Unlike pretty much every piece of Nintendo hardware ever released, Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo isn’t something that can be played and put down. This is something that needs to be experienced. The purpose of this diary is to give you an idea of what the Alarmo experience is like used in an everyday setting. After a few weeks of entries, the diaries will be concluded with a review of Nintendo’s alarm clock. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
The First Night
After prepping Alarmo for numerous pictures and videos for an article/video (which you can find here) highlighting the device mainly from a design standpoint, it was time to move the clock from my game room into the bedroom. I was happy to find that even though I had to unplug the device for the short trek to the next room, all of the settings were still in tact, including my Wi-Fi settings and alarms. After messing around with the volume settings a little bit, I settled into bed to get into my usual routine of checking out some wrestling/sports/YouTube before getting to bed.
Before Alarmo, my phone served as my alarm clock for over a decade. Before that, it was my DS Lite. We’ve come full circle. With that being said, I would usually have no frame of reference for how late it was which would always lead to a pretty poor sleep schedule. With Alarmo being next to me on the nightstand, it was impossible to escape the passage of time. One neat thing that Alarmo does (as do a number of phones these days) is to dim the display gradually and then completely depending on movement. When I would slightly move to get repositioned, Alarmo was staring right back at me, the time right there. Whereas I would usually be awake well past 1:00 a.m., I turned in early for the night, opting to sleep around 12:45 a.m.
Day 1
Alarm Type - Super Mario Odyssey - Chain Chomp
My normal alarm on my phone is usually set for 6:30 a.m., so after turning that off, I made sure to have the same time set on Alarmo. My wake up routine is to usually mash the snooze button and lay around in bed each morning for about 30-45 minutes. Alarmo changed this for today. I first awoke to a chain-chomp bark coming from my Alarmo. I had the device set to Gentle Mode, so my half asleep brain told my body to wave my arms wildly, which in turn quieted Alarmo…for the time being. Three minutes later, it started back up and I waved. This continued until about 6:45 a.m. when my wife woke up. The sensor in Alarmo detected her and played some victory fanfare. I thought that would be end of it, and I could just oversleep and miss work, BUT, Alarmo still detected me in bed and displayed a message that it would essentially go back into alarm mode until I got up. About five minutes later, I got up for the day.
Quick take away so far - after being used to a nine minute snooze time for such a long time, this was quite jarring, but not completely awful. I had a little bit more time in the morning to actually enjoy my breakfast and sip on my coffee a little bit longer.
Day 2
Alarm Type - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Bokoblin Battle
Since I had a day off of work the next day, the evening before I kicked back a few alcoholic beverages and went to be a little bit later than usual. Because of that, I set my alarm to 6:55 a.m. on the Breath of the Wild random theme to give myself a little more time to sleep. I woke up to the sound of Link battling Bokoblins. Feeling a bit groggy due to having a few more drinks than I originally planned, I stayed in bed for about 45 minutes fighting the alarm. This was definitely not a normal kind of morning for me, but at least I know how I’ll handle Alarmo when slightly hungover/still drunk.
I did mess around with the settings a little bit more after waking up and starting off my day. It’s worth noting that the display/operating system that Alarmo is using can stutter a little bit if you cycle through things too quickly. For example, I was scrolling through different titles and themes a bit fast and the system was having some trouble keeping up.
Day 3
Alarm Type - Pikmin 4 - Save The Drowning Pikmin
It’s time for the weekend, but I still find myself having to wake up early due to some part time work. This morning, the sound of Pikmin…drowning…When I actually heard them, that aspect of it didn’t register until I checked the alarm name later. Just as before, I snoozed for nearly an hour only to find that the alarm function is turned off at that point, an important thing to note for future wake ups.
Even with the alarm turning off (hey, I got up right after that), I did notice that it would still count the “wake up” of my wife seeing as she got up before I did. Although there are some sleep tracking functions on the device, the data can be a little bit skewed. “Sleep Time” is counted for any time that you are in your bed, with a graph showing some movement. In my case and for others who might roll around before actually falling asleep, this is a bit disappointing. Also, considering that Alarmo connects to both Wi-fi and to My Nintendo Accounts, it would have been nice to be able to see this information on my phone or something. Perhaps something like that will come in a future update.
Day 4
Alarm Type - Splatoon 3 -
Aside from the change in title/theme, there’s really not much to report. Waking up to (Splatoon) gunfire is a little bit unusual for me, but this is now the world I live in. Again, like I’ve basically said in previous entires, Alarmo is quite different from my wake up style for the past decade plus.
Day 5
Alarm Type - Ring Fit Adventure -
Again, not much new to say that I haven’t already laid out before. I’m beginning to find the regular motion detection for wake ups to be a little bit annoying. I understand that it’s difficult for it to distinguish between two different people. That can’t be easy to develop. Perhaps I’ll move on to button mode to see how it goes. Additionally, I really want to try out the “chime” feature of the clock. I’ll report back on these.
Day 6
Alarm Type - Super Mario Odyssey -
Well, what a mistake. So, I went ahead and tried out the “Button Mode” for my alarm today. Even though I literally read the on screen prompts, I still remained a little bit confused. In this mode, the gestures you would use to snooze your alarm are still active. The only difference is with the wake up. Hitting the button turns off the alarm, similar to how actually getting out of bed does in the other modes. In my normal morning grogginess, I must have just slammed the button and then slept peacefully…until forcefully waking myself up realizing that I had to get ready for work. It’s something to take note of - if you share a bed with a partner or pet, Button Mode will be useful, but just be sure to know how it works before going in. Don’t be an idiot (like me). The button at the top of Alarmo DOES NOT initiate snooze.
Originally posted on Friday, October 18, 2024, 10:44 p.m.
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