RCA RP4842 Clock Radio

Product Details: RCA RP4842

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Product Description: RCA RP4842

User Reviews: RCA RP4842

1. Simply? ...The winner

   , November 16, 2006
   Reviewer: Matt Lang - See all Matt Lang's reviews

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   1 of 1 Yahoo! Users found this RCA RP4842 review helpful

   Pros: Great features, great price, great reception, small footprint

   Cons: No dimmer (not a big issue with me, though)

   My trusty Sony ICF-C740 that got me through college was assimillated to my wife's side of the bed which worked for a while, but eventually I'd had enough and she's not so good at learning new gadgets so I found myself looking for an alarm clock radio. I'm a big researcher/try-er out-er of things and if there's something about a gadget that bugs me, it tends to grow worse until I take the thing back. So it was with clock radios. I had a few simple criteria: 1) had to be large ( 0.9"), semi-bright green numerals (the night-time vision area of your eye is more sensitive to blue--that's why blue signs catch your eye at night--but much worse resolution-wise than the day-time portion which essentially makes your vision worse when reading blue text/numbers at night, so blue displays were a turn off) which were easily visible by day or night, and didn't provide a light distraction for me as I went to bed; 2) preferrably 2 alarm times; 3) had to have radio as the alarm; 4) had to pick up at minimum local NPR station and local classical station as a bonus (best gentle wake-up music & news in the morning); 5) extra bonus points for nicely variable snooze time and a 'nap' feature without messing up the alarms.
   
   I looked at all the current Sonys (what happened to the simple design with nice features and good reception/sound quality?) and a whole slew of clock radios from Target, Walmart, Best Buy and others. Here are the main highlights of the ones that I ended up buying and taking back:
   -Extra large display clock (can't remember if it was a Sony, RCA or other brand): In general, I find the extra large displays are rather dim, with the possible exception of the red ones (but I wasn't going for red). Even the variable ones start out dim and just go lower. Don't even get me started on the large blue displays. Try reading them from across the room at night, just big blue fuzzy letters (and before you start knocking my vision, I'm 20/14).
   -RCA RP5640: wasn't too keen at first of the LCD display, but you could select green and it was bright enough (though the background brightness made me switch on the auto-dimmer which made it hard to read sometimes depending on the room lighting and my distance from the clock). All-around nice clock with all the features I wanted (including bonus points ones) but overall too many people complaining about broken CD doors (though I probably wouldn't have used that much) and the big kicker-generally poor reception. It could pick up NPR with a lot of background fuzz but not even a hint of the classical station. Also, the "instant weather" channels all picked up some local bad 40s country station...with a lot of background static. The alarm "off" button was pretty small too and in the corner, so not as user friendly as it could have been.
   -Boston Receptor: Great sound but...though the audiophile in me wanted to keep it, it too couldn't pick up the classical station (NPR sounded great, though) despite it's advertising on picking up weak FM signals. In the end, I couldn't justify $150 for medium-level reception and entry-level dual alarm features.
   
   As you can see, I was willing to pay a lot for a quality clock radio that did want I wanted it to: wake me up to radio of my choice, have some good features, and be easy to read & use. That's why I was surprised that my final purchase (the RP4842) I got for $7 on clearance at Walgreens. It's an RCA so it (somewhat surprisingly) had the "grad-u-wake" feature with the alert alarm (soft to loud in about 45 sec, though I never use that alarm setting), settable snooze time in 1 minute increments (no other clock radio I found besides the RCAs have that) and a nap button with 10 minute increments up to 2 hours. Contrary to other posts here, I didn't find turning off the alarm hard at all as the "on/off" button is in general fairly easy to feel w ...

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