Designed to tap into the body’s circadian rhythm with light, sunrise alarms simulate the dawn and can be set to whatever wake-up time the user desires. These alarms give users a less annoying start to the day than audio options, and could even reduce jet lag.
Enter WiiM, a company that usually specializes in budget-friendly audio gear. At first glance, WiiM appears to have steered out of its lane with its wake-up light and smart alarm. A closer look at the product reveals proper Alexa integration and plenty of audio features, including built-in speakers with support for popular audio streaming services like Spotify, Amazon Music and Audible via Alexa.
The WiiM wakeup alarm manages to uniquely unite features found in bits and pieces on other devices. The highly-rated Philips Wake-Up Light HF3520 might have a wake-up alarm, but it doesn’t have Alexa. The Echo Glow smart lamp is Alexa enabled, but it’s small and designed for kids—plus it doesn’t have an alarm feature. Amazon’s Halo Rise may have united a smart alarm and wake-up light with Alexa, but the company discontinued it in August.
Not even the pricey Philips SmartSleep light therapy lamp, which clocks in at $220, has Alexa built-in. Users also can’t use it as a speaker for music as they can with the nearly $100 cheaper WiiM, though it’s worth noting that the Philips SmartSleep light does track temperature, noise, light and humidity throughout the night for customized settings recommendations.
With its eclectic mix of features, the WiiM wake-up light held up when I tested it for over a month. The built-in Alexa was convenient, the speakers were a fun touch and the light-powered alarm was a relaxing change of pace. I experimented with the light’s many features to determine which ones worked well enough to justify the $130 buy.
Pros:
- Sleek, solid device
- High level of personalization through the app
- Good for room sharing
- Can control audio volume and lamp brightness both on the device and through the app
- Amazon Alexa, Amazon Music, Calm Radio and other services are available
Cons:
- Not the best audio quality
- Must connect to the app to easily control functions
- Limited built-in controls
Design, buttons, ports
The WiiM Wake-up light comes in either silver or blue-green and is easy enough to transport, weighing in at less than 3 pounds. The light is sturdy enough to stay in place on a bedside table without tipping over. It’s just under 7 inches high and 7 inches wide.
The light’s curving top mimics a sunrise; its design is similar to comparable lights from competitors. Its surface is smooth, with a glossy feel for the light-giving LED and a matte finish for the 6W stereo speaker beneath it. This speaker won’t fill up the room with sound–for that, turn to higher-wattage speakers–but it could be enough to function as a white noise machine just before bed.
Just above the Wiim’s light is a panel of built-in controls that follow the curvature of the lamp. There’s a button to enable or disengage Alexa, a Wi-Fi button, an action button to turn off the alarm and two sets of +/- buttons to control brightness and volume.
The WiiM light relies on a corded 12V electrical connection and comes with its own power brick. It cannot be used wirelessly. The back of the light has a small circular opening for that connection, which is flanked by two buttons: one to start bedtime and the other to cycle through available light settings without going into the device’s companion app.
There’s no place to plug in a phone via USB-C cable on this light, like there is on the Philips SmartSleep Wake-Up Light HF3650. But with its digital assistant connectivity, speakers and multi-color LEDs, the WiiM light has enough going on as it is without additional ports.
Set up is straightforward, and requires downloading the WiiM app, which is available on both iOS and Android. The light’s functionality is limited without the app, which allows users to set custom bedtimes and sleep routines.
Can a sunrise alarm clock make waking up easier?
Researchers say it might, and that sunrise alarms can improve health by helping regulate circadian rhythms. Plus, the WiiM Wake-up Light does have the necessary tools to improve sleep hygiene, including a dedicated sleep schedule section within the app.
I’m a heavy sleeper, and I was hesitant to put this sunrise alarm to the test because I didn’t want to miss work if it couldn’t wake me up. I held out hope that the sunrise alarm would inspire a new habit and not end up collecting dust as a flash-in-the-pan novelty.
So one tentative weekend night, when the stakes were low, I started my test.
The WiiM app has two subheads: one for waking up, and one for going to sleep.
The alarm’s features are found under the “Alarm” tab in the WiiM app. There are two tabs on the landing screen: Alarm and bedtime routine. The alarm tab is all about waking up, and the other is about winding down.
When setting an alarm, you can opt for built-in sounds or music from Amazon or the radio. You can control just how long the alarm lasts, customize the volume down to the percentage and precisely control the light’s maximum brightness. There’s a silent option, which makes light the only stimulus for your wake up.
The WiiM alarm masters customizability, breaking it down to incremental percentage amounts. Is there really a difference between 49% brightness and 50%? Maybe not a discernible one, but you get the choice anyway.
The many options for customizability were fun, but distracting at times. I found myself getting lost in the weeds during setup, making one little decision after another. Perhaps an easy setup option that simplifies things could have helped.
On the bright side, I could set my alarm to repeat, avoiding more decision-making in the future.
I decided to have the sunrise light effect start 30 minutes before my wake-up time, to trick my mind into thinking I was gradually waking up with the sun when I was actually waking up at 8:30 am on a Sunday. I wanted to see if I could cut through the usual alarm noise and wake up with light alone, so I went with silent mode. I kept the maximum brightness at 50%.
It’s convenient to be able to toggle off the sunrise light feature and the repeat feature, leaving behind a standard audio alarm.
The wake-up light worked for me! I woke up by 8:30, unaccustomed to a bright light shining on my face and too sleepy to think of plans to thwart it. Maybe I could have pulled the covers over my head, but it didn’t occur to me in the moment.
It’s worth noting that 50% brightness is really bright, enough to be unwanted in a darkened room. I turned off the light by pressing the button at the top of the alarm.
During the weekdays, I kept the Wake-up Light going, setting it to 6 a.m. instead of a luxurious 8:30, but I turned on a backup audio alarm on my phone just in case. The (obvious) problem is that sunrise alarms don’t work when you have something over your eyes, say a light-blocking mask. I tested out the WiiM’s audio alarm setting but found that I was more accustomed to the tones of my phone alarm.
All in all, the Wake-up Light worked. I haven’t noticed any changes to my mood or my energy levels throughout the day, and I’ve usually woken up before my backup alarm. Even if I have a blackout eye mask on and I need an audio alarm, it’s nice to lift up the mask and see light in the morning, instead of the dark that begins to linger in the fall.
I wish I had this in college, when I shared a room with a roommate who had a different sleep schedule. I woke up earlier than her and felt guilty about the noise of my alarm. It’s far easier to tune out bright light with a light-blocking eye mask than to block out the persistent sounds of an alarm.
Customizing the Wiim Wake-up Light’s glow
The WiiM Wake-up Light’s display can be playful or serious, working as a rainbow beacon in a dark room or as a more sedate nighttime light.
While users can switch between modes by pressing a physical button on the back of the lamp, they can also use the alarm’s app to bring their lighting dreams to life.
The lighting modes are fun to play with, with a fireworks mode that looks like a lava lamp and even a mode for reading.
Other sunrise lamps, like the Casper Sleep Glow Light, may let users customize the intensity of sunrise-shaded yellow, orange, or amber light, but the WiiM takes it up a notch by expanding the lamp’s hues to the whole color wheel, with all of its variations. As previously stated, you can set the light’s brightness from 0-100% and set a certain duration for it to stay on. Tapping the color button on the app reveals a color wheel full of options for users to choose from.
Any adjustments you make persist, even when the app is closed out or no longer active. That street goes two ways–if I was at work and wanted to check whether I had left the light on, I could open up the app for its status.
All about Alexa
The night before: “Alexa, wake me up to Alicia Keys at 6:30 a.m.”
The morning of: “Alexa, snooze for 5 minutes.”
The WiiM light incorporates voice control well, allowing users to set alarms, snooze, adjust light brightness (“Alexa, set to 50%”), turn the light on or off, jump to a preset color mode (“Alexa, set the light mode to Rainbow”) and turn the clock display on or off. It doesn’t require an additional Echo device, integrating Alexa into its hardware.
Enabling Alexa isn’t absolutely necessary, though, as every voice command has an equivalent control within the alarm’s app. If users want to activate Alexa, they have to log in to their Amazon accounts through the Wake-up Light app.
In addition to controlling the light, Alexa can handle the usual repertoire of requests, including telling stories and answering questions. It’s unclear if updates to Echo devices will apply to Alexa on the WiiM light, but probably not–Amazon usually only guarantees automatic updates to Alexa on its own devices.
While having Alexa on the WiiM is a nice bonus, it isn’t a dealbreaker. The device could retain its core functionality without it; users could turn to the app instead. Alexa adds another way to control things, paving another road to get to the same place.
Even if it didn’t have Alexa, which can be muted with a button on the device or through the app, the WiiM light would still be able to stand its ground against similarly priced wake-up lights. The Lumie Bodyclock Glow 150, the Parachute Restore Smart Sleep Assistant, and the Hatch Restore 1 are the same price as the WiiM light, but they don’t have the speaker capabilities as the WiiM–they can’t play audiobooks through Audible before bed or customize sleep and wake-up routines with songs from Spotify.
This is where WiiM’s previous expertise with audio comes in handy. Its light features and design are similar to, if not an expansion of, the ones found on the Lumie, the Hatch and the Parachute–but its speakers, extensive library of built-in audio and Alexa integration set it apart. For the same price as comparable products, the WiiM packs in a few more potentially deal-breaking features.
Can the Wiim Wake-up Light play music?
I made the mistake of trying to blast Taylor Swift in my living room with the WiiM Wake-up Light. Long story short, it was a bad time.
The 6W speakers on the WiiM are meant for up-close-and-personal listening, the kind that lulls you to sleep or jolts you awake. These speakers aren’t meant to fill the room with floor-to-ceiling audio; they’re best thought of as a complement to the sleep and wake features of the light rather than speakers to carry around and dance to.
Once I adjusted my expectations, I appreciated the audio. What was grainy from a distance sounded clearer up close. The pre-loaded audio on the app, featuring tracks like “Healing Music for Insomnia Therapy,” ‘White Noise” and “Woodland Ambiance” sounded especially good. Within each track, users can opt to automatically stop the audio in 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc., useful for if you’re about to go to sleep. They can also set the pre-loaded tracks as audio for a wake-up alarm.
So how does the WiiM Wake-up light compare?
The WiiM Wake-up Light tries to do a lot in a pretty small frame. While its execution isn’t perfect when it comes to audio, the light successfully expands on features found in other lights and adds a few more. Alexa integration and 6W speakers, for example, aren’t found in similar wake-up lights from Philips and Coulax.
When it comes to features, Dekala’s Arches wake-up light and Momilla’s sunrise alarm clock are the most comparable to the WiiM light. The Dekala Arches alarm clock works with Alexa and Google Home Assistant, can play music through phone audio and has white noise sleeping sounds. It can display colors other than sunrise hues and it’s specifically designed for the hearing impaired and heavy sleepers, coming with a high decibel volume.
Momilla’s sunrise alarm clock has a Bluetooth speaker, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and preset natural sounds.
The only feature the WiiM doesn’t cover, which the Dekala and Momilla have, is a wireless phone charger. WiiM’s design does not allow for it; the Dekala and Momilla carve out wireless charging slots within the top half of their lights and center their LEDs on a bottom panel. WiiM, on the other hand, has a design more similar to a Philips SmartSleep wake-up light, with a semicircle of light grounded in a light-free bottom panel.
The WiiM wake-up light resembles a light from popular brands like Philips or Hatch, but packs in extra features. In this, WiiM’s light stands apart from the others: It looks and acts exactly how you’d expect, but adds in a speaker, builds in Alexa and integrates a seamless Spotify connection into the mix for more functionality and fun. It’s a solid mid-budget buy.
