Easy to setup, and great functionality. Sounds good and the wife is happy with the Podcast for her Archers catch up 🙂
Looks to be well built and in a small footprint. First impressions over the last couple of days have been excellent.

So I was originally just looking for a bedside alarm clock, having decided to keep and charge my phone away from the bedside during the nights to promote healthier sleep and reduce screen time habits in bed. However, I’m also about to move back to the world of renting in shared houses and for the most part having a single room for my private living space, I need to live compactly. An alarm clock then, that has a speaker through which I could also Bluetooth some music files from my phone (or perhaps a USB), seemed the way to go. While no audiophile, I wanted the speaker to at least sound relatively decent if it’s going to be my main method of listening to music from now on, so I started looking beyond the cheaper ones. Wouldn’t it be nice though, if I found one with a decent speaker, if it could also play my CDs too? Thus, I ended up searching more for a CD player/Bluetooth speaker that also had an alarm clock function and would theoretically sit in a bedside table.

After searching around for a while, I came across the Homerton 2, which visually caught my eye with it’s appealing woodwork cabinet and a curious retro/modern design. I hadn’t heard of the brand Majority before, but did a little research and was convinced enough that the audio was likely to be decent, with a few reviews of the unit that I came across confirming this.

The Homerton 2 is way over budget for a bedside alarm clock, so what is it I’m getting? Well, essentially an awful lot of different connectivity options, a CD player and a decent speaker in compact form. I don’t think I’m probably the target audience for this audio unit, since there is a heavy focus on radio, DAB, podcasts, Spotify none of which I use! I do have though a CD player, Bluetooth connectivity and can play music from a USB stick (port in the rear if the unit).

How does it all fare? Well, I’ve just received the Homerton 2 and have gone through the set-up process, which was relatively straightforward and tested out all if the modes and I’m genuinely impressed. Given that I wanted a good speaker to listen to music with, one of my main concerns was that I wasn’t going to like this only having a single speaker and lack of stereo. Reviews suggested it sounded good and having now had a chance to listen to it myself I’m initially impressed by its clarity, volume and overall mix. I’ve tested all if the functions except for my USB music stick (in the car and it all works flawlessly and is easy to navigate. The remote is clean, effective and responsive too.

I initially had a little trouble working out which way the power supply us plugged into the rear, as a correct way up wasn’t obvious. There are 3 pins in the connector that form a triangle, but that could be rotated around several ways to fit and I was worried about applying too much force if I had it misaligned. Essentially, the flat end of the connector wants to face upwards, as was my initial instinct.

The unit looks amazing and feels both sturdy and well built. Honestly, while compact for what it is and offers, it’s a bit bulky for use as a bedside alarm clock due to it’s height and depth, thought the width is ideal. It will fit on a bedside unit, but it is a bit much and would probably be better naturally suited in another part of the room.

For a small decent sounding music system with lots of connectivity options, the Homerton 2 really is a winner. It looks smart, sounds great and has a wealth of listening input options. While not a radio user or podcast listener, I am actually now intrigued to start exploring this somewhat. The fact that the internet radio feature has access to something like 25,000 stations worldwide, which you can search through by country or genre (fun!), it feels you could go down some deep rabbit holes seeing what’s out there, if you felt so inclined. For many, while I don’t think the Homerton 2 will suffice as a main music system in a household, it would make an excellent secondary audio addition to just about any other individual room you wanted, due to it’s small footprint, great sound and attractive appearance. Or if like me, you have limited space but want combine a few functions into a single space-saving and quality unit, this is also well worth your consideration.

Oh, and as for the alarm clock function? Well, you can set up to 2 alarms which will play from any of the chosen music inputs available in the unit (radio, USB, CD etc.) and at your selected volume level. When you power down the unit, the display screen shows a clock display, which is a digital representation of an analogue clock (see image). I’d have preferred to have the option to make this a regular digital format with large numbers, but I should still be able to read this clearly enough in the night/early morning to know when I am! As an option for wanting a bedside alarm clock, it’s still ridiculous though.