Turning an alarm on or off, or changing the brightness of the light, requires fiddling with tiny buttons along the rim of the clock. The two other buttons are for setting the alarm, accessing brightness and volume settings, setting the duration of the sleep timer, and choosing alarm tones. To represent time, most digital clocks use a seven-segment LED, VFD, or LCD for each of the four digits.

Keep in mind that anyone can view public collections - they may also appear in recommendations and other places. This clock is missing certain bells and whistles of our upgrade pick—a phone charger, an aux cable and port to play music from your phone over the alarm’s speaker, a midnight light, and extra sounds—but we think most people won’t miss them. If the tick-tock of some clocks’ mechanical movement tends to keep you awake, rest assured that this clock is completely silent—something we can’t say about the percussive passing of time produced by the Alessi Optic 02 B or the faint bzzzz emanating from the Marathon Analog Desk Alarm Clock with Auto-Night Light. From novelty items such as puzzle alarm clocks to a device for releasing some morning anger, you will definitely find one to your liking.

The clock’s wood-grain finish has a great feel, and its cool “now you see me, now you don’t” LED display shines from beneath its veneer. Everyone has their picks, and there are probably a few that come to mind: the sound of a crying baby, wall drilling, clock ticking, or an electric guitar are just a few. If people find difficulty in setting the time in some designs of digital clocks in electronic devices where the clock is not a critical function, they may not be set at all, displaying the default after powered on, 00:00 or 12:00. The Philips model that’s the next level down has only three choices (piano music, plain chirping, and chirping with the cuckoo).

The developers recently added Bluetooth speaker functionality and are promising Spotify connectivity and additional sounds as features that are “coming soon. Unobtrusive: An alarm clock should not be the first thing you notice in a bedroom—perhaps it should even be the last. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

The snooze button isn’t a physical button, but there’s a touch-sensitive surface that shushes the alarm in nine-minute increments. Honest people come in different packages, and I learned an important lesson about not judging people. Tocky is Nanda Home's second generation moving alarm clock, first advertised in 2010 as the "tech-savvy cousin" of Clocky. We also preferred clocks with a companion app that allows you to set your alarms and customize sunrises and sunsets through your phone. One small study that asked subjects to do math problems and go biking after waking up suggests that dawn simulation could be useful for reducing sleep inertia and getting your daytime on.