Pure-Fi Anytime

Portable iPod dock with built-in alarm clock

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If you're sick of waking up to the dulcet tones of breakfast radio DJs, then the Logitech Pure-Fi Anytime might be the device for you. Coupling a regular alarm clock with an iPod dock it allows you to wake up to the songs of your choice while also providing a decent if not exceptional speaker system.

Pros

  • Built-in radio, detailed mid-range and highs, sweet treble notes

Cons

  • Quite a bit of distortion, lack of clarity in the mid-range, remote can't surf the menu, bass somewhat weak

Bottom Line

A good but not great iPod alarm clock, it has a few nifty features like its motion sensor but the audio is merely average.

Would you buy this?

  • Where to buy

    Priced from: $ 55.01
    Selling at 17 stores
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If audio quality is your game you may be disappointed with the Pure-Fi Anytime, although it is far from a bad system. It just lacks the clarity and definition of some more expensive docks.

The most noticeable issue is some distortion in the mid-range. Crunchy guitar riffs could be a lot tighter and more controlled. They really come across as quite muddy and dirty, which makes listening to genres like metal a little trying at times. On the plus side there was a good amount of detail and everything was nicely separated. Vocals had a slightly forward presentation but they didn't overshadow the rest of the music.

Bass was somewhat absent, but this isn't entirely uncommon for a small iPod dock. What bass there was, was of a good quality: it was much tighter than the mid-range and sounded quite full and rich. However it just didn't extend deeply enough or have enough power, and while this wasn't an issue in a lot of our tests certain tracks felt a little hollow and empty as a result.

Treble notes, on the other hand, were quite impressive. Again there was a slight lack of clarity but it wasn't too severe here and in general high-pitched notes rang out sweet and clear. Piano-based tunes sounded particularly good.

The soundstage created was reasonable but not particularly encompassing. It's difficult for a relatively small set of speakers to produce a truly immersive sound, so we weren't expecting great things. The volume level, however, was good and should be adequate for a medium-sized living space.

Aside from the speaker functionality, this unit also functions as an alarm clock. It does a fine job with one notable exception. You can set it to wake you using either AM or FM radio, a device connected to the auxiliary port or your iPod. When we tried using our iPod, however, it turned the device on but failed to actually start playing the tunes. You can make it work by creating a playlist with a specific name which the device automatically tries to access, but if you've left the device off with a song paused, don't expect it to start the track.

Everything else worked as expected and was pretty simple to set up. There are three playlist buttons labelled 1, 2 and 3 that can access lists made with that number as the name. Unfortunately, the remote doesn't have the ability to fully navigate the iPod menu, but it does have all the other bits and pieces including track skip, play/pause, volume and alarm keys.

A standard dock is included for an iPod classic but there is also an insert that makes it compatible with other devices such as the iPhone. It also has an auxiliary port for non-Apple MP3 players and a battery pack that takes C batteries for portability.

The only other notable feature is motion detection, but this is of limited usefulness. All it really does is let you hit snooze on the clock without actually touching the device. It works well, but we'd question whether it is a wise idea to make it so easy to take those extra nine minutes...

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