My car stereo tuner is digital. My home stereo tuner is digital. My boombox tuner is digital. Yet all alarm clocks, from the cheapest model to the one that has a built-in CD player and cost $100+, still have analog tuners. Why?
WAG
Analog tuners are cheaper, which increases the profit margin. Car stereos and home audio tends to get reviewed by magazines while alarm clocks don’t. IOW, the alarm clock manufacturers are ‘getting away’ with a cheaper technology that would get the other manufacturers slammed in a public forum.
Stephen
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3 things:
-Is it really that much cheaper? Especially considering the ease of use factor?
-Why wouldn’t ONE company buck the trend and put $3 worth (my WAG as to the price difference) of extra electronica in the alarm clock just to see if it would sell any better? Ex. the timex CD player/alarm clock- it retails for $90+, has three alarms and many other features, but is still analog tuning.
-Are there any situations where analog tuning is preferred to digital?
-Yes, I should’ve named the thread Analog tuned alarm clocks.
Alarm clocks don’t tend to get tuned much. Basically the radio is there as an alternative to the alarm, which means it pretty much gets set to one station and left there. Given that, why invest much in tuning controls?
After all, given the sound on those things who is going to use them as a radio after they are fully awake anyway?
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Well, I’ve seen a few that have digital tuners, but those are on the expensive CD/sound machine types. I would spend the extra cash for a digital tuner. I even think that there is no savings using a analog tuner. Silicon chips and LCD’s are so cheap today that the mechanics of a analog tuner would be more complicated to manufacture, where a solid state chip could just be pluged in. It’s annoying isn’t it.
As far as the original clock thing goes, I have an electric alarm clock with hands.That way, when the power goes out for 5 min it doesn’t zero.Don’t trust the battery backup.
I wondered about this, too. I finally found the Zenith 213B which does have digital tuning. The price was around $90.
I’m a bit surprised to hear that the Timex clock with the CD player has analog tuning. From pictures I saw in a catalog, I thought it was digital. It was my second choice after the Zenith. I went with the Zenith because I didn’t need the CD player.
Didn’t the Bose people come out with a digital tuning/CD player alarm clock?
I never saw the Zenith but that’s probably because I didn’t try catalog shopping. I checked out stores only (Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, etc…).
Since I’m typically very groggy when operating the alarm clock, I usually wind up smacking the thing around in an attempt to turn off the alarm or hit snooze. In the process I sometimes hit the tuner dial and trying to retune the station with the analog doesn’t work as well. So its not just curiousity- there’s a good use.