Eton S100 AM/FM Clock Radio w/Aux port (Blue) - NSND100BL - Sold out!

This unit is very powerful for a clock radio. Sorry there is no text formating is reviews on Buy.com,, so my complete review is piled together in one long sentence. The entire enclosure is acting as a bass reflex enclosure for the small woofer. It's ported out the back meaning it's designed with an audio air vent out the back tuned to reinforce the bass at a frequency around 100Hz. This reinforces the bass and it has a very full sound. The enclosure is a little small for what they are trying to do so it has a lot of mid-bass making for the full sound that makes it sound like a much larger system than it is. Due to the small size it has a strong bass peak from 100-150Hz and can't go much below that. So it's down -10dB at 90Hz, and it can't do any deep bass of course (such as 40-60Hz), but it still sounds like a good set of computer speakers that has a small subwoofer. You could retune the enclosure to a deeper note by extending the rear bass port 50% by adding a small tube to effectively extend the length of the existing port. That would lower the amount of mid-bass and resolve some people's complaints of too much bass. It really has too much high or mid bass, and not enough low bass. And this would fix both problems. The new port lowers the tuning point to perhaps 80Hz,, which it can't do much of, so it would have no bass peak anymore above 100Hz,, and it would add small amounts of deep bass. FM and AM reception seem average with no issues. There is a battery backup option for the clock and alarm, good idea. The amplifier itself is quite powerful and really is 7 watts. It pulls up to 20watts on the input lines when maxed out (I measured it) so I'm sure it really is 7 watts output and that is not overstated at all. So the amp is strong and it's fairly quiet with no hiss in normal operation. The line inputs work fine (it's mono of course) and it's a good idea for an amplified speaker. So plug in your MP3 player, etc. Negatives: It's unfortunate that is has no internal AC power supply, I suppose they just didn't have room for it while maintaining the small enclosure size, so it has a large, heavy, external AC wall transformer to plug in. And it's big. It's not the high tech "Switching type" of transformer, those are the lightweight ones that says 120 to 220V on them. This is the old style that takes 120V AC only because the voltage reduction to run the unit is done with a heavy metal transformer rather than using lightewight, powerful sophiticated electronics. Due to the cheap design of the transformer it also pulls 2 watts forever even when the radio is off or unpligged. It's wasted as heat by the transformer itself. Dumb design and some day this type of design wil not be legal due to green energy requirements. The case is all black plastic, and just thick enough to not vibrate when turned up. Wood or metal would be better but maybe not at this price point. The clock display is a nice blue color but it's pretty small and has limited contrast so it's hard to read from more than 5 feet away, it also has a limited viewing angle so unless you are in front of it, it's not much use as a clock. The display has no brightness adjustment either. It has 2 levels and goes bright when you move a dial, then dims down by half. Which may be too much for a nightstand in some cases. It has very few controls, such as there is no way to control the sound. There is no bass, treble controls. So hopefully you like the sound because the only thing you can adjust is the volume. Just one big knob and the little buttons, which are labeled all in a row with some writing above and below each button making it hard to know which writing goes with what button. I got this for a tremendous sale at 80% off, so it's well worth it for a nice full sounding radio. The remote works fine too. It surprises people with the rich sound, but fails as a clock radio and they need to make the cabinet 10% larger to fix the unnatural boost of mid bass frequencies, and that also allows room to move the AC transformer inside the cabinet.
 
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Electronics > 2-way Radios