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The Pure Chronos CD II measures 19cm wide at the front, 7cm wide at the back, 19cm deep and 12cm tall.

The front of the unit has two columns of four buttons with a wheel set between the columns. Above this is a four line (green on black) display. Below the columns of buttons are two 3.5mm sockets, headset and Auxiliary In. The top of the unit has two buttons on each of the front corners to control any CD you might play. Behind the top opening CD door is a USB port ‘Power Port’

The speakers are on the front (rounded) corners. The sides and back are clear, the base has input for the power adapter (total lead length 1.80metres) and out for the wire radio aerial (total length 80cm). Both have grooves let into the base to feed the leads from the back of the unit.

There is (hurrah) a printed Owners Manual 20 pages and (hurrah again) all in English. While most of the controls are self explanatory the manual explains everything. The ‘Power Port’ allows you to power anything from the Chronos CD that uses a standard USB socket, the first time I have seen such an item on anything of this sort.

See also: Alarm/Radios

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This could never be a unit to fill a large room with sound and therefore it is likely that it will never be far from you. I therefore find it hard to justify the inclusion of the 15 button remote control. It is 8.5x4x.5cm about the only thing it does that cannot be done instantly from the controls on the unit is Mute, still if you were the other side of a large bed and your partner is sleeping I suppose the remote means you do not have to get out.

The four line screen shows a clock as the top two lines and providing there is power this and the date fills the bottom line even when it is in Standby.

There are 15 DAB and 15 FM presets. Scrolling through the XX DAB stations is quick using the central knob. However it does take time to get through the FM band so presets here are a good idea for immediate tuning.

When playing a CD the top two lines of the display show the time and the third line the track number and elapsed time. When the CD has stopped playing the third lines shows the total number of tracks and total time of the CD inserted.

The Auxiliary really just uses the Chronos as an amplifier and speaker system for whatever you plug in such as an MP3 player.

Sound quality for a small unit was good on all platforms.

It is possible to set up to four alarms with a choice of DAB, FM, CD or tome to awaken you, there is an almost invisible snooze bar on the front edge of the unit but as most people do not open their eyes to use snooze what does its visibility matter, by default the snooze setting is for 10 minutes.

There is of course also a sleep timer that can be set for 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes at any time you can cancel the sleep timer by pressing the sleep button for two seconds. Although there is the volume knob the unit also supports bass and treble adjustable in a range of -3 to +3 for each. You can also change the brightness and length of the backlight as a number of people find two much light makes it difficult to get to sleep.

Doing my Internet searches found the Pure Chronos CD Series II at a best price of £88.05 including free delivery from the first link. Mine was black but I see they also do white which for some reason is £3.62 more.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002OOWBVQ?ie=UTF8&tag=gadge0a-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634

http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-61270&Category