Philips WAK3300: Here's Wi-Fi you need a better alarm clock

Alarm clocks are typically  -- though not always -- hateful little sods, synonymous with a miserable feeling of remorse that the night is over and that romantic tryst with Philippa Forester was merely a dream. Solely responsible for getting us out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn, they're hated with the fury of a thousand suns. The nerds at Philips also have to get out of bed, so it's no surprise they've put considerable effort into making them less rubbish with the WAK3300.

This system goes hand-in-hand with Philips' WACS7000 music system we recently reviewed. As a stand-alone alarm clock it's fine -- but it also has built-in Wi-Fi and an Ethernet socket for streaming digital music from your PC or the WACS700.

We've been playing with it for a while now. Okay, the sound's not amazing, but compared to a normal alarm clock it's hanging with the cool kids. It took about 20 seconds to get up and running and within a minute we had music flying over Wi-Fi and streaming through the office LAN. The menu resembles an iPod's traditional layout and navigation style, so it's a tasty piece of Dutch cake to use.

The WAK3300 is on sale now for about £89. Look out for our full review shortly, but in the meantime you can check out our review of its brother and sister systems o'er yonder. -Nate Lanxon