The Anytime is, at heart, an alarm clock, and it has the sort of robust alarm functionality that we'd expect in a unit at this price point. Specifically, each of the two alarms can be set to wake to AM, FM, iPod, or a buzzer. The alarm volume can also be specified, so you can fall asleep to music at a soft "5" but have the alarm rouse you out of bed at a sufficiently loud "12." If the alarm source is set to "iPod," the Pure-Fi will look for playlists called "Alarm 1" or "Alarm 2," respectively; otherwise, it'll just resume the most recent playlist in progress, or--lacking that--just start playing some random tunes. Also, a 9-volt backup battery keeps time, alarm, and radio presets intact during power outages. The only thing missing in terms of alarm customization is the ability to set them for individual days of the week or weekday/weekends, as found on many iHome iPod clock radios.
Need to grab a few more minutes of sleep? If you don't want to grope for the snooze button, just wave your hand above the Anytime, and the motion detector should kick in. It worked for us most of the time, but we did have to go back for a second pass on occasion. (Snooze time can be customized from 1 to 15 minutes.) If you want to fall asleep to music instead, the snooze button will act as a sleep timer, automatically shut off the Anytime anywhere from 5 to 180 minutes after starting its countdown.
In terms of sound quality, the Pure-Fi Anytime is squarely in the "sounds decent for the money" camp. Bass response is somewhere between thin and nonexistent, and it can't get very loud without distorting. We put the Pure-Fi Anytime head-to-head with the Pure-Fi Elite, the Pure-Fi Dream, the Pure-Fi Express Plus, and the Altec Lansing InMotion Moondance Glow iM402. To our ears, the Anytime finished towards the bottom of the pack. The inclusion of bass and treble controls would've been a nice way to help
Put that in perspective with pricing, however: the Anytime can be had for less than $100, while all but one of those competing models skew more toward the $150 to $200 range. Likewise, one of the closest competitors, the iHome iP99, offers a nearly identical set (more flexible alarm options, no "wave to snooze" feature) but at a list price of 50 percent higher.
And that's pretty much the bottom line. If you're looking for anything beyond light listening duties, you'll want to trade up to a pricier model. That said, the Logitech Pure-Fi Anytime's relatively strong feature set, attractive design, and affordable price tag go a long way to making up for its sonic shortfalls. It's a perfectly good iPod/iPhone clock radio, and a worthy competitor to most similarly priced options from iHome.
