The Informant: The Hatch Alarm Clock (Almost) Cured My Smartphone Addiction
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Phone alarms are objectively abysmal. They’re never a welcome sound when they go off, and they make it impossible to avoid one’s phone first thing in the morning. Regular alarm clocks will keep you on time just fine, but the Hatch Restore alarm clock is primed to make the turbulent transition from peaceful slumber to human-ness as smooth and relaxed as possible. I’ve been using mine for more than two years and I’m never returning to the iPhone “Radar” sound for as long as I live.
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Hatch Restore Machine
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Blinking awake and immediately refreshing one’s Instagram feed not only triggers an avalanche of dopamine first thing in the morning, but it forces your brain to skip over alpha and theta wave states where your brain is relaxed and not processing information yet. That waking up period is necessary because it prepares the body for a day of focused managing and organized thoughts. Transitioning this abruptly primes your brain for distraction, which is why the subway is filled with thumbs endlessly flexing on smartphones in lieu of paperback books or human conversation.
By virtue of not being a phone, the Hatch Restore Alarm Clock mitigates these effects. It’s also designed with features for making going to bed and waking up as serene and relaxed as possible. The company’s flagship product was Hatch Baby, an alarm clock for kids, designed to help them sleep better and stay in bed longer. After skyrocketing success and years as the #1 best seller within multiple baby-related categories on Amazon, the company expanded into adult alarm clocks with similar principles.
Hatch’s co-founder Ann Crady Weiss told SPY in a 2022 interview that Hatch believes the category of sleep technology is overpromised. “I don’t think that a product or category or brand can promise sleep, right? Because sleep is really complicated. But what we can promise is rest, and you giving yourself a moment that’s dedicated to rest.”
They do this through a combination of customizable lights, sounds, and colors that you set as your bedtime and morning routines in the Hatch app. At night your routine may consist of a calming sound of a babbling brook as you’re winding down. The morning may include a sunrise light that starts 30 minutes before your alarm, dubbed a “Gentle Wake Up” in Hatch land, and a relaxing alarm sound — like wind chimes, waves, or jungle noises.
Hatch released the Restore 2 sunrise alarm clock earlier this year with an upgraded sound library and a more streamlined design. The two clocks appear to have very similar functionality, but I’ve only used the first-generation product.
Using the Hatch Restore
The Hatch unit itself also looks like it’s on a spa day. It’s an unassuming half orb with a gray speaker along the bottom that displays the time.
My Hatch alarm has never malfunctioned, not once, and I love the fact that I don’t wake up to the notorious “Ripples” iPhone sound that I did all through high school. My nighttime routine includes sounds of a crackling campfire that accompanies my Kindle reading, and my morning sunrise light is accompanied by a “Meditative Flute” sound that beckons me to a figurative mountaintop to meditate on command.
Do I still grab my phone very soon after dropping into consciousness? Yes, absolutely. Hatch can’t move the seismic mountains of smartphone addiction. But I love how it nudges me in the direction of making a healthier choice and that does it so a package that looks chic on my nightstand.
My one complaint is that it requires programming through a smartphone app, and the programming you can do on the device itself is relatively limited. When I travel, if I forget to turn off my alarm on my phone it will still go off and my boyfriend has to unplug it to keep it from sounding off the next day. I can’t adjust it from afar, and he can’t turn it off on the device itself.
The app itself is very intuitive, and I’ve never had a problem adjusting my routine when I need to. The one important note about that is that once a routine starts, you can’t adjust it. There are occasions in the morning when I’d like to wake up later, or snooze for a few minutes, but since the digital sunrise has already begun I can’t push the alarm further back in the app. I have to snooze until the alarm itself goes off and then snooze it with the button on the top.
The app itself is very intuitive, and I’ve never had a problem adjusting my routine when I need to. The one important note about that is that once a routine starts, you can’t adjust it. There are occasions in the morning when I’d like to wake up later, or snooze for a few minutes, but since the digital sunrise has already begun I can’t push the alarm further back in the app. I have to snooze until the alarm itself goes off and then snooze it with the button on the top.
Hatch Restore Machine
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