Sangean RCR-22 Atomic Clock with FM-RDS / AM / Aux-in Digital Tuning Clock Radio, silver, one size

THIS IS A WONDERFUL CLOCK RADIO. ITS MANUAL, LIKE SO MANY WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW TOO MUCH AND ASSUME THAT THE CONSUMER ALSO KNOWS PLENTY.....COULD USE SOME EXPLANATION.BUT THE LITTLE TUBE-LIKE "CARTRIDGE" THAT FITS ON THE BACK, SOMEHOW DOES AN INCREDIBLE JOB OF GETTING AN FM RADIO SIGNAL. WE LIVE OUT IN FARM COUNTRY IN THE MIDWEST. WE HAVE HAD ACCESS TO ONLY ONE CLASSICAL RADIO STATION. WITH THIS CLOCK RADIO WE NOW HAVE THREE.WHILE IT ONLY ALLOWS TWO SETTINGS FOR ALARMS (ALL WE NEED) RATHER THAN ONE OR TWO EACH OF SEVEN DAYS LIKE ANOTHER CLOCK WE RECENTLY PURCHASED, I WANT TO LIST WHAT IS WONDERFUL ABOUT THIS ONE IN ADDITION TO THE RADIO.YOU CAN ADJUST, FROM THE BOTTOM, WITH A SLOT SCREWDRIVER, THE BACKLIGHTING FROM BRIGHT TO SEVERAL GRADATIONS OF DIMMER, TO TOTALLY OFF.THIS ENABLES YOU, ONCE YOU FIGURE OUT THE BUTTONS ON THE FRONT TO: PRESS THE LOWEST ONE OF FOUR VERTICAL ONES ON THE RIGHT TO ACCOMPLISH THIS.I THEREFORE SET IT TO SAVE OUR SLEEPING EYES, AFTER READING HOW DAMAGING LIGHT CAN BE THROUGH THE EYELIDS OF SLEEPERS WITH ILLUMINATED NUMBERS OR BACKLIGHTING. LIKE MOST PEOPLE WHO BUY SUCH A CLOCK-RADIO, WE HAVE IT TWO FEET AWAY FROM OUR BED, IN ORDER TO TURN OFF THE ALARM THE NEXT MORNING.ANOTHER REALLY NICE FEATURE IS TO BE ABLE TO PRESET THE SEVEN TOP BUTTONS FOR AM OR FM STATIONS. WE NOW HAVE A CHOICE OF THREE CLASSICAL SIGNALS. JUST LAST NIGHT, ONE OF THE STATIONS HAD SORT-OF BOMBASTIC MUSIC, WITH A LOT OF DRUMMING. WITH JUST A POKE OF A BUTTON, I TRIED ANOTHER STATION AND GOT GORGEOUS, SUBTLE JAZZ GUITAR PLAYING...PERFECT FOR GOING TO SLEEP.THE TOP RIGHT VERTICAL BUTTON GIVES YOU OPTIONS FOR ON/60/45/30/15 MINUTE INCREMENTS FOR SLEEP...LIKE OLDER RADIOS USED TO DO. YOU JUST LISTEN FOR A BEEP. THE LEFT TOP TWO VERTICAL BUTTONS ARE ALREADY PRE-SET BY US TO SELECT ONE OR THE OTHER ALARMS, FOR THE TWO DIFFERENT TIMES WE NEED DURING THE WEEK.WE JUST LOVE THIS RADIO. I SELECTED IT BECAUSE I HOPED THAT IT HAD NO STRONG GREEN, RED, BLUE BACKLIGHT AND NO STRONG GREEN, RED, BLUE (THE WORST ON THE BRAIN, I HAD READ) BACKLIGHT.IF YOU DO NOT NEED A DIFFERENT ALARM TIME SETTING MORE THAN THE TWO OPTIONS, THIS IS THE FINEST CLOCK-RADIO YOU CAN GET. IT IS BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED AESTHETICALLY AND FAIRLY PRICED. IT HAS A LOVELY SOUND FOR MUSIC ALSO. THE REASON FOR THE APPRECIATION OF MORE THAN ONE STATION IS ALSO BECAUSE, WHILE NEWS MAY BE WHAT SOME PEOPLE WANT, IT IS NOT WHAT YOU ENJOY WHEN GOING TO SLEEP OR AWAKING, IN MOST CASES. I THINK IT ALSO HAS A SLOWLY-GROWING LOUDER ALARM BUT I AM NOT SURE.NM

UPDATE 2022-10-24: The super capacitor has long gone sour. The function buttons are bouncy and cause errors; even the ON/OFF button requires multiple operations and sometimes does anything but. It's life is nearing end.As of this writing, I have had the RCR-22 for over two months. These days, our product range of offering is limited by crowd-driven selection, based on an uninformed, undiscerning public dictating a mundane choice for those of us who know what we want. Once in a while, something shows up that makes me say; "where did that come from?" Looking at the available clock radios was underwhelming based on what I knew I wanted and what I could find. These times, every product is the same as the other.......or worse. It's either common or excellent.When I found the Sangean RCR-22, it stood out way above the plethora of "me-too" clock radios. I won't go over all the features here as they are already published. I did find a few pluses that are not listed in the features as well as a few of my own items I wish it had. What I wanted was a clock radio that had a quartz time-base that was reset by the time radio signal transmitted from Boulder Colorado, which is connected to the world-standard atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. A good quality AM/FM radio, runs off AC with a battery that only serves as a backup during power outage. A large enough display that was lit at night but very dim, preferable amber in color (warm colored light in a dark room is more conducive to sleep than the blues and greens). Of course, I didn't quite get everything I wanted.With the RCR-22, I found most of what I wanted, then some. It's an "atomic clock" radio. It runs off AC, without one of those "wall warts". The AM/FM radio is above average quality with "phase locked loop" FM tuner. The sound coming out of the speaker is above average for a clock radio. It has a headphone output for stereo headphones but it only has mono audio out. It has a lot of buttons to access lots of functions. Some buttons are on the front, some on top. One thing I found convenient is that when pressing the front buttons, there is a post on top at each side to place a finger behind to stabilize the unit while pressing a front button. It does not use a back-up battery but instead has a "super capacitor" to keep clock running for an hour or so during a power outage. Some outages last longer. If it goes beyond the power stored in the capacitor and your wake-up time, the alarm will not sound. Even if power is restored before your wake-up time, it may take a while to reset to the atomic clock signal. That's why I would prefer a back-up battery. We recently had a 2-hour power failure and when the power returned, the clock had lost its time. All other settings (alarm and radio presets) were still intact. The clock will reset automatically by radio control but that will take a while depending on reception.The clock face illumination is blue LED. You have a choice of bright or dim. The dim choice is fully adjustable by screw-head adjustment on the bottom. You can adjust from nothing to bright as the standby setting. That means that even with be color being blue, you can adjust it so that it is barely visible in a dark room. That's what I did and I can still read the display in a lighted room. The snooze can be silenced by ANY of the top buttons. The snooze alarms every 5 minutes. I would have preferred 8 to 10 minutes.If I try to write all my thoughts of this product, I never will get this review in. I will just say in conclusion that I am very satisfied with this Sangean clock radio. Instead of warming over a product to compete with everything else, they innovated and put thought into a product that rises above the rest. Of course, it's too early to discover how long it will last. I do know that my previous Timex atomic clock radio lasted 13 years until the function buttons lost their conductive film inside.UPDATE 2016-11-06: The clock does NOT automatically reset for changes between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time. It has an add or subtract an hour setting. Some people prefer this, some don't. I have other radio controlled clocks that automatically reset. I would prefer the option instead, to choose between automatic DST setting or not automatic. The DST/ST code is already sent along the radio signal from Boulder Colorado and if the dates change, the radio signal contains the change.