Wake-up light

I was looking over the Wiki and I found a section about alarm clocks. I was surprised not to see my favorite: the Philips Wake-up Light. The idea behind this thing is very simple: there's a very bright light built into the alarm clock, and it comes on gradually over the course of the half hour before your alarm goes off. It may not work for everybody, but for me it guarantees that I start to wake up, gently, just before the alarm actually goes. Basically, it's almost like I just happen to spontaneously wake up at the moment when the thingy on my nightstand turns on the NPR morning news.

The only complaint I have about it, other than the annoyance of NPR pledge drives , is that the buttons on the front, which are needed for adjusting the alarm time, are hard to use in the dark. I think the designers assumed that only the buttons on the side were going to be regular use things, and they designed them to be easy to find and manipulate just by touch. For the buttons on the front they must have assumed those were only going to be used for occasional setup. For me, changing the alarm time is a pretty frequent occurrence. But this is really a minor nit-pick.

I bought one of these for my mom, too, and she loves it. I'd buy them as gifts more often if they were a little cheaper, just because it's the kind of thing people never buy for themselves but love when they have it. But I'm usually way too cheap to give $80 gifts...

Instead, I thought I'd just give the "gift" of a recommendation to all of you. If you are really driven to try out one of the "10 most annoying alarm clocks" linked to from the Wiki, you probably deserve to try out something more gentle like this.

ncgncg wrote:I was looking over the Wiki and I found a section about alarm clocks. I was surprised not to see my favorite: the Philips Wake-up Light. The idea behind this thing is very simple: there's a very bright light built into the alarm clock, and it comes on gradually over the course of the half hour before your alarm goes off. It may not work for everybody, but for me it guarantees that I start to wake up, gently, just before the alarm actually goes. Basically, it's almost like I just happen to spontaneously wake up at the moment when the thingy on my nightstand turns on the NPR morning news.

The only complaint I have about it, other than the annoyance of NPR pledge drives , is that the buttons on the front, which are needed for adjusting the alarm time, are hard to use in the dark. I think the designers assumed that only the buttons on the side were going to be regular use things, and they designed them to be easy to find and manipulate just by touch. For the buttons on the front they must have assumed those were only going to be used for occasional setup. For me, changing the alarm time is a pretty frequent occurrence. But this is really a minor nit-pick.

I bought one of these for my mom, too, and she loves it. I'd buy them as gifts more often if they were a little cheaper, just because it's the kind of thing people never buy for themselves but love when they have it. But I'm usually way too cheap to give $80 gifts...

Instead, I thought I'd just give the "gift" of a recommendation to all of you. If you are really driven to try out one of the "10 most annoying alarm clocks" linked to from the Wiki, you probably deserve to try out something more gentle like this.

Thanks for posting this!! On my wish list and will probably have next month.

Before next winter I hope to build a rather sophisticated version of this which will wake me up very slow - and then tan my hide a bit for good vitamin D and awake hormones in the winter time (S.A.D. prevention).

Have a great year!

Todzo