Pure: Chronos

Paul Hardy, Newcastle upon Tyne, on November 23rd, 2006
The Chronos is Pure's version of a DAB Clock Radio. Sound quality is good, not great because its in mono, but then again you must remember that the primary function of this product is as a clock rather than a radio. The unit has a headphone socket, that, if you wish, can attach external stereo speakers or headphones. The controls are relatively easy to use, however one gripe that I do have is the amount of scrolling needed to find the radio station that you like, they could have done this easily by fitting a wheel with which to scroll rather than arrow buttons. The radio however does have a preset feature allowing up to ten stations to be preset. The menu allows you set your preferred station scrolling method this can be alphabetical order or favourite stations first. The time settings are automatic (great for when the clocks change) and you can set up to four different alarms which can have one of four conditions on them, including ONCE, DAILY, WEEKDAYS or WEEKENDS. You also have a choice of alarm, a buzzer, or DAB. If you choose DAB it will wake you with the last station that was listened to. What is also good is that if for any reason there is a power cut, the Chronos has all the alarms stored in its memory - however I am not sure how long the memory lasts, but it definitely keeps the settings for short disconnections i.e. moving it to a different room of the house. The display itself is very clear, with pure's trademark blue background and white lettering. Located on the back of the unit is switch to toggle the backlight on and off. The display is quite bright without the backlight on. If for whatever reason the display is too bright, particularly when sleeping, the design of the chronos allow's you to lay the clock on its display. When the radio is switched on, the display shows two lines of text, the top line displays the name of the station and the bottom which can be toggled using the info button to display various text including either the name of the song/programme playing, the date and time, the frequency of the station to name but a few. When the radio is switched off the unit goes into clock mode, there are two ways of displaying the clock, the default is the two line display where the time is shown at the top and the date at the bottom, if an alarm has been set a bell symbol is shown in the bottom right of the display. By pushing the info button the date is removed and the time is stretched down, to cover what would have been the second line. The digits are displayed a little crooked, however you can still easily make out what the time is. The alarm symbol is displayed in the upper right corner of the display. The clock also features a snooze function which you can choose the length of time the snooze should last, or turn snooze off completely. Overall, this is a fantastic alarm clock, however I can only recommend that you buy it as an alarm clock, if you listen to the radio regularly for longer periods of time, then choose a bigger stereo model.