Sunrise / Sunset / Daylight Alarm Lamps?

Cadder · 10 Oct 2022 at 21:22

I have seen these things gaining popularity over the years. At first I thought they would be gimmicky and near useless but more recently I thought to at least try one out.

We're a few days into using this lower end one - Beurer WL50. It's actually quite impressive. I have ours set to start 30 minutes before the alarm itself goes off. In that time the dim light turns on and gradually brightens. This morning I woke up without needing to adapt to the fairly bright light and feeling a bit more alert than I typically would upon waking.

The reason for this thread is to see if any other forum users have these types of lamps and which they would recommend. I want a better one, mainly because the alarm sound options are limited and the birds chirping track is short and terribly stitched on loop. App control would be perfect too.

Any daylight alarm users here? How do you rate them?

Cadder · 11 Oct 2022 at 06:52

Definitely need an upgrade! It ran out of power last night so I plugged it in again to charge. I hadn't realised that it had reset itself when the battery went flat.

No wake up light or artificial bird-chirping this morning.

Cadder · 22 Oct 2022 at 07:21

Rroff said:
I use the smart alarm on my phone to more gradually wake me up than a sudden alarm blaring out - definitely better than being suddenly jerked out of sleep.

I'm trying out this feature on my new phone but it's not as effective as the dedicated smart alarm.

jpaul said:
Hue bulb in bedside light

I like this idea. As I have Hive it would be easy enough for me to try and configure it that way. Even if they don't have a dedicated feature, I could probably set it to different brightness levels on a schedule.
The drawback with Hive is that it has carried out system updates at any time between 00:00-03:00 and when complete the bulbs would come on 100%. This was bad enough with the landing light outside our bedroom but by the bedside, I'm not sure.
Hopefully Hue doesn't do this but I'm cautious with this approach.

mushtafa said:
We use Lifx bulbs in the bedrooms with custom wake-up automations which change brightness and colour.

Never heard of Lifx. Any good?

throwaway4372 said:
I tried a Lumie but it was trash-tier build quality

The Beurer was the same. Absolutely no chance it warranted its £80 price tag.

Cadder · 22 Oct 2022 at 10:40

The_Arbiter said:
Wow, that would seriously wind me up. If the update time was configurable then all fine, but seems like a major oversight.

Yeah, waking suddenly to a beam of bright light under the door is no fun.

Cadder · 21 Nov 2022 at 13:06

The_Arbiter said:
Appears to be lots of discounts on these for black friday. Sill not convinced i'm happy with spending the cash as i've got to pick up a new phone so will give the smart alarm or smart bulb thing a go instead, my current phone can't do such things.

The sunrise setting on my phone is OK but not as effective as the sunrise lamp we had. Think we'll persevere unless some really good deals land. The trouble is they are well overpriced for what they are so they'd need to be 75% off to be actually worth it.

Cadder · 21 Nov 2022 at 20:39

The_Arbiter said:
Is that because the phone uses the led/flash to wake which is pure white(?), whereas the alarms are a warm colour?

No it's the screen that lights up slowly but never gets as bright as one of those lamps.

Cadder · 24 Nov 2022 at 13:25

The_Arbiter said:
I'm gonna pick up one of those cheapo Chinese "sunrise alarm clock" from Amazon. I don't like the shop, but it's the only place where i can get a return without hassle,plus i had a cashback voucher for them so it free.

Reviews on YT seem favourable and they appear to have more functions than some of the more expensive ones which put me off even more with those ones.

Let me know how you get on. Amazon is too much of a minefield for me, especially with stuff like this.