If you have $10,900 dollars to throw at all-black watches shaped like skulls, congratulations–you have somehow found your way to the correct article. The BR 01 Cyber Skull from Bell & Ross is the kind of thing a ten-year-old boy would buy if the boy in question had unlimited resources and very little shame. In that regard, the watch possesses a certain ghastly charm. Let’s take a closer look.

The BR 01 Cyber Skull: Where Understatement Goes to Die

The press material for the BR 01 Cyber Skull watch makes a point of drawing parallels between the skull motif and the Memento Mori (mortality reminders) of stoic and humanist philosophers alike. I believe it’s highly unlikely that thinkers from either branch of philosophy would drop the amount of cash needed to buy a decent used Honda Civic on this watch, but I suppose that’s beside the point.

The design is more modernist than traditional, with the skull’s surface broken up into geometric facets. The BR 01 Cyber Skull is a play on the motifs first explored by Bell & Ross in their Skull family of watches (which debuted in 2009). According to Bell & Ross, the BR 01 Cyber Skull represents the company’s launch into “ultra-modern” shapes, which, okay, is certainly a direction to go.

The case and silhouette of the BR 01 Cyber Skull is meant to invoke the lines of the F117 Fighter jet. If you were into model-building in the 80s (and who wasn’t, am I right?) you’ll remember this plane–it was the one your older brother stole because it was the coolest. Go Google it and come right back so you have an idea of what I’m talking about.

The PR materials for the BR 01 Cyber Skull breathlessly compare the watch to traditional Japanese Origami, avant-garde art, mythology, and Sith Lords (from Star Wars, just in case you’ve been asleep for the last thirty years). That all seems a little extreme, and by now you get the idea that this is a ten-thousand-dollar watch designed for a man-boy with too much disposable income, so let’s just move on to the specs.

The BR 01 Cyber Skull’s Specs

The BR 01 Cyber Skull is water-resistant to about 164 feet, so feel free to wear it in your summer house’s pool or your winter house’s hot tub or in the ocean at your spring house, or while tubing down the river at your fall house. But don’t take it diving, or it won’t survive — which would, of course, be a real pity.

The movement is mechanical hand-wound, and a sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating covers the 45-mm case. The strap is black rubber and features a black PVD-coated steel buckle, and the hour and minute hands feature Super-LumiNova technology so you can see what time it is when your date leaves the dimly-lit restaurant unexpectedly early.

The Buy

If you have the money and the will, you can purchase this limited-edition watch for $10,900 dollars. They blessedly only made 500 of them, so get one while the getting is good.

Hologram portrait technology has been around for a while — baseball cards were doing a version of it in the early nineties, and Kanye West commissioned a hologram of Kim Kardashians’s dead father for her 40th birthday (as a side note, Kanye programmed the hologram to call him “the most, most, most, most, most genius man in the whole world” — so the whole thing went down about like you’d expect).

But you don’t have to be a Kardashian (or the most, most, most, most, most genius man in the whole world) to enjoy hologram tech thanks to the Looking Glass Portrait — a new piece of tech currently raising funds on Kickstarter. The device allows you to turn any photo with depth information (read: portrait mode) into a lifelike hologram that sits on your home office desk.

How to Create Your Hologram Portrait

The Looking Glass Portrait is about the size and shape of a shoebox and fits nicely on a desk, shelf, or anywhere else you’d put a picture frame. To create your very own hologram, all you have to do is take a photo in Portrait Mode with your iPhone (and some Androids). Portrait mode photos contain depth information, which the Looking Glass Portrait then uses to create lifelike three-dimensional holograms.

Once you’ve uploaded your photo to the pc/Mac compatible HoloPlay Studio software (included), the software automatically converts the data into a hologram and stores it on the Looking Glass Portrait so you can display your futuristic portrait anywhere, anytime!

Taking it Up a Notch with Light Field Photos

If you want to take your holographic creations to the next level, tap into the incredible capabilities of the Looking Glass Portrait to create light field photos. Switch to Panorama mode on your phone, capture an image, then upload it into the HoloPlay Studio. The additional data makes an even more detailed and convincing hologram!

The Looking Glass Portrait’s Interactive Applications

What makes the Looking Glass Portrait unique (in our opinion) is its capability to function as an interactive tool for creatives of all types. When used in Desktop mode, Looking Glass Portrait can interface with 3D creation software like Unity, Unreal, Blender, and Maya. That means 3D artists and animators can render a character or landscape into the Looking Glass Portrait to get an in-depth look at their creation. If we were in that position, we’d use the technology as a proof-of-concept tool. Nothing wows like a hologram; showing your character design in holographic 3D space might be a good way to convince a stubborn executive that you are right and they are wrong about the design choice in question.

The Looking Glass Portrait can also run the experimental Azure Kinect recording application to capture and display motion in real-time. We don’t know what you’d use it for, but we suspect it would be fun!

Desktop Requirements

Any PC or Mac with HDMI and USB-C ports will interface with the Looking Glass Portrait. You’ll need a graphics card like the GTX 1650 (or equivalent), an Intel i5 chip or higher, and 8 or more GB of RAM.

Kickstarting the Hologram Portrait

The Looking Glass Portrait will retail for $349, but a campaign special will get one on your desk for $249 and includes all the software needed to run the advanced applications and produce your own hologram portraits. The product will ship anywhere in the world and is expected for delivery in April 2021. Hurry up if you want one — only 84 of the original 1,000 are still available.

You’ve heard the phrase “be on the ball,” right? It’s an idiom that means be on top of things; be precise; don’t let things fall through the cracks. The phrase came into being after a tragic head-on train collision in Ohio in 1891. Railroad commissioners turned to a man named Webster Clay Ball to sort out timing and schedules and avert future accidents. Ball’s contributions to time programming — and the idiom that sprang from his name — generated and inspired the Ball Watch Company. And its new offering — the Hydrocarbon DeepQUEST II, is a titanium watch that would undoubtedly make the great railroad man himself proud.

Bomb-Proof Titanium Construction

The DeepQUEST II is a dive watch, and we’ll get to all the high-end dive-specific features in a moment. But first, let’s talk titanium. Titanium is one of the lightest and strongest known metals, and the Ball Watch Company utilizes it to forge a rugged timepiece.

Ball machines DeepQUEST II’s case from a solid block of titanium. If you want to make it last, make it in one piece — that’s what we always say. Well, it’s what we would say if we made high-end luxury dive watches. We do know that strong metals help reinforce crown seals — often critical weak points in waterproof watches.

In addition to its substantial strength, titanium is corrosion-resistant. You’ll want that quality in a watch you plan on exposing to all the salt, sun, and sand the ocean can dish out.

A DeepQUEST to Dive In

Pressure build-up is another key hazard dive watches must address. The Hydrocarbon DeepQUEST II meets the challenge with a helium release valve built into its crown. Other dive watch manufacturers usually place this valve inside the case, but Ball Watch Company patented its innovative crown-mounted design to accommodate DeepQUEST II’s monobloc case.

Let’s talk specs. The Hydrocarbon DeepQUEST II features BALL RR1101-C automatic movement and is chronometer-certified COSC — the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute. It’s shock-resistant to 7,500Gs and water-resistant to 3,300 feet. It has a unidirectional rotating bezel with luminous markings so you can time your decompression stops down to the second.

Visibility is always a concern for divers, so the DeepQUEST II delivers night reading capability with 24 micro gas tubes on the hour, minute, and second hands, as well as on the dial. The technology is an efficient alternative to luminous paints.

You have to expect an anti-reflective sapphire crystal from a watch of this pedigree. DeepQUEST II doesn’t disappoint. A screwed-in crown rounds out the feature set.

Styling

Yes, your ridiculously expensive dive watch needs to be functional. But what’s the point of having a ridiculously expensive dive watch if it doesn’t look ridiculously expensive? The Hydrocarbon DeepQUEST II delivers with a chunky 42 mm case and slick black and white styling.

Each version of the watch is available with a titanium and steel bracelet or rubber watch strap. Each band will hold up pretty well to life under the sea, though there’s something classic about stainless steel on a dive watch. That would be our choice.

A DeepQUEST…Into Your Wallet

Well, here’s good news: if you are the type of person who can afford to drop thousands of dollars on a watch, you’ll probably be okay with the Hydrocarbon DeepQUEST II’s hefty price tag. The stainless steel band version runs $3,899, while the rubber strap version costs $3,799.

Purchase

I’ll never forget my first stand-up paddleboard experience. It was in Apalachicola Bay, a tiny area of the Gulf known for warm water and delicious scallops. My wife and I rented paddleboards and set off across the bay, immediately realizing what a revolution our boards were — because you could see down into the water. As we paddled, all sorts of flora and fauna became suddenly visible because we were at a higher angle than if we’d been in an inflatable kayak or canoe. Now a French paddleboard company called LOEVA is taking this experience to the next level with Le StandUp — a completely transparent paddleboard.

Transparent Paddleboard Beauty

It’s important to note that the Le StandUp is not a surfboard–it is a standup paddleboard. It has a wide, stable base (31 inches) and a rounded nose meant to provide a relaxing, stable platform for paddling.

And what an experience paddling this board promises! The crystal-clear material is unique among paddleboards. On top of that, the Le StandUp features a rechargeable LED lighting system with a battery life of three hours and a range of 45 feet (in totally clear water). The frame that surrounds the transparent sections is a crisp carbon material: light but strong.

The board weighs 44 pounds, is suitable for beginners through experts, and ships with a paddle, leash, fin, and charger (with international adaptor).

Buy It. Do Some Good.

The Le StandUp paddleboard is made in France, and a portion of every purchase goes towards Reefscapers — a non-profit that helps rebuild coral reefs. There isn’t any word on a price yet, so we suggest following LOEVA on their social media channels to stay apprised of any news!

Learn More

Who says tactical folding knives have to be big and chunky? Not the folks at Tekto Gear. They’ve created the Romeo Tactical Folding Knife as a streamlined, minimalist answer to the ungraceful hunks of steel you often see hanging off the pockets of the kind of guys who wear cargo pants (and that’s not you, right?).

The Look: Romeo Folding Knife Aesthetics

Fans of Tekto Gear’s Juliett Folding Tactical Knife will love the Romeo — the basic design is the same, with differences in execution (material, finish) being the most noticeable variance.

We like a matte black knife as much as the next, but there’s no reason you can’t throw a dash of color and interest into a design. The Romeo accomplishes a little visual appeal with metallic blue accents on the handle screws and the clip. The woven carbon fiber handle also breaks up the unrelenting black finish a little. It’s polished for a clean look.

The blade is slim and almost delicate-looking but plenty hard enough (see the specs section below). An aggressive tip is a finishing touch on the minimalist styling. With this tactical folding knife, it’s all about form following function.

The Specs: Tactical, Foldaway, Functional

The Romeo Tactical Folding Knife’s 3.46-inch blade is large enough to be useful — not too small to handle whatever task you throw at it.

Don’t worry about the blade snapping. It’s forged from Austrian M390 steel, with a hardness rating of 60-61 HRC — plenty hard enough to stand up to sustained daily use.

The screws and clip are titanium, so you can rest assured they will resist corrosion and won’t snap off if you snag it on something.

The whole package comes in right at 1/5 of a pound, so it won’t weigh you down on your adventures either!

The Buy

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore purchase thou, Romeo? At Tekto Gear’s website, where the tactical, folding blade is currently retailing for $120.

Purchase

Not that you would ever cook tough steak (you aren’t that kind of person), but let’s think hypothetically. If you somehow managed to create a tough porterhouse, dry chicken breast, or gristly pork chop, you are gonna need some high-end, razor-sharp table knives to saw through those bad boys. Check out the Benchmade Table Knife Set — four American-made knives with clean lines and reliable Benchmade construction.

Benchmade Table Knife Set: Bring on the Butterfly

It’s worth noting that these knives are table knives, not kitchen knives. You shouldn’t prep meals with these bad boys — merely set the table with them.

That said, this knife set is a thing of beauty. The blades are the clip-point style with a handsome stonewash finish. Each knife is about 5 inches long and weighs just over 3 ounces. Big enough to get the job done, but not so large as to scare your dinner guests. The tang runs the entire length of the handle; three openings perforate it for balance and looks. The resin handle is textured for easy gripping, even if your hands are slippery with wing sauce.

There’s just a touch of serration towards the tip for those especially tough food items, and each blade is laser engraved with the iconic Benchmade Butterfly, so your dinner companions won’t help but notice your good taste. On top of the individual embellishments, the set comes with a red birch wood case for convenient and befitting storage.

The Price of Functionality

We’ll be honest. It’s hard to imagine dropping $600 on a set of table knives — particularly if you are truly a master of the grill (at least a few of your meat dishes should be fork-tender, shouldn’t they?). But Benchmade is renowned for the quality of their knives, and American-made craftship is still hard to beat in this product category.

Benchmade will also service and sharpen each knife for free, so you can consider this table knife set an investment that keeps its edge.

Purchase

In Japan, there’s a concept called “kintsugi.” Like all translations from another language, it’s a little difficult to describe precisely, but the essential idea is this — just because something is broken doesn’t mean it is trash. By embracing kintsugi, an item’s repair marks become something to celebrate and cherish rather than something to hide. Architect Max Gunawan, the founder of Lumio, traveled widely in Japan and became fascinated with kintsugi and its associated design philosophies. That fascination is woven into his newest product, Teno — a Bluetooth speaker that transcends how we expect sound products to look, feel, and sound.

Lumio thinks of Teno as the speaker equivalent of a sound bowl: meditative, peaceful, and beautiful. So how did they do?

Teno Kintsugi Aesthetics

The first thing you’ll notice about Teno is that it looks like no speaker you’ve ever seen. Made using natural sand, Teno is sculpted in the shape of a small bowl. The material chosen for this kintsugi speaker is inspired — nobody needs another slick metal or plastic surface in their house. And because Teno features a natural material, it will develop a patina over time and use. More than that, it’s just a pleasure to hold natural materials over plastic.

The product’s shape invokes the Japanese cultural ideas that inspired it — simplicity, minimalism, and attention to detail. And at only 5 inches in diameter, the Teno speaker is small enough to look great anywhere in your house.

A crack runs throughout the textured sand surface, calling to mind that kintsugi concept we discussed earlier. Move the two halves of Teno apart slightly, and a warm golden glow emanates from within. That’s right, Teno is a light as well as a Bluetooth speaker. The light has four brightness settings, and you can control each with a simple tap of the finger.

Teno Speaker Sound

In addition to kintsugi, the Teno speaker was also inspired by nature. Lumio founder Max Gunawan was walking through a forest one day and was taken by how the sound of the birdsong seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere all at once. He designed Teno to evoke the same feeling. When you crack Teno open all the way, the speaker activates with the chime of a sound bowl, but the electronics are still hidden deep inside the device. It’s a speaker that doesn’t look like a speaker, and we like that — our houses are already too crammed with cords, screens, and metallic surfaces.

There are no indicator lights anywhere on Teno — all the notifications you need to receive (like low battery or Bluetooth connection) are delivered by the sound of birds chirping, leaves crackling, or water dripping. You can adjust the volume of Teno’s speaker by sliding your fingers up and down the bowl’s surface. If you receive a call while you are streaming music from your phone, a single tap near the bowl’s edge will answer the call and cast it to Teno’s speaker.  The microphone is noise-canceling, to boot.

Teno’s speaker is powered by a 10W class-d amplifier. That translates to powerful sound with minimal distortion. Lumio tunes the Teno with DSP technology for a balanced listen. A neodymium full-range driver and passive radiator deliver clear sound across the high, mid, and low ranges.

An additional cool feature of Teno’s is its ability to create a stereo experience intuitively, without having to pull out your phone and fiddle with an app. If you have two Tenos, simply tap the base of each until, and they will pair — delivering you twice the volume in addition to stereo sound.

Purchasing Info

Teno, offered in black and white sand options, is available on pre-order for $300. Order now and expect your Teno speaker to arrive in May 2021. That is a premium cost for a Bluetooth speaker, we know, but consider it an investment in a quality piece of gear that combines form and function in a truly unique way.

You might find it strange that we are prepared to use the word “elegant” and “work boot” in the same article, but these are strange days, friends. And the subject of this article, boot though it is, has the clean lines and refined execution we usually see in luxury automobiles. So we think the word “elegant” fits in this case. Allow us to present the Wolverine 1000  Mile Boot — finally, you can pour concrete and look good at the same time.

Wolverine: Give Foreign-Made Footwear the Boot

Wolverine first debuted this pattern in 1914, and that legacy is apparent in every detail of this American-made work boot, from stitching to leather quality to timeless design. This boot is equally at home in the office or on the street, but we think it looks best covered in dust and oil stains. After all, the best part about leather, especially high-quality leather, is how beautifully and uniquely it ages. Wolverine uses leather from the Horween Leather Company, a Chicago-based business that’s been providing the Midwest with leather for over 100 years.

The laces are flat-waxed cotton, sure to hold up to all kinds of abrasion, while the Vibram heel will take just about anything you can throw at it. But it’s the welt-constructed leather outsole that we really love. Such construction allows the 1000 Mile Boot to be resoled, meaning Wolverine has crafted a boot you could wear for the rest of your life.

Quality Comes At A Cost

Some might balk at a price tag of $385. Call us old-fashioned, but we’d rather spend that sum one time on quality footwear that lasts a decade or more than shell out $150 every few years for the rest of our lives. And there’s nothing like slipping on a pair of well-worn work boots. Don’t believe us? Give the Wolverine 1000 Mile Boots a try, and hit us up in 20 years to let us know what you think.

Being a Gentleman

What does it mean to be a gentleman? This is a good question to ask yourself whether you are prepping for your first ever date or reading this in a cubicle somewhere.

Back in the day, it meant a man of noble birth — someone who owned land and had a title. Later, it came to mean a man from a good or wealthy family, if not necessarily someone from the nobility. Lately, it’s come to mean someone with good manners.

But I believe good human beings are made, not born. And I also believe being a true gentleman goes way behind the surface level things we tend to associate with the phrase now. Let’s dig in a little, shall we?

A Gentleman Respects Boundaries

You’ve probably heard your parents tell you to “be a gentleman” a lot as you were growing up, usually in reference to how you treated women. Chances are they meant holding the door open at restaurants, opening the car door for your date, and the like. These are all fine things (assuming your date wants you to behave this way), but being a gentleman goes so much deeper.

If you want to really be a gentleman, try this: respect the boundaries of women. You can apply this concept across the whole range of your life. Are things getting hot and heavy? Make sure everyone is okay with it — and any kind of coercion (physical, mental, or emotional) is absolutely, 100% wrong. It’s possible you might have some guy friends telling you that women need (or like) to be pushed or convinced a little in these matters. Do not listen to these so-called friends. That kind of mentality leads directly to sexual assault.

Respecting boundaries also extends to how you interact with women you aren’t actively in a relationship with. Here are a few things that are always worth repeating: don’t whistle, gawk, sneer, leer, poke, pinch, touch, comment upon, or otherwise invade the physical or emotional space of the women in your acquaintance. And don’t, repeat, don’t send unsolicited lewd pictures. Hot tip: nobody, repeat, nobody wants that.

A Gentleman Only Gives Attention When It Is Desired

There’s an insidious belief instilled deeply into our culture that if you ask a woman on a date, and she refuses, that you should keep asking in increasingly dramatic or escalating ways until she finally says yes. This behavior — which is deeply disturbing to most women, especially in the workplace — seems to have been romanticized for dramatic purposes at some point in our past and has appeared in books, movies, and tv shows regularly ever since.

Please don’t do this. That kind of persistence isn’t romantic. It’s creepy. And a gentleman isn’t creepy.

A Gentleman Speaks Up

Do you know when it’s hard to be a gentleman? When no one around you is one.

Oh well. Be a gentleman, anyway.

This situation comes up a lot when it’s just a bunch of guys hanging around. Men tend to say things in the single-gender company that they would never dream of saying to a woman’s face. Here’s a good life tip: if there’s something you can’t say around one group of people, it’s probably something you shouldn’t say at all.

You might find yourself remaining silent while the dudes around you make disrespectful comments about a woman or women in general (or any other group, really). It’s easy to think that as long as you aren’t participating in such talk, that you aren’t condoning it. But silence is complacency. Speak out against this kind of behavior, and know that you are improving the lives of your fellow human beings by doing so. Any friends you lose as a result weren’t worth having in any case.

A Gentleman Doesn’t Believe He is Owed

One disturbing trend of the last few years is the so-called Nice Guy Effect. The Nice Guy Effect is when a man lives according to all of the above but then believes his adherence to that behavior entitles him to the affection or sexual attention of the women he interacts with. When that attention is not given, he either begins behaving terribly towards the woman in question (thus proving that his initial behavior was a sham) or whines to his friends about how badly women treat nice guys.

This belief and attendant behavior utterly misses the point. You are treating women decently — being a gentleman —because they are human beings just like you and deserve to be treated as such. Decency is not transactional. Nobody owes you anything — particularly not sexually — for rising to basic levels of human behavior we expect people to grasp in childhood.

A Gentleman Leads by Example

Embracing this way of living — and talking about it — is meaningless if you aren’t living it out. You can start being a gentleman today — right now. Not because you want to get something out of it and not because anyone expects you to — but because it’s the right thing to do.

Getting your morning started right is crucial, and everybody knows it. A dedicated morning routine is one of the best ways to begin your work with energy and verve. And a smart alarm clock can help you do that! The best smart alarm clocks wake you up gently, provide you with needed information, and have easy-to-use, intuitive features.

The top smart alarm clocks in this Buyer’s Guide have all that and more — and we’ve given you plenty of options to boot.

Your phone has done enough — time to stop using it as a clock and alarm. Smart alarm clocks await. Tally ho!

The Best Smart Alarm Clock

Echo Show 5 Smart Alarm Clock (BEST CHOICE)

Our Best Choice product is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Echo Show 5. Amazon has spent the last 10 years or so building an entire suite of smart products. The Echo Show 5 is the centerpiece of the whole system, giving you control over all your smart devices (such as lights, switches, and thermostats) as well as a view of your security cameras.

The Echo Show 5 allows you to make hands-free video calls to the Alexa App or other Echo devices (as long as they include a screen). You can also use it as an intercom system because it is connected to other Echo devices in your home. Did we mention you can stream music and video from all your favorite platforms? Well, you can. That makes it ideal as a bedside alarm clock.

Oh yeah — it’s also an alarm clock. The ambient sunrise lighting feature is a winner. And because it’s a smart device, the Echo Show 5 will give you weather updates, let you know what time your first meeting of the day starts, and features interchangeable faces. What else could you want from a smart clock?

Purchase

Philips Smartsleep Smart Alarm Clock

The Philips Smartsleep Smart Alarm Clock is a solid entry from a well-established brand. The design is futuristic and organic and will probably fit best in a minimalist-inspired bedroom. But let’s talk function.

The sunrise light has five different colors that you can adjust according to your preference. The lamp function has 25 different brightness settings, and the sunset simulation function helps you drift off to sleep peacefully without having to get up and turn out the light. The lamp features natural sounds for those who need a little white noise while trying to sleep, and it even has a USB port to charge your phone!

Purchase

Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) Smart Alarm Clock

If the Amazon Echo Show 5 was a little too much device for you, consider going with the Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) instead. This Alexa-enabled smart speaker and alarm clock has fewer functions than the Echo Show 5 and still works just fine to get you up and moving in the morning.

The Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) is Amazon’s most popular smart speaker. It’s affordably priced, sized efficiently for a nightstand, and has all the time, alarm, and snooze functions you’d expect from a WiFi alarm clock.

Because it is Alexa and Echo enabled, you can stream music from all the major platforms and any Bluetooth-enabled device. Dot can communicate with any other Echo-enabled device, as well. A friendly LED light and modern styling don’t hurt either.

Purchase

Anker Smart Alarm Clock

If you are looking for a nice smart alarm clock that is a little more simple and streamlined, consider Anker Smart Alarm Clock. This writer primarily knows the brand through their portable chargers, which are quality products.

This smart alarm clock follows Anker’s pattern of streamlined, stripped-down styling. No fancy LED lights or sunset features on this device — it comes in white or black and has basic alarm clock functions, Bluetooth connectivity, and an FM radio.

That being said, this is a brand that makes portable charging devices. So they couldn’t resist throwing in some wireless charging functionality for recent Samsung and iPhone devices. Yup — this is a smart alarm clock for Android as well as iOS.

You can choose from 10 different sounds for waking up and 10 ambient sounds for falling asleep. The LED screen senses low light and dims automatically. If you like it bright, you can turn the dimmer off with the app. Now that we think about it, maybe this isn’t such a stripped-down smart alarm clock after all!

Purchase

JALL Smart Alarm Clock

Here’s a friendly-looking smart alarm clock that is perfect for kids! The large, rounded surface spills plenty of light into the room every morning, waking you (or your kiddos) up gently without the pulse-pounding experience of a normal alarm clock.  JALL Smart Alarm Clock has 20 brightness levels and was upgraded in 2020 to feature seven different colors.

We prefer the soft, warm ambient glow, especially for sleeping and waking. Speaking of sleeping, this smart alarm clock features a snooze function you can hit up to five times; just don’t be late for work. The dual-alarm feature lets you sleep later than your partner, which is helpful because you work from home now, and time has no meaning.

A USB plug-in, seven ambient sounds, and an FM radio round out the feature set.

Purchase

LaMetric Smart Alarm Clock

Now, this is a unique and feature-packed app-controlled alarm clock. The first thing of note is the styling, which is simple, square, and streamlined but features a colorful eight-bit interface that should remind any millennial worth her salt of the good old days. The app allows you to customize your screen however you want (as long as you stay within that blocky eight-bit style).

But there’s a ton of functionality here as well. The LaMetric Smart Alarm Clock will display calls, notifications, weather, news, email subjects, reminders, and more. If your app has notifications, chances are they will show up on the LaMetric Time. You can also make apps using the LaMetric framework, which is pretty cool!

Like most of the smart alarm clocks on our list, it’s also a wireless speaker. And of course, you get an alarm function that you can set to music if you choose.

Purchase

HeimVision Smart Alarm Clock

HeimVision Smart Alarm Clock is similar to a few other clocks on our list: a large, soothing, friendly-looking clock with sunrise and sunset functionality. This one stands out because you can connect it to an Alexa-enabled device, so you don’t have to get out of bed if you forget to set it.

You can wake up to a relaxing sunrise as well as seven sounds — FM radio, bird, ocean, stream, beep, wind chime, soft melody, or piano. You can go to sleep to white noise, birdsong, or the soothing sound of a babbling brook. You’ll be so deeply asleep that you’ll probably need that snooze button, which gives you an extra 15 minutes of rest.

You can control this connected alarm clock through the Smart Lift app to fully access all the features this smart buy offers!

For some old-style options, check out our selection of the best analog alarm clocks.

Purchase

i-box Bedside Smart Alarm Clock

There’s no doubt about it — wireless charging is the future. Hope on board with this smart alarm clock from i-box. It’s designed with wireless charging in mind and features a large flat space to rest your phone while it juices up overnight.

i-box Bedside Smart Alarm Clock also features dual alarms, 6W stereo sound, and a USB charging port just in case you have an older phone. The display can switch between 12-hour and 24-hour time styles and has five levels of brightness, so nothing disturbs your beauty rest. It comes in many colors (we like the pink!) and was designed in Britain.

The powerful speaker fills the room with crisp sound thanks to a passive subwoofer and is, as usual, Bluetooth-enabled for streaming music from your phone.

Purchase

JALL Digital Smart Alarm Clock

This isn’t what alarm clocks looked like in the ’80s, but it’s what the ’80s wish alarm clocks would have looked like. That being said, the clean, minimalist design JALL presents here fits well into modern houses and bedrooms and is small enough to be unobtrusive on a nightstand.

On JALL Digital Smart Alarm Clock, you can set three daily alarms and dial in your routine even further with an optional weekend alarm. The display also gives you temperature and relative humidity, if you happen to be the kind of person who likes to know that sort of thing before you get out of bed.

A final little touch is the brightness adjustment feature. As we learn more and more about sleep science, we know that humans don’t sleep very well if there’s a light in the room. The dimmable display feature ensures you get a good night’s rest and wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day.

Purchase

Emerson SmartSet Smart Alarm Clock

Tired of always wondering if your alarm clock is right? Yep, so are we. That’s why so many people use phones as alarm clocks: they always tell the right time. Emerson addressed that problem and more with SmartSet Smart Alarm Clock.

The SmartSet uses a Bluetooth connection to your phone to set the time correctly, and remembers it from then on — despite power outages, daylight savings time, and leap years. Pretty cool! Other features include a USB port for charging, a large LED screen, and an alarm that you can program to go off only on weekdays (or only on weekends — though why you’d want to do that, we have no idea).

The FM radio can be tuned via your smartphone and features 20 station presets. All in all, this is a powerful medium-sized alarm clock that won’t steer you wrong. The fancy LED lights at the base add a little spice to the otherwise bland styling.

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PICTEK Projection Digital Smart Alarm Clock

While not technically a smart alarm clock (it doesn’t have WiFi, Bluetooth, or Smartphone connectivity), PICTEK Projection Digital Smart Alarm Clock makes our list because of its unique wall-projection feature. The projector can swivel 180 degrees so you can find an angle that works great for your room and comes with four brightness settings as well.

This feature is great for folks with limited mobility, kids who like the novelty of seeing the time projected on their ceiling, or just about anyone else. The display is 100% dimmable and stands out clearly against the unadorned and streamlined black surface. This alarm clock is another one that straddles the line between some of the larger options on our list and the tiny “nightstand” products.

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La Crosse Technology Smart Alarm Clock

Here’s a smart alarm clock for the dedicated data freak. It’s really more of a weather station than an alarm clock, featuring internal and external temperature readings, daily highs and lows, forecast information, chances of precipitation, and more. It’s also a projector on top of all that, featuring a 270-degree rotation capability for ultimate ease of use.

La Crosse Technology Smart Alarm Clock features include a nap timer, snooze button, crescendo alarm clock, auto-dim, and more. A USB charging port completes the handy features. Doubtless, this is too much clock for some people, but if collecting meteorological info about your day as soon as you wake up is your jam, you might want to give this option serious consideration.

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Smart Alarm Clock Buying Guide & FAQ

Features to Look for in Smart Alarm Clocks

Size – Generally speaking, a small smart alarm clock is best. That’s because bedside tables are usually small, and your alarm clock has to share real estate with beverages, laptops, phones, books, medicine, earplugs, and all the other things people need to sleep. That being said, we have a few large alarm clocks on this list (the sunset/sunrise lights tend to be large). If you’ve got space for it, there’s no problem!

Display – Look for dimmable displays, or, failing that, something that is easy to read without being too bright. The best sleep comes from the darkest rooms, and light (especially blue light) can interfere with sleep cycles.

Quality – Smart alarm clocks are surprisingly affordable, with even some of the fully-featured options in our Buyer’s Guide dipping down below $50. Alarm clocks are also not items that typically get a lot of wear and tear (you touch them two or three times a day, and they don’t get tossed around or dropped very often). For these reasons, we won’t necessarily link quality to price for this product category.

But there’s no doubt that a few of the more trendy alarm clocks on our list are expensive. We’d imagine they are of higher quality as well, but since we haven’t gotten our hands on any of these smart alarm clocks, we really can’t say for sure.

Light – A few of the smart alarm clocks in this Buyer’s Guide feature a sunset/sunrise light, something that happens to be this writer’s favorite feature (I have an alarm clock with this functionality). Falling asleep to a simulated sunset and waking up to a gentle sunrise is far superior to any other option. The only downside is that these alarm clocks can be large and chunky and don’t fit very well on small nightstands.

USB Charge – Like it or not, most of us sleep within spitting distance of our phones. Might as well lean into it and acknowledge that having a USB charger built into your alarm clock is a handy thing.

Audio – Every smart alarm clock we feature here has audio capability of some sort. There’s no doubt that audio quality will differ a little from device to device — but we aren’t going to make judgments because we haven’t listened to all the devices in this roundup. Chances are, if you are a committed audiophile, you won’t be using your alarm clock to listen to music, so it shouldn’t matter that much anyway.

About half of the alarm clocks in this guide are Bluetooth compatible, meaning you can stream music from any platform on your phone. All of the clocks here have FM radio functionality.

Compatibility with Other Smart Devices – If you are linking up all your appliances with smart-home technology, this is the most important feature for you. Only a few alarm clocks in our guide can communicate with other smart devices. All of them are Echo and Alexa (read: Amazon) devices. If you want to turn off your living room lamp from your bedroom, consider a device like this. If your needs are simpler, don’t bother.

Battery – All the smart alarm clocks in this guide plugin, but a few feature batteries for auxiliary power. A battery allows alarm clocks to keep the time during power outages — crucial for not oversleeping the morning after a storm!

Other Features – Other features you might look for on smart alarm clocks are dimmable displays, LED lights or accents, and wireless charging compatibility. This last is probably the most interesting to folks, though dimmable displays are important for getting a good night’s sleep.

Smart Alarm Clock FAQ

What is a smart alarm clock?

A smart alarm clock is a broad term, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll say it’s an alarm clock with unique or interesting features beyond basic alarm functionality and an FM radio. Some of the smart alarm clocks in this guide are WiFi-, Bluetooth-, or smart-home-enabled. These meet the technical criteria of smart alarm clocks. Other clocks in this guide have features that make them stand out, like sunrise/sunset features or projectors.

Is it bad to wake up to a loud alarm?

It’s no fun, that’s for sure. Once you start waking up gently to a smart alarm clock, you’ll never want to go back. You start your day with a lower heart rate than you would if you were startled awake. Speaking anecdotally, you might even remember your dreams a little better!

Do smart TVs have smart alarm clocks?

Not per se (at least not that we could easily find). But most smart TVs have a function that lets you program a turn-off/turn-on time. You could use this function as an alarm clock, but seriously: don’t turn on the TV first thing in the morning. Use the quietest part of your day for study, reflection, and contemplation.

Is a sunrise alarm clock worth it?

As we said a little earlier, we sure think so. It’s this writer’s preferred way to start the day!

Sources

1. Can an Alarm Clock Really Help You Sleep Better? – Popular Mechanics
2. How To Choose The Best Alarm Clocks Backed By Science – Dreams.co.uk