The aerial is just a wire, but reception is fine and the full range of stations was detected in under a minute. The volume control uses the pair-of-buttons method, which in this case doesn't give fine enough adjustment - especially at low volume, where clock radios are usually set.
The actual clock time is automatically set; however, when the clocks went back it didn't adjust itself. (I ended up having to reset the whole unit, since there is no way to adjust the clock.) The alarm function is quite handy, with a 'weekday' option and is simple to set to the right time.