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It looks amazingly like lots of other clock radios, even down to having a ‘wire’ aerial. The main difference is that it is DAB. I have only seen one other DAB radio without a ‘rod’ aerial and that was a portable hand held unit that used the earpieces as the aerial.

It is semi circular 17x11x6.5cm, all those dimensions are the maximum as it has a slight concave shape. It is white with grey buttons. The front has a 10x2.5cm display and while all the station text etc looks fine when switched off the clock display looks very stretched and will take some getting used to.

This is a mains only unit, it has twelve buttons on top in two rows of six split by a very large snooze object in the centre of the concave sculpting and no doubt many hundreds of hours of testing have been carried out to prove this is easy to hit when hardly conscious.

See also: DAB Radios

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On first connecting power the top line of the two line very clear display says ‘Setting clock …’ this action will eventually fail as it only sets once you press the ‘on/off’ button and tune to a DAB station. Providing the power is not disconnected time will then be kept even with the unit switched off.

I found a total of 53 stations but as a word of warning I do live in a good DAB reception area. To check what the likely reception is in your area type your postcode at www.digitalradio.com

Both sleep timer and snooze can be set up to an hour in five minute increments. There is a 24 page A5 manual there you will discover there are no less than four alarms you can set, possibly a little over the top but there is no need to set them all. You can choose to be woken by radio or buzzer. I found setting the alarms a little fiddly and would suggest setting when fully with it, not after returning from the pub. The box does have an error saying single alarm, however the manual is correct saying four.

As with most DAB offerings you can have stations preset here it is ten. Apart from this there are ‘Alphanumeric’ ‘Active Stations’ ‘Prune Stations’ as the other three ways of listing your choices.

The inbuilt speaker gave a perfectly satisfactory sound for something at the bedside. However it is possible to use headphones and there is a socket on the side for this. During the night the display may well appear too bright and there is ‘dimmer’ setting on the right side beside the headphone socket.

I managed to get good reception using the wire antennae but as stated I do live in a good DAB reception area. You do need to have the wire well extended, I was surprised to see that it is only just over 60cm long, I would have thought a little longer like maybe a metre would have given more options as to sighting of the wire.

Providing you get good DAB reception a DAB clock radio is certainly worth considering, this is a product that can do anything that a standard clock radio can do but with DAB.

The likely price is just under £50. http://www.bushdigital.co.uk/Products_Audio.htm