Great in many ways, but has a drawback.

This Sony was close to a perfect clock radio, but it had one HUGE flaw. Instead of having the option to slap in a couple AA (or a 9-volt) batteries for back-up power (which will enable the alarm to wake you up even after a full 8-hour power outage), it has a built-in power back-up chip, which holds a mere 60 seconds of memory back-up power. It sure must be nice to live in Japan, where if a thunderstorm knocks out the power, or a tree falls on some power lines, the power lines are always up & fixed within 60 seconds. But, for the rest of the world, power outages commonly last for many hours. The recent East Coast power outage which effected over 50 million people is a perfect example of how important this feature is. Just a short 60 second power outage will completely wipe-out the current time, all 3 alarm settings, all 25 preset radio stations, everything! And you will wake-up (eventually) an hour or two late for work, to a silently blinking 12:00.

Another flaw (minor) was that if your radio is placed right next to your bed, (as they often are), the large orange backlight is somewhat bright, even on the lowest of 3 manual dimmer settings. The Auto Dimmer feature has the same 3 brightness levels, and there is no option to turn the backlight off completely.

Otherwise, this Sony had just about every feature you can possibly imagine, including seperate digital volumes for wake-up and sleep timer. Its just a shame that Sonys top-of-the-line clock radio has virtually no power back-up. Perhaps its called the -Sony Dream Machine- because theres a good chance it wont always wake you up. It just kind of defeats the whole purpose of a reliable alarm clock.