Sony ICF-C218 Clock Radio

The SONY DREAM MACHINE ICF-C218 is a clock radio, currently being sold at most Walmarts for just under $10  ($9.95 before tax).  I bought one specifically because I needed a radio to listen to my favorite Sunday morning talk radio station 98.7 “Drive Time Dialogue”.  Sadly, my iPhone4’s AOL radio app, and XM radio app does not get that channel. iPhones don’t have built in FM tuners either – a continued omission by Apple.
 
Therefore, I will start this review by talking about the radio.

The stereo driver  is about 2 and a half inches wide.   When turned to its highest volume, sound is loud enough for small bedrooms, dormrooms and small workshops, but its definitely not as loud as a typical $30 boombox.  If you walk from one room to the next, you can barely hear it.  Turned up to the highest level, the stereo produces some high frequency distortion. There are no controls to enhance Bass or Treble. Reception seemed to be decent and I was using it in a room with medium cellular reception – but, the reception is definitely not crystal clear.   I would rate overall sound quality about 3/5.
  
Would reception be better if the clock didn’t use the power cord as an external antennae?  We’ll never know.
 
The radio operates on FM from 87.5MHz to 108MHz  and on AM from 530 kHz to 1710kHz which would allow me to listen to AM 1010 WYNS if I needed traffic info.
 
There is even a sleep timer for the radio which offers increments of 15, 30,60 or 90 minutes.
 
Of course, the reason most of you will want to buy a $10 Alarm Clock Radio is for the Alarm function.
 
Until I bought this Sony Dream Machine, I was using a Timex T133T  “Nature Sounds” Alarm Clock.  The display on this Timex was oversized so that each number field was about 2 square inches large.  The oversized numbers made reading it especially easy since I kept it about 15 feet away. (My Master Bedroom is huge). It was also plenty loud with an extremely annoying buzzer and an option to either hear a 4 second loop of ocean waves crashing (which sounded like the inside of a toilet bowl), or a 4 second recording of wild monkeys screaming. Either one, guarranteed to wake you up!

The SONY however is a standard sized clock radio. From 10 feet away I can still see the numbers, but, because the display is green rather than red, seeing it is slightly difficult. Most displays use green because human eyes are more sensitive to the green portion of the color spectrum, but,  for this application in particular red seems to work better – especially in pitch black darkness. Unless this radio is right next to your bed (~5 feet), some people will have problems seeing it.
 
This radio also advertises “AUTO TIME SET”.  I took a close look at it  to figure out if it received data through “radio data services”, but, it doesn’t. Instead, the factory set this clock and included a Lithium CR2032 battery  to keep the internal clock active.  Fortunately, there is a low battery symbol that will notify you when the lithium battery needs to be changed. (All alarm clocks should have that symbol ).
 
The radio’s auto time feature runs about one minute ahead of my Verizon Fios Set Top Box, which I assume displays more accurate time.
 
The Dream Machine features a Daylight Savings Time feature  which means it also offers a DATE keeping feature with a TIME ZONE feature.
 
In order to set the time zone, however, you are only given a numerical code which corresponds to a time zone found on the manual itself.  1 –Atlantic; 2 – Eastern, 3 – Central,  4- Mountain, 5 – Pacific, 6 – Yukon, 7 – Hawaiian.  THEREFORE YOU MUST REMEMBER TO KEEP THE MANUAL. Would it not have made sense to “tattoo” the codes to the radio with a sticker or something?
 
Finally, you can choose whether or not to be woken by the radio or the alarm buzzer. The buzzer is incredibly weak.  I couldn’t believe it was just a few low beeps - similar to the low battery warning of a cellular phone.  I expected to get the annoying buzzer sound you get with most modern alarm clocks.  The only failsafe way to use this alarm clock is to set the Alarm mode to “radio” so the loud, annoying radio channel wakes you from a deep sleep.
 
Because of this, I’d be forced to reduce this alarm’s score to 1 out of 5 stars.  But, because it does offer radio wakeup and only cost $10, I will give it an overall score of 2/5.

The C218's cons are typical oversights (read: stupdity)  by Sony. I've yet to use a Sony device which performed the way it should. Just another reason they've lost half their stock value in the last 2 years.