A great multifunction unit disguised as an alarm clock.

I bought the Sony ICF-CD863V for my cubical at the office. In this environment the radio excels. It has a ton of nifty features. FM stereo sound is great. The small footprint unit manages to squeeze out a surprising amount of bass that you can control with a dial. I can pull in AM stations much more clearly than I could with my much bigger boombox. The TV stations are much quieter than the radio stations but still come in clearly, you just have to remember to turn the volume down before switching back to radio. This is great for listening to the Monday night football broadcast at work. The CD player is standard Sony fare. You can preset 5 stations for each band, an FM1, FM2, AM, TV and Weather. I am unable to pull any weather stations in at the office which is rough, but I did get them in at home so I know they work. I'm not sure why mitmail's unit didn't, but I can turn my backlight off completely. The auto brightness setting is overkill and seems to work in reverse, In the dark the backlight shuts off, and when it is bright it turns on. There is also a nap feature so you can listen for a set period of time before shutting off.

This unit is designed as a clock radio with alarm functions that allow you to wake up to any of the stations or the CD player. However like previous reviews have said there is no battery backup function and the snooze bar is quite small for my taste. Sony has built a great radio here and has mismarketed it as an expensive alarm clock. It really isn't effective at that. If you can't live without a battery backup(I usually never replace my 9 volt in my alarm clock at home) You can always spend an extra $30 on an APC battery backup strip that should power it for several hours. Heck you've already blown $90 on this. Beyond that there isn't a reason in the world not to get this unit.