“Max… Max… Wake up Max. It’s been a year since you wrote a review.”
It sure has, and it’s about time I dive back in. I’ve had my hands on Nintendo’s Alarmo for a while now and have been using it as part of my morning alarm routine with the intent of writing a review. It’s close enough to a game, right?
Setup
Alarmo’s setup is mostly simple, after you connect it to Wi-Fi. Make sure you have a USB socket to plug into, as Alarmo provides the cord, but not the charging brick. The clock only has 3 buttons: notifications, back, and select. The select button can also be used to scroll between choices, and for the most part that isn’t an issue. However, if you have a longer Wi-Fi password that will be the most tedious part of setup. It isn’t too bad, but, if you accidentally make one mistake you’ll probably need to do it all over again scrolling through each letter one at a time since it’s not a touch screen you can’t just press each button on a keyboard like you would a smartphone.
However, after you get past that it isn’t too bad, as they do let you scan a QR code on Alarmo so as to input your Nintendo account via smartphone, which is quite appreciated. If you don’t have a Nintendo account Alarmo will still work. From there you will go ahead and download any updates that need to be applied. After download you will have to apply date, time, alarm, and you can choose your theme.
Alarm functions
The alarm works pretty well – if you haven’t seen the advertisements, once it goes off, it will continually get more intense until its motion sensors detect you getting out of bed. If you’re single, this will be of more use to you than if you’re married, like myself, since
The motion sensors don’t work nearly as well if you share a bed, or if there are pets on the bed, both of which I qualify for. I’ve therefore had minimal usage of the motion sensors, but I have used them a few times both with my wife and in a separate bed for test purposes. As long as Alarmo is at the same height as your bed it does work pretty well, I also tried placing it at my feet as the guest bed does not have a headstand like mine, and that works… okay. I have had some success with my bed I share with my wife, but it definitely gets confused with two people.
As for how the alarm functions, it has three different settings when motion tracking is enabled. It either makes the alarm more or less intense, and you should choose based on how deep of a sleeper you are/ how much of a hard time you have waking up.
As for what you would like to wake up to, there are many options. As alluded to earlier you can have Princess Zelda saying “Wake up Link”, (one of my wife’s least favorite themes). Alternatively you can have the Electrodome theme from Mario Kart 8, or Disco Legs theme from Pikmin 4, along with a whole slew of others.
There’s normally about 7 themes per game series, each of which changes what interactions there are as well as the music. The more you move the more your Alarmo calms down. If you waggle enough it’ll snooze for a bit, but it will come back later to wake you again. This is only the case if you enable motion tracking – otherwise you get a traditional snooze button.
I’ve seen a few people say Alarmo doesn’t have snooze and thought it might be prudent to show how to activate it here, as I also thought it didn’t have snooze initially.
Back to the alarm itself, if you take too long to get up, Alarmo will get more and more intense. It varies by game, but for example, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild theme begins to play the Guardian battle music. In the Super Mario Odyssey theme, Bowser will bother you.
Overall it’s a really cool concept and I love the idea of it. If you’re worried about the volume, take note it is adjustable.
Additional functions
Now, is that all Alarmo has to offer? No actually, there is more, and it’s these extra aspects which I appreciate, as they add more character and fun to Alarmo. In addition to tracking how long you sleep each night, it goes ahead and plays you a sleepy time song (just one per game series).
My favorite sleepy time is the Breath of the Wild one, it has an owl hooting, wind blowing, with just a hint of night music to ease you into sleep. Mario Kart 8’s is the lobby music for online play, which is relaxing. Pikmin 4’s is the end of day music you hear in the game after completing a mission.
Alarmo also features an hourly chime, which is once again game specific, and most of them are really fun! Pikmin 4’s is plucking Pikmin, Breath of the Wild’s is recovering hearts, Ring Fit Adventure’s is clapping with the beat like in the game. And Mario Kart 8? Well, that’s the worst one. It may or may not have given my wife a rude awakening…
As of update 3.0 Nintendo has added three features that help with the experience. The previously mentioned sleepy time noises can now be set anywhere from 1 – 60 minutes, as opposed to its one set time previously. You can now preview what the alarm will sound like without actually setting it and having it go off. You can also now set each day of the week to a different wake-up time, something that I was missing for my weekends. And the most important update of them all: system stability. Of course.
Final Thoughts
Overall I like Alarmo, it’s fun, it’s different, it’s unique. I do wish you could mix and match alarm, hourly chime, and sleepy time music from different games series, instead of being restricted to one at a time. I’m hoping in the future they allow that, as I would prefer Breath of the Wild‘s wilderness noises for sleepy time, the sound of plucking Pikmin for hourly chimes, with Ring Fit Adventure’s Fit Battle to wake me up.
Scoring: 70%
Functionality: 3/5 As a basic alarm with extra whistles it works. If the aforementioned problems were fixed this would be higher, but snooze being not smooth with button instead of motion does detract from the experience. Also not having it function as well for multiple people takes points off as that’s a lot of the purpose. Finally, not having the mix and match features is of a more minimal issue.
Enjoyability: 5/5 It’s Nintendo, they know how to make things fun and they did a great job with Alarmo on that aspect, the volume is nice, as is the selection, plus the fact they’re adding more, my only question on that is how much more. And thankfully due to “Mar10” day, we have seen at least one extra theme, so hopefully we’ll get even more in the future.
Price: 2.5/5 This is the part of Alarmo that holds it back the most to be quite honest. As most alarm clocks run for around the $20 range, and the higher end alarm clocks are closer to $120 but have more features and functions than Alarmo does. $100 for an alarm clock is a big ask to be honest, especially since they didn’t even include the USB adapter as mentioned. If you are at least a big fan of Nintendo that this seems cool, it is worth it, the experience is fun and unique, but is dragged down by lack of features other high end alarm clocks have. Or, if you have a wife or husband, or even pets that will make it so one feature is mostly inaccessible. If those worries aside don’t matter to you much it’s a fun experience, personally I wish it was closer to the $60 – $75 range and I could give it more of a recommendation.
Morality/Parental Warnings
It’s a clock. There are no issues here. The only possibility I could see is if Nintendo added themes from their more mature series.
