time. It works for that once I get used to its button quirkiness.

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Despite being one of the top items that appears on Amazon when searching for "iPhone 4 alarm clock", this alarm clock does NOT work with iPhone 4. If you are desperate enough, you can use the MP3link, but then you cannot use any of the smart controls, such as rewind/fast forward/stop/play. The MP3link will not charge your iPhone, so you will be draining away the battery during the night. So I'm not interested in using the MP3link. I will return it and try to find an alarm clock that actually works with my iPhone 4.

P.S. Someone mentioned how there was no difference between the Snooze button and the Alarm buttons (meaning you can accidentally turn the alarm off instead of Snooze), however, the Snooze button is significantly larger than the Alarm buttons. The unfortunate thing is that it is side by side with the Alarm buttons, so if you like to slap around the alarm until you hit the Snooze button, it may or may not be an issue. After looking at how much larger the Snooze button is, I decided I would be safe buying this alarm.