ILX Consumer guide: The Philips wake-up light

With the long winter nights coming up, I am now bombarded by ads for this thing. Parts of me wants to believe, but reason tells me it's probably a big scam. Anyone tried it?

I have a similar fake-sunrise alarm clock (a Lumie Sunray). It does tend to wake me up in a slightly less jarring manner than a beeping alarm, and the night-time fadeout makes me (mildly, pleasantly) sleepy when I'm not too impatient or too late to bed to wait for it. I haven't, however, noticed being any less grumpy or more awake/better rested.

If it broke would I buy a new one? As an alarm clock or SAD remedy, not out of my own pocket, but I find the fadeable bedside light useful on its own. Not £50 of useful though.

(The light doesn't always wake me, either, so I have to keep the backup beeper on. But I tend to sleep facing away from it with my head under thick dark sheets - not because of the lamp, habit built up over many years - so that might well be why. I usually wake up enough to turn the sound off before it goes anyway.)

I put an iron on my couch, with a timer set to come on 5 mins after my alarm comes on.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit since my husband does not like the mornings much. (haha putting it lightly -> "morning moodiness" oh crap it's the worst)

I have a friend who has one and he swears it is the greatest thing he ever bought. It really does help him wake up. I used it once and it felt good to be slowly brought out of sleep with the light rather than abruptly with a jarring beeping sound

I don't know, I'm not sure this thing would actually wake me up tho...

I couldn't find an American version of the Phillips Wake-up site. Maybe it's because over here in the New World, we have these things called "windows".

I've had a SunRizr for 8 years - you use it with your own lamp. I've got it controlling a 150W floodlight that points up into the corner of the bedroom. Most mornings, it wakes me up (esp on weekends, when I forget to turn off the dawn), but I also have a twee Totoro music box alarm clock as backup. I really like it for a few reasons: falling asleep to the dusk function is great; it works as a dimmer so is also mood lighting; if I wake up in the middle of the night, I don't feel the need to look at the clock - if the dawn hasn't started breaking, then it's nowhere near time to get up; getting out of bed in the half-light (it's set so the full dawn isn't until 10 minutes after the alarm goes off) is easier on me than waking up in the dark and turning on a full strength light.

From what I gather it isnt actually the light that wakes you up. You usually put a normal alarm too. But you set the light for like half an hour earlier and it slowly gets you out of deep sleep or whatever, making the real waking up less harsh.

Philips Hue isn't working and people all over the world can't connect to their expensive lights. yay forced cloud logins

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hue/comments/17k29bw/hue_app_not_working/

Setting my old alarm for tomorrow in case the light doesn't remember to wake me up