I am one of those people that if I didn’t have an alarm clock (or 12) I could easily sleep through until the late afternoon; my body seems to have no concept of when it needs sleep and exactly how much it needs, with winter time proving especially difficult.

Products like the Beurer WL 90 Bluetooth Wake Up Light have been designed to help your body fall asleep and wake up naturally by using light to imitate sunset and sunrise, tapping into your circadian rhythms and leaving you feel naturally awake and refreshed each morning - the dream, right?

The WL 90 is a 4-in-1 wake up light, mood light, reading lamp and radio/speaker. I liked the orb design of this product and the way the clock integrates itself into the rest of the light: all the buttons are tucked around the back, which creates a clean profile but doesn’t make them easily accessible. Setting it up was a straightforward procedure, although the digital “beep” that it emits when you press any of the buttons becomes a bit annoying, especially when manually searching and saving the radio stations.

There are three alarm time slots that can be used separately or all at the same time: you can choose between the radio, alarm or 10 pre-programmed wake-up melodies, including bird song. There are 10 memory spaces for radio stations but no way of renaming them, so you will just have to remember, guess or write them down! The sunrise function gently increases the light to naturally wake you up and the sunset function can be used to relax your body and mind ready for sleep, but the light level change isn’t particularly smooth and a little distracting when you are trying to relax. Other features include the snooze function (range 1-30mins), a reading lamp function, automatic display-brightness adjustment, which dims when the lights are switched off, Bluetooth and Aux connectivity to play your own music, up to 2,500 lux light intensity and the possibility of charging devices via the USB port. For an easier way to set up alarms and interact with the WL 90, you can use the Beurer LightUp app, this makes things a lot easier…when it connects.

My major issue with this alarm is you should be able to tap it to activate snooze, amongst other things, but it is so insensitive that it needed to be repeatedly whacked until it responded. This turned what should have been a relaxed and gentle wake up situation into a semi-conscious piñata game. I really wanted to love this product, it had so much promise, but the awkward buttons, hit & miss connectivity, and close-to-useless touch sensitive control rendered it another reason to hate waking up. RRP £139.99

2 out of 5

Current Cheapest Price

Pros

Compact and attractive design

Sunset and sunrise function

Plays audio via Bluetooth, FM radio and AUX

4 in 1 wake up light, mood light, reading lamp and music station

Choose between radio, alarm and 10 wake-up melodies

Automatic display brightness adjustment

Cons

Buttons hard to access

Touch sensitive controls are unresponsive

App connectivity unreliable

Can’t switch button tone off

Unintuitive

Bad sound quality (harsh and lacks bass)

Light levels noticeably change on sunset and sunrise mode

Over priced