Setting the alarm itself is painless with the remote in hand: Once you’ve hit the Alarm button, you use the volume controls to adjust your wake-up time. The alarm feature is barebones, though—you can set just a single alarm, and the Brick doesn’t support weekend modes or other fancy alarm features.

FM reception in my home seemed fine, as stations came in clear. You can store up to 20 presets using the remote, though, again, you must use the remote to recall any of those stations. Annoyingly, you can’t navigate directly to a given preset; instead, you’re forced to scroll up and down through your saved stations.

During my initial evaluation of the Brick, focusing on features and design, I came away unimpressed thanks to the rubber feet that fell off; the tiny, identical buttons; the limitation of being able to use the clock only via the remote. Then I tested the system’s audio performance. Packed into the Brick’s case are left and right 21mm tweeters and 34mm midrange drivers, powered by 4 Watts per channel, along with a downward-firing, 88mm “subwoofer” on the bottom with a 15-Watt amp of its own. The sound produced by this array hits you—forgive me—like a ton of bricks. It’s not just capable of getting very loud with minimal distortion. The audio it generates is impressively clear and rich. For the Brick’s price and size, the audio it generates is simply amazing.

Reviewing the Brick was tricky. I can’t give the product my full endorsement, since I came away disappointed with multiple tangible issues. But if audio is your primary concern, and you’re looking for a swell-sounding, reasonably priced iPod/iPhone dock, the Brick certainly satisfies the ears. Just be aware of its design flaws.