Philips AJL303 3.5-Inch LCD Clock Radio
From Philips Consumer Electronics
Philips compact LED clock radio with 3.5" LCD display lets you view photos and listen to music from built-in FM radio, or from an SD card. Also includes preloaded relaxation music to help you fall asleep peacefully, and gentle wake with increasing alarm volume.
Amazon Sales Rank: #5781 in Consumer Electronics Brand: Philips Model: AJL303/37 Dimensions: 3.20" h x 3.90" w x 1.50" l, .30 pounds Display size: 3.5
Wake Up to Your Favorite Music and Photos Offering the ultimate in flexibility, the Philips AJL303 Clock Radio awakens you to your choice of nature sounds, radio, your own music or a traditional alarm buzzer. You can also display your favorite photo as the background image on the 3-1/2-inch color LCD screen and watch photo slideshows set to music. Start your day off right by waking up to a treasured photo, your favorite tune or the sounds of nature. It's perfect for the bedside, but also fits attractively on your office desk. No matter what your alarm clock needs, the Philips AJL303 Clock Radio has it all. Wake to your own music, radio, an alarm buzzer or even sounds from nature
Very Good Alarm Clock This little Phillips alarm clock is a jack of all trades. It is a clock/alarm, FM radio, LCD picture viewer, and even an MP3 player. But like most multifunction products it does have its flaws, the biggest being the clock is not always clearly visible when in picture viewing mode. *** Positive Points Include: *** - Easy to use menus and just enough buttons to make it simple to use - Radio and mp3 playback have sound quality that is surprisingly decent for its size - Can have it randomly scroll through your pictures or pause on any single photo - Screen can be dimmed or turned off completely - Has 2 independent alarms - Alarm sounds are really soothing and include forest, birds chirping, ocean, and church bells in addition to standard buzzing, radio, or MP3 playback. - Good design with small size and attractive looks - Has a internal backup so you wont lose your settings if the power goes out *** Negative Points Include: *** - LCD screen is a bit low in resolution but more than adequate for most people - Clock can be a bit difficult to read with pictures playing in the background. To get around this just load a picture of a wall and click on pause. - Mirrored bezel attracts fingerprints Overall: This little alarm clock does pretty much everything. If it had better visibility of the clock and maybe a slightly higher resolution screen this would be 5 stars. Nice radio, the rest is just OK This is an ambitious attempt at combining a clock radio, LCD picture frame, and an MP3 music player. It's very sleek and modern looking and is small enough to fit on just about any bedside table. Here are my observations: On the positive side- The radio is actually the most successful component with clear sound and a very good FM station auto-program function. On the not-so-positive side- The LCD screen is fairly low resolution, which means that no matter how good your photos are, they will look pretty mediocre on the little screen. The choices for clock/picture display are rather limited and the screen does not have a dimming function. The biggest drawback to this little clock is that there is no backup battery to keep the clock set in the event of a power outage. Overall, this one rates in the "close, but no cigar" category of clock/radio/photo frame/MP3 players. Affordable alarm clock radio works as a digital photo frame, but.. I have always wanted to have a digital photo frame. And I finally got a chance to use the Philips AJL303 LCD clock radio that can also work as a digital photo frame. It is an alarm clock radio that has a 3.5 inch color LCD screen and can play MP3 files from the memory card (SD or SDHC type). After the initial setup, the first thing I did was that I copied my favorite MP3s and pictures to the SD card since the Philips AJL303 does not have any internal memory to store music or pictures. As I expected, it plays my music and pictures flawlessly. You can listen your music while the slideshow is playing. The one thing I have not found so far is that I cannot make the slideshow going while the radio is playing. When the radio is playing, it only shows the frequency of the radio station and I cannot listen radio and enjoy pictures at the same time. So I mostly use this device as an MP3 player to see the slideshow at the same time. The size of the 3.5 inch screen is fine by me. I use a GPS and a PDA that both have a 3.5' screens. However the picture quality is little bit disappointing. Pictures look very rough and the saturation of the color is not satisfiable. I do not think it is because of the resolution (320*240). I have a PDA with same resolution and same size screen and my PDA shows far better pictures. I know that I cannot expect too much on a $60 device, though. The size of the analog clock is small and I wish there is an option to have an analog clock that is big as the size of the screen. From a distance, I hardly recognize the time, so I had to switch to a digital clock for better visibility. Also, if you are planning to use a microSDHC card with an SD card adapter, the Philips AJS303 might not read your card. I have many SD, SDHC and microSDHC cards at my home and the Philips cannot read one of my microSDHC card with an SD adapter made by Transcend. It reads all my SD and SDHC cards fine though. As an alarm clock radio, it serves its purposes. I love to wake up with the music I like and the reception of FM channels are just fine. The menu is not that intuitive, however, once you get the hang of it, it is OK to use. The lack of a backup battery might be the biggest drawback of this alarm clock radio with a digital photo frame. Once you lose the power, you should set everything again. Now, my 9 year old daughter is using the Philips AJL303. It seems like she really loves this and she does not have any plan to return this to me. If the Philips AJL303 has a backup battery and better picture quality, I would give 5 stars.
