Sunrise Simulation Alarm Clock Review

Sunrise Simulation Alarm Clock Review

Buy it at Amazon: Sunrise Simulation Alarm Clock [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Easy to setup, helps w/gradual waking, a good reading light, loud alarm.

You'll receive the clock, a 4 ft microUSB charging cable, a power adapter, and an instruction manual. The clock is made of a plastic housing with translucent frosted front panel. The diameter of the clock/light is about 6.75". There are two ways to power the clock. You can use 3 AAA batteries, which are not included, or plug the unit into the wall with the USB cable and adapter. If you use both the batteries and the wired plug, the batteries serve as backup power if the clock is unplugged or during a power outage to save the time and settings.

There are buttons to control the brightness of the LCD, the light ring on the face for a nighttime or reading light, and volume of the alarm/FM radio. You can even turn the time display off if you need it really dark at night to sleep. The clock can display both 12-hour and 24-hour military time format. There are 6 "tunes" you can set for the alarm that include nature sounds like birds chirping, ocean wave, and several melodic songs (with nature sounds thrown in for good measure). There's also a standard beeping tone and a setting for the FM radio as the ringer. The light on the front also can be set to a fading rainbow or a fixed color.

The keys on the front are touch sensitive and the instruction manual is pretty good at walking you through the setup process which only takes a few minutes. To two interesting features on this alarm clock are the sunrise and sunset simulations. For sunrise simulation, the light on the face starts off dim 30 minutes before your alarm is set to ring. It then gradually brightens up to full brightness until your alarm goes off. This simulates how sunlight would gradually lift you out of sleep rather than a blaring alarm going off suddenly in the dark. This gentle waking is supposed to allow you to wake up more refreshed and well-rested. The sunset mode is the opposite. Provide the clock with a sunset time and it'll illuminate 30 minutes before your selected time at full brightness and ramp down until it goes off 30 minutes later. It's supposed to help you wind down and relax before bed.

The FM radio is a nice feature because if can be set as the alarm or you can just listen to it like normal. You can't choose the station band though and you have to rely on the auto-scan to find your facorite stations and put them in the presets. I don't know what the max number of stations is but so far it's saved up to 23 stations without a problem. Note that the time is not displayed while in radio mode. If you set the alarm to play the radio, it'll ring with the last station that you listened to. You can snooze the alarm for 5 minutes by tapping the snooze key in the middle of the light. To stop the alarm altogether, press any other key, and to turn off the wake up light, tap and hold the sun icon.

Overall, this alarm functions well and waking up to the light really does seem to be less stressful than being pulled out of sleep all of a sudden by loud sounds. The speaker isn't the highest quality, but it's not really designed for hi-def playback. The lowest volume is also quite loud in my opinion, but I suppose that's the purpose of an alarm clock, so you hear it. I like that the clock has a light and radio alarm function, something a lot of battery operated clocks no longer support. It's also great that the charging cable is a standard microUSB, so it's easy to replace.

Buy it at Amazon: Sunrise Simulation Alarm Clock [Affiliate Link]