The Hatch Restore Offers a Trippier Wake-Up Experience Than Your Smartphone Alarm
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There are a lot of cool things out there that make us wonder — do they really work? In our I Tried It series, we set out to use them in the real world and have determined that, in fact, they really do.
The Product on Trial
The Hatch Restore Sunrise Alarm Clock
The Tester
Melanie Yates, reluctant early bird and sleep-tech user
The Brief
For most of us, waking up is hard to do. And, arguably, it's only become more difficult since we've started using our smartphones as alarm clocks. A lifelong early riser, I usually open my eyes well before my alarm goes off, and I can never seem to shake the early-morning anxiety as I wonder what time it is. I can’t stand to have a clock staring at me, so I can either check my phone and risk getting pulled into a pit of despair or struggle to go back to bed. Maybe I successfully fall back asleep for a fitful half hour, but usually not.
Restore Sunrise Alarm Clock
$129.99
amazon.com
Whether or not you deal with the same strange early-morning insomnia that I do, the Hatch Restore Sunrise Alarm Clock makes waking up feel less like a continually losing battle with sleep and more like a gentle, meditative — dare I say vaguely trippy? — morning ritual. And it works the same magic at night, too.
The Hatch Restore is a multihyphenate sleep gadget: It's a white-noise machine, sunset lamp, sunrise alarm clock, and a nightlight. Based on your settings, the device uses gradients of brightness, sound, and color to help gently wake you up or put you in a bedtime-ready mood. It’s mainly programmed by its proprietary smartphone app, where you can set wake-up alarms and wind-down settings for sleep — and it’s also how you use the device as a standalone lamp and sound machine.
If getting an alarm clock seems a little retrograde, you'll likely be convinced otherwise after using the Hatch Restore because everything about it can be customized to your preferences. For your morning alarm, you're presented with an entire menu of serene settings. Choose from 10 preset light gradients that fade from one dim, deep hue into a bright, sunny one with names like “Sunrise of a Flower Orchard,” “Morning in Prague,” or “Conquering Fuji.” Then, pick your sound: Various chimes, bells, ocean waves, flutes, and even old-school alarm beeping are all options, depending on how much of a morning jolt you need. You can adjust the brightness of the light and the volume of the sound, too.
Most importantly, you can decide the duration of your simulated sunrise anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes. This has been one of my favorite features of the Hatch Restore thus far. My weekday sunrise is set to 30 minutes before the alarm (with sound) goes off. If I open my eyes before the alarm and see that the device is still dark, I know I have enough time to try to get back to sleep. But if its dim sunrise colors are beginning to brighten, I can slowly start to stretch and wake up without having to scramble out of bed.
In nighttime mode, the Hatch Restore works in a similar way. You can choose a single glowing color to dim gradually for a few minutes or hours (you can even set it for all night if you want to use it as a nightlight) and select soothing white-noise sounds like “Evening Campfire,” “Heavy Rain,” or even “Dishwasher” to lull you into a relaxed, bedtime mindset. Falling asleep at night is not something I usually have a problem with, but I still love setting the Hatch Restore to glow silently in a moody, mysterious indigo hue for 90 minutes after I turn off all of the other lights in my apartment.
The Hatch Restore’s app interface is easy to navigate with no annoying pop-ups or notifications, and I like that I can turn off the alarm before it goes off and keep it off for the next day without having to open the app. If your Wi-Fi is spotty, the app can lag a little, which is the only not-great part about using it.
To take your wind-down to the next level, you can sign up for the Hatch Sleep Membership, which offers a comprehensive library of guided meditations, music, ambient sounds, mesmerizing light gradients, and bedtime stories that you can listen to and enjoy through the device. The subscription is $4.99 monthly or $49.99 per year, and while it’s certainly a nice add-on perk, the $130 device has enough useful light and sound capabilities if you don’t want to pay for even more.
Closing Argument
Just recently, I woke up to the Hatch Restore's sunrise setting called “Hiking in the Dawn,” and instead of freaking out about where my phone was or even thinking about the day ahead, I simply watched the device turn from deep orange to a pale peach all the way to sunshine yellow before the bright and breezy opening notes of the “Meditative Flute” alarm began to play.
Does using the Hatch Restore compare to watching an actual sunrise? Definitely not. But its daily (and nightly) light show allows me to relish, instead of wrestling with, that liminal space between sleep and wakefulness.
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