Customer Reviews:
 It could be so much more.... January 22, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Its like a blackjack compared to an iPhone, its cools but just shockingly bad software. Why don't they just let the software be open source and we could download our own on to it. Its professional design, great idea, but fails on execution - see the other comments for details. For those of us that have bought it, we should all email Philips and demand a software upgrade (note if you go to their product support website, there is an upgrade for an old bug, but not a general upgrade for deficiencies in design).
 Review of Philips Clock Radio AJL308 January 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The AJL308 Philips Clock Radio has many very nice features, most of which we have not been able to use as yet. The appearance is nice and the large numbers are especially good for my wife who has rather marginal vision. The unit does not have an AM radio. This was NOT stated in the product literature we reviewed before purchase. We have not heard of a clock radio that does have both AM and FM for more than 50 years. In addition, setting the alarm time and the alarm is unnecessarily tedious, even when due care is used to follow the provided instruction manual. Making the changes in the hour and minute times has an unusual response time that requires too much experimentation every time we want to make a change in the alarm time. Once we have the alarm set, the multiple choices of alarm tones is an extremely nice feature. Although there are a lot of alarm tones available, we cannot find different pictures to insert, and, for the next several months, we will not have the time to learn how to load our own picture for display. Other choices such as a nice mountain scene, landscape, etc. would have valuable for us. The primary user of this product (my wife) has to take her AM radio to bed with her so she can turn it on after the alarm goes off. The bottom line is that if we had tried to use a display of this product we would not have bought it.
 More than just a picture frame - nice desktop gadget January 18, 2008
The Philips AJL308 is more than just a picture frame - it's a nice and useful desktop gadget as well. Image quality is good, although a higher resolution screen would be desirable. But then, at the price I paid for it, $ 89.99, it's about what one should expect.
The only critique I have is the user interface. There are far too many buttons and mutations how to use them. It is hard to understand why Philips did not take advantage of the graphic display and use a context-driven/graphics-guided user interface. The additional hardware cost would have been zero.
With that, I would have given the product a full five stars (reflecting the attractive price).
Not a finished product.... January 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I purchased this at a great price and was excited to give it to my wife for Christmas. When I pulled it out of the box, it felt a little cheap. Once I turned it on, I had to immediately update the firmware on the Phillips site because the date was wrong. Someone passed the quality assurance with the date and day of the week being out of sync. How did that happen? Overall, the cons far outweighed the pros and I returned it.
Pros - It looked like a glorified alarm clock. Finally, some company out there is stepping up to the plate and attempting to make an clock that is more than just a plain vanilla buzzer. Pictures and video were a nice touch.
Cons - Had to install new firmware out of the box, low res screen, when the brightness is all the way down and audio is playing a distinct buzz is heard (and annoying!). Contrast is bad. Videos play, but with an irritating count down in the corner (can't remove in preferences). Even when the brightness is all the way down, it's pretty bright. Can't wake up to MP3's. Radio reception was worse than my 10 dollar Wal-mart radio.
Bottom line: It was a great intention, but it really needs some serious improvement with the software. If you're thinking about buying one of these puppies, head to Target or another retailer that carries one and look at it. Then you'll be able to confirm this review.
Philips Digital Frame/Clock Radio January 15, 2008
Good product, nice to see that it can play Divx videos. Can do mp3s, jpgs, and divx vids straight from your san-disk! All amazing stuff for a cheap price but not much flexibility otherwise. Thin choice of alarms, annoying time clock and auto-dimmer when playing vids, jpg randomizer hard to use, mp3 player is feature-less. Still glad to have gotten it for my niece though. enjoy.
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