With the nights now longer than the day’s most of us need to get up before the sun and that means we are far more likely to be woken unnaturally with the result that we feel – at the very least – less charitable towards others and therefore unhappy. This light from Philips can wake you with a gradually brightening light and for the heavy sleeper even bird song.
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When the other end of the day arrives our sleep pattern can be out of sync and a red light can pulse to get up ready to sleep, this offering from Philips has both and it even has a built in radio.
It is 22cm tall, 22cm wide and a maximum of 11cm deep at the base and less than 2cm deep at the top.
The light unit is circular within those measurements.
There is a line of four ports at the back towards the base, USB for charging only, a Reset button, DC power in and finally Aux in. below this is a 1.5metre long FM radio aerial.
Once power is on the setup is done via touch buttons near the base of the front. The unit’s speaker is at the back just below the cone shaped hole in the light and sound does penetrate forward.
Dependant on how heavily you sleep the light can be blindingly bright if required I was happy with it set at 40% of maximum.
The red light pulses at a default rate of four circuits a minute from zero to rather bright, take it from someone with years of sleep problems it does help you to detox the day so you are in a better place to try to sleep the setting is for ten minutes.
Everyone says that screens of any sort before bed are bad be it computers, notebooks, tablets or mobile phones and the red light here will help you to be ready you to sleep.
The morning alarm will start with a very faint red light thirty minutes before the set time going though orange to cream and eventually to white which will probably be enough to wake you gently but if not a choice of buzzer, bird song or even radio will do the job at the set alarm time. There is a snooze button on top of the unit.
Every one sleeps in cycles of around ninety minutes in a ‘U’ shape the good sleep occurs at the base of the ‘U’ if you are lucky you then drift straight off into another 90 minute ‘U’ through the night. This is why with a conventional alarm you are likely to be grumpy if woken from deep sleep and far less so if woken from the top of the ‘U’.
As this relies on power should there be a power cut you may have with other such devices have a problem, not so with this unit if the power is restored before the time of the alarm it will go off as normal, if it’s still in effect then a buzzer will sound at the appropriate time as this unit has a built in rechargeable battery that has an eight hour life long enough for the majority of power outages.
There is a five language User Manual with the first fifteen pages in English to explain everything.
I have reviewed many wake up lights and somewhat fewer sleep lights this does both so whichever part of the day is your problem then this can help.
At the time of publication the Philips Somneo Sleep Wake Up is available from Amazon for £123.99 including free delivery.
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