Sony ICFCDK50 Under Cabinet Kitchen CD Clock Radio

Sony ICFCDK50 Under Cabinet Kitchen CD Clock Radio..

Grab Now Sony ICFCDK50 Under Cabinet Kitchen CD Clock Radio By Sony

Most helpful customer reviews

537 of 545 people found the following review helpful.
Great radio for garage workshop
By D. Matheny
I have been looking for an inexpensive radio for my work bench for quite a while. What I really wanted was an AM/FM radio that I could mount out of the way and that also supported an input for my MP3 player. I was starting to think that no such item existed until I came across this radio - so I bought it and mounted it under my work bench.

The sound quality is good for a radio in this price range and there is a handy battery backup for whenever the power gets cut momentarily (which is fairly common out there just because I'm always dinking around with stuff). I also love that my MP3 player hooks up so easily, which gives me acces to pretty much all my music when I don't feel like listening to the radio. I kind of doubt I will ever use the CD player.

Unfortunately, I immediately found that the quality of the FM reception was so poor I couldn't stand to listen to it (AM was fine). After a couple of days of playing around with the position of the power cord, I realized that the problem was feedback from the battery charger for my cordless drill that is plugged into the same outlet. Once I realized that, I changed how everything is plugged in and now the FM reception is very good :). It's too bad this doesn't just have an external FM antenna so people don't run into this problem - I docked a star just for this reason.

I'll make one more comment about the more expensive version of this radio, the ICF-CDK70. When I was having all the reception issues, I thought I'd go give that one a try and I realized that this model (ICF-CDK50) is better in pretty much every way as long as you don't care about the CD changer. The ICF-CDK70 is bulkier, it does NOT have a battery backup, it still has the FM antenna in the power cord, it uses the same speakers, and it doesn't have the handy preset buttons for radio stations. In some ways, I can't believe they call it an upgrade! If you are considering one of these, I highly recommend sticking with this model.

Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase.

312 of 320 people found the following review helpful.
Great product! Love the slim factor and the great sound!
By Paul Larpenteur
I installed this in my kitchen underneath a cabinet and it looks great. It's only about 4 inches in height or seemingly less, and was easy to install with the paper hole alignment guide provided. You put the paper guide into the cabinet and then you use a drill to make the holes through the bottom of the cabinet. I countersunk the screws into the wood by using a slightly larger drill bit to make small areas for the screw head. I didn't use the provided spacers, and instead just mounted the unit flush against the cabinet, and it looks great!

Now about the unit, the sound is great for our kitchen. I always leave the megabass setting on, without it it does not fill them room as well. I can crank this unit way up and hear it in all the rooms of my house, and it does not sound bad or like the speakers are going to break. So that's great, you can crank this baby!!!

The CD player works great, just like you would expect. Clock is fine. Timer is fine. Also hooked up to my ipod through the audio-in cord provided and that worked great as well.

Five presets buttons (actually 10 FM and 5 AM) make it really easy to switch around. The remote controller is neat, but don't really need to use it as I can reach the unit just as easily. Controller does not reflect off walls or anything like that, so you need a clear line-of-sight to make it work.

Overall, this is a great product and my wife and I love it!

112 of 116 people found the following review helpful.
Poor FM sensitivity and selectivity
By Paul Pomes
I purchased this radio after review of comments and other shopping services. It's being returned due to very poor FM performance.

A FM radio can be judged by a number of parameters the most basic of which are sensitivity (how well can the receiver pick out a weak signal) and selectivity (how well it rejects adjacent channels especially when a strong station is adjacent to a weak one on the dial). This radio performs poorly on both scores.

Sensitivity: All other radios in our home have no trouble picking up KPBS on 89.5 MHz in San Diego. In every location in our kitchen the ICF-CDK50 barely pulled the signal out of the static with the power cord extended full length. With the cord neatly stowed no signal was audible at all. There's no provision for an external FM antenna.

Selectivity: When tuned to XHFZO on 92.9, a weak Baja California station, the radio pulled in KMYI at 94.1 (6 channels away!) instead.

On the plus side the performance on strong to very strong stations was excellent modulo the limits of FM broadcasting. AM and CD performance was excellent. Sound was deemed very good.

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