Teac HD-1 - Clock radio with iPod cradle

Worst HD clock radio iPod dock ever 2010-07-17

Reviewer: P. Blum

Well I have had this unit for about a year now, and there are a few good points about this unit that others have described in detail, but overall, it is an unusable piece of crap.

So here is the ugly:

My goal for this unit was as a dock for my iPhone and as a radio alarm clock. The programming on this unit is extremely buggy. Whenever I place the iPhone in the dock, it starts playing on a random track. This is extremely agravating, since I often go to bed after my wife, so it wakes her up often. I have been pouring through the manual and programming options in excruciating detail, and there is no way to turn this feature off. Also, the button required to turn the iPod music off seems to change at random. Sometimes it is the I/O button, but sometimes, for no explicable reason, that won't work, so I end up pressing some of the other six buttons at random to see what works. Fairly frequently, I can find no combination of buttons that will turn the music off - I have to take the iPhone off the dock and replace it before it will turn off. There is no discernible pattern or logic to this process. Arggggh! And it has even started playing music at random times during the middle of the night on a number of occasions!!!@#$%!!

Also, the screen is too bright for sleeping. I need to put a card in front of it to allow for sleep, and although it does allow me to turn the back-light off by pressing the snooze button several times to toggle through brightness levels and get to the one where the back-light is off, it resets it to the brightest level every day, so I have to do this daily.

There are lots of other small problems which others have noted that also make this a bad product. Others have described them. It all adds up to extreme aggravation, and I am done with this POS. It is going to goodwill.

Does anybody have any recommendations for a good iPhone dock, HD radio clock alarm???

Was okay while it worked 2010-06-16

Reviewer: Dan in Seattle

We bought this radio strictly for the HD function. I didn't care much about AM radio or about using the alarm clock. It's a good thing that I didn't care because the other functions are not much to speak of.

Setting time, setting the alarm or setting the pre-sets on this unit is extremely difficult. In the case of the presets, you can have twenty pre-set stations, but you have to scroll through all of them to get from the first preset to the last. That is ridiculous and very inconvenient. I finally picked four stations that I like and set them in sequence over and over so that any of the four was always in reach. This worked for me, but of course would be totally unacceptable to anyone who had a longer list of favorite stations.

Despite the above concerns, the actual broadcast quality of the stations that I had selected was very good. (Until now)! We had one early problem; The on/off button broke about a month after we bought the radio. We decided it was too much of a hassle to get it fixed and just used the remote to turn it on and off.

That brings me to the reason for writing this review. On top of having an extremely poor user interface, this product is of very poor quality. In addition to the broken button we are now having audio problems. The broadcast is continually interrupted by static. Sometimes it will change stations on its own and sometimes we have to disconnect and reconnect the power cord to get it to work. Naturally it has gone out of warranty. TEAC gave me the name of an authorized repair company in my area and I called them. They had never heard of HD radio.

I could mail the unit to TEAC in California, but the repair and shipping would probably cost as much as the original purchase price. Instead this thing will go into the trash and I will start looking for another brand of HD radio.

I always thought that TEAC had a good reputation, but I would never buy anything with their name on it after this experience.

Non-Existant AM reception 2010-04-16

Reviewer: Ken Gilbert

I bought this to receive AM HD stations to eliminate the static.
I live 4.5 miles from the radio towers: Line of site.
The strongest AM station, 10 KW, could not be clearly received: HD or analog.

ALL AM stations had static.
Other AM radios could receive the analog stations w/o static.

FM was very good though: HD and analog.
Sound quality is excellent.
No dedicated preset buttons is a pain.
Returned.

Thanks ... Ken

Know its limitations 2010-03-04

Reviewer: SurlyBurly

I've used this Radio at work for three months. I set the station and leave it for eight hours. For this purpose it works fine. It picks up HD radio signals and the sound is good. HD radio is not a technology leap. It sounds like a good FM radio signal. Though it is nice to get a broader music choice wth no commercials. I don't use the alarm or the ipod.

The bad: the "preset" buttons are worthless. It scrolls forward for 20 stations. It's not very stylish.

If you know the limitations of this first generation unit, it could be a good value for you. It's just right for my needs, but i don't have tough demands for it.

Excellent Value HD Radio with Ipod Dock 2010-02-18

Reviewer: ET

I have been searching for a HD radio with an Ipod doc, table top size and reasonable cost. Various reviews pointed to the Teac HD-1 radio so I purchased one.

I am quite happy with the purchase as the appearance, features and sound quality is excellent for a radio of this size. The Ipod dock comes with a number of adapters to fit various models and charges the Ipod. The remote feels substantial, providing convenient switching between the HD radio, Ipod or an external source such as a CD player or satellite radio source. One button HD Radio tagging allows you to tag a song and then when the Ipod is connected to Itunes you can easily purchase the song. The song and artist replaces the clock display when playing.

The Teac HD-1 is a bit large for most night stands, but as a table radio it is a perfect size. Stations can be easily stored however you can only sequence through the presets in one direction which is a pain.

I highly recommend the Teac HD-1 for a reasonably priced HD table radio with Ipod dock.