I don’t need a standalone alarm clock to get up in the morning. I simply use my iPhone’s alarm, which has served me well for years.
But in the middle of the night, I don’t want to check the time on my iPhone. I need an actual clock, one that won’t startle me awake with blaringly bright light or tempt me to think about anything other than getting back to sleep.
I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for decades. And like so many of us, I’d come to rely on my phone as my primary time-teller. But that meant when I inevitably woke up in the dead of night in my clockless bedroom—typically either because I had to pee or because my son had wandered in from his room—I would look at my phone to see what time it was.
Of course, looking at a bright phone display in the middle of the night in an otherwise dark bedroom confuses our bodies and makes it much harder to fall back asleep.
I’d see notifications that would lodge in my brain. My mind would start racing. I quickly felt awake and alert. “Stop thinking!” I’d silently chastise myself.
Even when I snoozed those notifications, the bright light from my phone’s screen so startled me awake that it was exceedingly tricky to fall back asleep.
I just wanted to know what time it was. I didn’t want or need my iPhone’s display pouring into my eyeballs.
But I did need a clock I could read in the dark, so in spring 2021, I decided to go back to basics. I perused Wirecutter’s guide to the best alarm clocks—not because I needed the alarm, but because this seemed like a good place to seek a clock designed for bedside tables—and looked for lit displays that might be easy on my bleary eyes.
Scrolling through photos of a handful of alarm clocks, I dismissed several—“That’s not me, that’s not me, that’s not me”—until I got to the Oct17 Wooden Alarm Clock and said, “Ooooooh, that might be me.”
I liked the spare, distinctive, and modern design. I liked the price tag even more.
So I bought it. And I’ve slept much better ever since.
Top pick
This wooden alarm clock has an unfussy contemporary design—and it displays the time, date, temperature, and humidity at a glance.
My bedside table is un-ostentatiously utilitarian. It’s home to a lamp, a phone charger, a couple of books and remotes, and this clock.
As my colleague Gregory Han explains in our guide to the best alarm clocks, “The Oct17’s triangular-shaped wood body looks much nicer than one might expect from a budget clock. In fact, it’s more attractive than many pricier clock options we considered.”
He’s right. It’s handsome. Honestly, it might be the best-looking piece of home decor in my bedroom—and the minimalist design means it would fit well with all kinds of bedroom decor without clashing.
In my experience, it’s also extremely durable. It looks as good as the day it arrived, three and a half years ago. This may be, in part, because the triangular shape makes this clock all but impossible to tip over. And trust me, we’ve tried: There are few things in my home that my 6-year-old son hasn’t tried toppling by hurling a ball at them.
The clock’s display—captivating in its marriage of modern backlighting glowing through an almost retro wooden body—is simple and clear, a soft white that’s gentle on the eyes. When I glance at it during a middle-of-the-night visit from my son (who now refers to me by my full name, and rather unnervingly will stride in, wake me up, and say, “Ben Frumin, can I sleep in your bed?”), I can peek at the clock and see it’s 2:17 a.m. without an iPhone-level shock wakeup.
The clock face also soundlessly displays other useful information. I have mine set to display the time, temperature, and humidity level. It doesn’t even have to be connected to the internet.
Now, the controls for this alarm clock aren’t amazing. It has three little, ever-so-slightly-raised buttons (“Alarm,” “Enter,” and “Time”) on the back, along with a finicky and cheap-feeling plastic dial to change values. As Gregory writes, “Navigating the clock’s mode settings and feature adjustments proved unintuitive, requiring more button presses than a Street Fighter move combination.”
But thankfully, I almost never touch these buttons. It’s really just twice a year, when I fiddle with the time for daylight saving.
In other words, I am a very basic bedside-clock user. I’ve never messed with the brightness, what information is displayed, the apparent ability to tap or clap the display on and off, or even the alarm function of my alarm clock. (Though I did try the alarm—once—while working on this article. Setting the alarm is easy enough, but the blaring beep it subsequently emitted was … not the sound I’d want to wake up to.)
Those features sound mildly fancy and are probably helpful. But I don’t need them.
I just need a cute clock that doesn’t cost a fortune and can gently tell me what time it is in the middle of the night, without jarring me awake.
On that score, the Oct17 is a dream.
This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Maxine Builder.
