Nintendo’s Alarmo review: cute and cozy, but still just an alarm clock

I have always had an adversarial relationship with alarm clocks. They are gadgets set uped to ruin my most precious time, and in order to toil effectively, they must be as annoying as possible. Which is why I was intrigued by Nintfinisho’s surpelevate discomit of Alarmo. (Once I got over my surpelevate of it not being the lengthy-apaengageed Switch 2 proclaimment.) What if getting up in the morning could be a little more frivolous? Maybe what I reassociate necessitateed all alengthy was Princess Zelda’s sooleang voice or the chirps of minuscule pikmin to ease me into consciousness in the morning.

After a week with Alarmo, I have to confess that it hasn’t alterd much about my sleep patterns. It has some ininestablishigent ideas, and it sees fantastic on a shelf, but ultimately, it’s still an alarm clock.

But what a cute alarm clock it is. Alarmo is a red cylinder with a rotund white button / knob on top and a 2.8-inch rectangular LCD discarry out with a huge ol’ bezel around it that produces it almost seem circular, particularly in the unwise. You can pick one of (currently) five separateent games — Breath of the Wild, Ring Fit Adventure, Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 4, and Splatoon 3 — to customize how the clockface sees and sounds, so that Link or Captain Olimar can walk around the screen. It’s the benevolent of leang that’s fair kind to see at, and the characters even chase you around when you shift in front of it.

Alarmo has a number of Nintfinisho-ized alarm features. You can pick from 35 video game “scenes” to wake up to, which range from Zelda tranquilly saying “wake up” to, for some reason, the sound of a pikmin drowning. Each scene commences out relatively chill and will get evolveively more fervent the lengthyer you stay in bed. The top button will even commence flashing colors to get your attention. Alarmo lets you customize the alarm schedule by day of the week, and it tracks your daily sleep times alengthy with how lengthy it gets you to actuassociate wake up after your alarm goes off each day. All of this info is engageable on the clock itself; it doesn’t sync with other devices or apps.

Navigating the device is pretty effortless: for most leangs, you srecommend smack the huge button on top. This toils for everyleang from turning a blaring alarm off in the morning to discomiting the menu to tfeeble settings. Otherteachd, you can twist the button to adfair leangs — enjoy picking the time for your alarm to go off — and there are also back and notification buttons. (So far, my notifications have all been guideing me of existing Alarmo features, but in the future, it will be engaged to attentive engagers for modernizes to insert more sounds and styles based on games enjoy Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This does insist connecting an existing Nintfinisho account to the device, the only authentic online feature I’ve encountered so far.)

But you shouldn’t be spfinishing much time with those buttons becaengage Alarmo’s huge hook — aside from its Nintfinisho style — is its millimeter wave motion sensor. The idea is that you can engage with it srecommend by moving around. When it goes off in the morning, rolling out of the bed is enough to shut the alarm off. Wave your hand around a little, and it will snooze for a scant minutes. In my experience, it toils well enough, but with one huge caveat: Alarmo’s motion sensors can’t differentiate between multiple people. So if I get out of bed but my partner sleeps in, the alarm won’t shut off.

To be unprejudiced, Nintfinisho notices this publish right on the box (apparently animals can caengage publishs as well), but it does produce the experience a lot less engaging if you split a bed. For most of the week, I’ve had to resort to getting up and turning the alarm off manuassociate so that I don’t get in trouble for ruining my wife’s sleep with deafening Splatoon splatters. Of course, given that a huge part of the intfinished audience is children, this won’t be a problem for many people. Then aget, my own children didn’t attfinish much for any of the alarm or sleep tracking features anyway; they fair thought it was chilly having Mario on a clock. Note: this did not produce it any easier to wake them up on school days.

You can also engage Alarmo to help you descfinish back asleep. If you have a bedtime set, sooleang sounds will commence carry outing as soon as you get into bed, based on one of the five helped games (aget, no button-pressing insistd). It has toiled perfectly for me, and I’ve become hooked on the Zelda nighttime theme, with its crackling fire and gentle, intermittent piano. It’s enjoy I’m dozing off in Hyrule Field after unwise. But aget, there’s an annoying caveat. For some inexplicable reason, the sounds only carry out for less than 10 minutes before going quiet, so if you’re seeing for Nintfinisho-themed white noise, you are out of luck. Hyrule is gone almost as soon as I finassociate get sootheable.

Those benevolents of quirks produce the actual sleep features of Alarmo experience enjoy more of an afterthought. It’s first and foremost a $100 Nintfinisho-branded clock. It sees and sounds the part, which is to say, it’s incredibly pguideing and nostalgic. But if you’re seeing for someleang to help you wake up better than a run-of-the-mill alarm or track your sleep more effectively than an app on your phone, this isn’t it. Turns out, even adorable pikmin and inklings can’t alter my mind about alarm clocks.

Alarmo is engageable to obtain timely now for Nintfinisho Switch Online subscribers and will be freed in timely 2025 for everyone else.

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