Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor's New Clothes
Review: After reading so many comments about how great the Cambridge 740 sounds, I bought one. Well....it sounds lousy. I was appalled by it's sonic inferiority. My twenty-five year old Advent radio still sounds much, much better. The 740 sounded lousy in the Cambridge store, but I chalked that up to poor store acoustics. When I got it home, it sounded just as lousy. Don't be conned by all the advertising and published hype; this thing reproduces music very poorly. This expensive boom-box is an insult to anyone who has the slightest appreciation for audio fidelity. Moreover, the FM reception is unbelievably poor. In San Francisco, it receives about four stations. Many major stations don't come in at all.......incredible! If this junk is all that Cambridge can come up with, I will not be surprised if they're gone in a few years. Bad, bad product. You've been warned.
Rating: 
Summary: Great mini stereo, not a great alarm clock
Review: At first I couldn't understand the negative feedback on this product. As I read the reviews I realized that many of the reviewers were placing a high value on such features as AM radio reception and alarm clock functionality. Well, I personally would rather spend $10-20 each on one of those dedicated products and focus my $300 on a radio that (a) sounds great; (b) plays all the new media formats in addition to CD's; and (c) can be hooked up to an MP3 player or wireless access point to play my entire music library. If you want an easy to use, great sounding mini stereo, this is a truly great product for the money. If you want an AM radio or alarm clock, go to Walmart with your pocket change.
Rating: 
Summary: Pops? Sure...Classics, probably not
Review: I almost sent this back, because it wasn't as good as my Bose AM-5. Hah! It doesn't claim to be. Normal setting has a good bass boost, possibly too much for the classicist. Real boost is for people who don't mind going deaf before they're 30 yrs. old.
I've learned to enjoy it as a bedside unit, secondary to my better-balanced Bose.
Rating:
Summary: poor design
Review: I bought a Cambridge SoundWorks - SoundWorks Radio CD 740 several months ago when it was priced around $399.
This radio has extremely poor AM reception. In fact, I have used my portable Sony MP3 CD player/radio plugged into the AUX port to listen to AM radio stations. The Sony costs only $80, is barely bigger than the CDs it plays and has no obvious antennea, go figure. I know most people don't care for AM radio but if they are going to provide AM radio in the unit then they should provide AM radio in the unit.
Much hype has been made about the remote control mainly because it is paper thin. I have news for them, the remote control is pitiful. I understand there is a market for smaller lighter remote controls but this is rediculus. Smaller and lighter is only good down to a certain point. More attention needs to be paid to the ergonomics of the remote. It is a chore to press the buttons on the remote and when they do get pressed you need to aim it directly at the unit or else it won't work and even then it fails on about a third of the button presses. They can do us all a favor and put real buttons on the remote which have a crisp tactile response, ergonomic design and are easily depressed. The other issue with the remote is that there is too much reuse of buttons. The remote needs to have more dedicated buttons and fewer buttons that get used for multiple and seemingly unrelated purposes. As a result of this non-sense, I have programmed a much larger universal remote to handle most of the functionality provided by the remote.
The menu standby time is too short. When setting the alarms if you hesitate for more than a second the menu automatically exits and you have to start over again. This combined with the flakiness of the remote makes for a real hassle when trying to change any settings.
Don't be taken by the misleading advertising, this player has no non-volitile mmemory. The manufacturer is proud for having provided a 48 or 72 hour battery backup for the alarm clock function depending on which document you read, I say so-what. Why is it so hard to find a radio product that will store the 15-20 or more programmed radio stations in non-volitile memory? Particularly with this unit as it is supposed to be the cadillac of radios. As soon as you attempt to move the radio from one place to another requiring the power cord to be unplugged or the electricity goes out for a half of a second, guess what, those 20 or so odd stations you just pain-stakenly programmed are all gone. You'll need to pain-stakenly reprogram them and good luck trying to remember what you had programmed. How much would it take to build a cheap solid state memory stick into an already wildly expensive radio? As a result of this non-sense, I have plugged the radio into a UPS device.
The LED display on this unit is about as bad as it gets. This display must have the lowest contrast ratio of any LED I've ever seen. There are $10 alarm clocks on the market with bigger clearer and much much higher contrast LED displays.
The only positive statement I can make about this radio and I mean the only positive is that it does have decent sound quality for music, however the talk radio quality is less than average.
Overall, I think the folks at Cambridge Soundworks need to go back to the drawing board and improve the quality of the design of this unit. A good or great sounding radio is not good enough, they need to pay more attention to the details. Because of their lack of a good design from top to bottom, about the only thing this radio is good for is as a good set of speakers. This is not good enough for the cadillac of radios and consumers should demand more. A few simple and cheap components and this could become one of the best radios ever made. In it's current state, this unit is more like a beta than a real product that is ready for the street.
Rating:
Summary: Great sounding radio!
Review: I just got my Cambridge radio with CD the other day and I love it! I almost bought the Bose but a buddy had this one and once I heard his I decided to get my own. It sound really good, especially the base. I have other Cambridge speakers and have always been happy with their products and their customer service.
Rating:
Summary: Ugly Duckling WIth Nice Quack
Review: I purchased this for my office. As soon as I lifted the 12 lb. box, I knew this was serious stuff in a small package. I ran my computer sound output to the aux input so that even my Windows startup tune now thrills me. Now as I work I stream digital, high-quality radio from the free RealAudio player to the radio. There are dozens of stations available. The audio quality (surprisingly good bass) is about the same as a midlevel, three-piece PC speaker set. Setup of the Cambridge radio and RealAudio are trivial.I have two of the high-priced (about $100 more than Cambridge) Bose radios (one with CD, one without) at home. Sound is great from the Bose and the Cambridge systems; I cannot choose between them. However, the Cambridge does have bass and treble adjustments while my Bose systems do not have these adjustments. I also am pleased with the FM reception for both the Bose and the Cambridge and wish the AM were better in all. I was disappointed in the looks of the Cambridge system. The Bose system, in its plastic case, has a high-tech, modern look, although the control pad on top is perhaps not as easy to access as the front-mounted controls on the Cambridge. The Cambridge wooden case (black on mine) is solid enough but unappealing in appearance, with a big volume knob sticking out dead center and small, cheesy control buttons around it. A huge snooze-mute button sits on the otherwise unblemished top. I have ten radios in my office. Most are small portables that I purchased for their design. My favorite is the Grundig Yacht Boy. Good design in consumer products seems important only to Italian and German firms.
Rating: 
Summary: Great sound, fantastic features, almost perfect
Review: I purchased this radio and exchanged it twice before finally returning the unit.
The first unit kept bad time (2-3 minutes a week) and had a display that wouldn't dim. The dimming was fixable without exchange, but the time remained an issue, so I exchanged it.
The second unit wouldn't dim at night and kept me up. The time was fine. The dimming was not reparable so I exchanged it. New unit (side by side with old) dimmed much more and was great in that respect.
The third unit kept horrible time, litteraly lost 1 minute or more a day. I reset the clock a number of times over a month and compared to the BBC time tone (which my watch was always in sync) and it was consistently off by more than 7 minutes a week. This unit was manufactured in August of 2004.
I returned it because, for me, it was a clock radio and the clock part was important. I couldn't figure out why it kept poorer time than my $15 timex wristwatch.
Great features:
- For the two alarms, the mode, volume, and stations could be set independently and these did not depend on what the radio was set to last. So you could go to sleep at a low volume radio and wake up to a higher volume CD or a higher volume radio set to a different station.
- Great sound.
- Plays MP3's, has AUX jack
- Adjustable sleep timer
It is doubly dissapointing because this is so close to being perfect, but three strikes and they're out.
By the way, customer service was always excelent and they bent over backwards to help me even after they knew I was reuturing the unit in the end.
Rating:
Summary: Far exceeded my expectations
Review: I was suprised when I read reviews of this item which were anything less than 5 stars. I have been looking for ages for a decent, small sized radio. This item far exceeds Bose for sound quality, and it plays MP3's in addition to CD's so you can put in one CD with 8 to 10 hours of music. You can also adjust treble and base which you cannot on the Bose. It also displays the radio station playing and the current song and artist and the upcoming song and artist when playing the radio (again, Bose doesn't). But beyond any of the "features".. its just sounds great. I have a Onkyo stereo with Bose cube speakers and a Bose subwoofer and this blows it away. Its not just my opinion, but everyone who has come over and listened to it has been amazed. I will be keeping this for years to come I can already tell you. Its also great becaue if you need to move it its just one piece.. no speakers to connect or anything else. I'd give it 10 stars if that was a choice. Zero complaints and many suprises.
Rating:
Summary: Blows BOSE Away
Review: I'm both a music fanatic and a surgeon who works in many different places in the hospital - I sometimes like listening to the radio, but more often like to listen to my own CDs. Even better, I like to listen to my own custom-made CD's with music of my choosing because doesn't it seem like almost EVERY album recorded comes with at least a couple of "dud" cuts?
With the Cambridge SoundWorks Radio/CD I get to go even one better: I get to pick and choose from among the 1,700 albums worth of MP3 living on my 160 GB external Hard Drive (all legally recorded from my personal CD collection) and record customized MP3 CDs. This way I get between 150 and 190 songs on a single disc. My ears can't tell the difference between the MP3's and the original CD.
How does it sound? Well - it sounds fantastic - the powered bass speaker system gives a foundation to Bach, Beethoven, Buffet, the Beatles and Bill Monroe that the Bose Wave system simply doesn't have: at the SAME PRICE I'd have no problems recommending the Cambridge over the Wave. Now... since the Cambridge checks in at about half the price of the BOSE - well that makes it an easy choice, doesn't it?
It's a good-looking, compact unit. It reads the files easily. The remote control is intuitive and fast.
If you've been waiting for the right "boom box" to play MP3 CDs, THIS IS IT!
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Quality Control and Customer Service
Review: It took three attempts to finally receive a unit with a working CD player. Never before have I had to go to a third shipment to have a working product. Furthermore, their customer service department had a "so what" attitude. Keep sending them back and we'll keep shipping out product till you get lucky. Absolutely no consideration for the time and effort expended to deal with the hassle of unpacking, testing, repacking and sending back multiple defective units. Bottom line: Go with anything else.
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