For thirty years my mornings started with a buzzer. Paper mill, rotating shifts, and on early shifts that buzz came at 4:40. You do not ease into a day that starts that way. You come up off the mattress like something bit you, and then you spend the first hour of your shift trying to remember whether you slept at all. I retired at 59 and figured the waking up part would fix itself. It did not. A year later I was still coming awake tired and out of sorts, and when I finally sat down at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad, light was the second thing on my list and dark mornings were on it too.
The dark mornings are what the Philips SmartSleep Wake-up Light is for. I bought the HF3520 in that same October order as the other four things, and it has sat on my nightstand since the day it arrived. The sunrise starts at 6:00. The birds come at 6:30. I have been through one full winter of Green Bay dark mornings with it now, and I would buy the same one again. Here are ten reasons the Philips lamp beats the buzzer clock from my mill years, the one that lives in a drawer these days.
See What a 6:00 Sunrise Looks Like in a Bedroom With No Light In It
The HF3520 runs a sunrise that builds for half an hour, then five natural sounds, a tap snooze, and a reading lamp with 20 brightness settings. Mine has been on the nightstand since October of last year.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →The light starts a full half hour before the sound
The sunrise begins at 6:00 and the alarm sound does not come until 6:30. That half hour is the whole point of the thing. You are still mostly asleep for it, but the room is not black anymore when you surface, and by the time the birds start you have been half awake for a while already. Getting up becomes a decision you make instead of a jolt you take.
You pick a sound you don't hate
Five natural sounds are built in. I picked the birds and I have not changed it in thirteen months. If you have ever laid there resenting your alarm before it even went off, you know why this matters. A sound you chose yourself is one you can hear without your shoulders coming up around your ears. That sounds small. It is not small at 6:30 in the morning.
Brightness climbs instead of snapping on
The lamp has 20 brightness settings and the sunrise works its way up rather than throwing the room into full light in one second. That was the part that used to get me. Dark room, then bright, then my heart going and my feet on the floor before I knew what day it was. A slow climb lets your eyes catch up with the rest of you.
One tap for snooze, no patting around in the dark
You tap the top of the lamp. My old buzzer clock had a snooze bar and I used to hunt for it with one eye open. Now I reach over once, the light backs off, and the sound waits. I have hit snooze maybe a dozen times in thirteen months, and most of those were mornings after a bad night, which is exactly when you want the option sitting there.
The display dims itself so nothing glows at you all night
The display dims automatically. I set nothing and I adjust nothing. It handles its own brightness through the night, so the clock is not throwing light across a dark bedroom while I am trying to get to sleep. This was not on my list. It is one of the things I would miss if it were gone.
It earns its keep as a reading lamp
Twenty brightness settings and it works as a bedside lamp. I use it that way more than I expected, mostly in the winter when it is dark by half past four in the afternoon and I want to read a few pages before the news. One thing on the nightstand doing two jobs means one less cord and one less plug, and mine is a small nightstand.
The sunset does the opposite job at night
The same lamp simulates a sunset. The light winds down instead of up, and the room gets darker over a stretch of time rather than all at once when I flip a switch. I use it a couple of times a month, not nightly, and I would not tell you to buy the lamp for that alone. On a night when my head is running, though, it beats watching numbers.
There is no buzzer at the end of it
This is the whole difference in one line. A buzzer tells your body something is wrong. The Philips lamp and a few birds tell it that it is morning and nothing is chasing you. I still get up at 6:30 and I still go to bed about 10. I am just not angry about the getting up part anymore, and I was angry about it for thirty years.
It is a proper alarm clock besides
The Philips unit has an FM radio built in. I turned it on once to see that it worked and never went back, because I do not want a radio talking at me at 6:30 in the morning. It is there if you are the sort who likes the news while you find your socks. The rest is a plain, capable clock: an alarm, a tap snooze, a display, and it has held its spot since October of last year without a hiccup.
Two weeks is a fair trial, and that is about what it took
I want to be straight about the timeline. It was about two weeks before the dark mornings stopped feeling like a fight. Not one morning, and not three. Two weeks, in early November, with the sunrise starting at 6:00 while it was still black outside my window. If you try one for three days and quit, you have not really tried it. Give it two weeks before you make up your mind.
What I'd Skip
Here is what I would not pay extra for. The FM radio, because I used it once. The sunset, because I use it a couple of times a month and it is a nice extra rather than a reason to buy. And the Philips HF3520 takes up a good chunk of the nightstand, which is worth knowing if yours is small, because mine is and the lamp and my glasses use most of it. There is one honest gap, too. When I sleep straight through with my eye mask on, the sunrise never reaches me and the birds do the waking. The two do not fully work together and I am not going to pretend they do. Joyce gets up later than I do and turns her face away from the light, so I keep it where I like it and she sleeps on. If I had to score the thing, I would give it 8.4 out of 10 and four and a half stars.
The sunrise starts at 6:00 and the birds come at 6:30. That half hour is the difference between getting up and being dragged up.
Thirty Years of Buzzers Was Enough for Me
If dark mornings are on your list too, I would buy this again. Sunrise at 6:00, birds at 6:30, and a bed that is a good deal easier to leave.
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