Best Smart Alarm Clocks

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.

Purchase

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.

Purchase

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.

Purchase

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