The La Crosse Soluna C80994‘s sunset function is very lacking. It’s a popping gradient of orange, pink, red, and blue that you can’t change to a more uniform color, and it casts a mostly pink light across the room. It takes 30 minutes and you cannot change the timer duration. It’s also the dimmest sunset light of all the alarm clocks I’ve tested. Even at the beginning of the cycle, when it was brightest, I had trouble reading. The sunrise mode isn’t much brighter, ending in a blinding blue-and-white hue reminiscent of waking up with a flashlight shining into your eyes. The alarm itself looks nice, but feels cheaply made. It’s $50, but it’s nowhere near my top pick, the HomeLabs, which costs less. I say pass.
The Amazon Echo Glow is marketed especially for children and therefore prioritizes intuitiveness over functions. It’s not a hub and doesn’t have a microphone, so you’ll need to pair it with an Echo device to control it with your voice, although you can control it without a hub via the Alexa app. The Echo Glow reaches a maximum brightness of 100 lumens, but it doesn’t seem to get any brighter than a Dollar Tree night light. It’s like jumping straight into the middle of a sunset.
You can set different colors and automatic color shift schemes, as well as custom schemes, but that’s about it. There are no other features, although it seems durable enough to survive a toddler room. At $30, the value is weak. You’d better buy your child our top pick, the Homelabs, for the same price. Or if you want something intuitive your kid can use without an app, jump for the Casper Glow Light.
