Nintendo Alarmo Review: A Small Step to a Nintendo Smart Home
Little sounds creep around me. I think I hear something screaming or crying. It’s Pikmin. I turn around and there are little “success” pings. Do I control them? Are they okay? The sounds get louder. I sit up. The Pikmin cheer and the sounds stop for a moment. I think I’m in snooze mode. The Pikmin will return.
I’m about to wake up to the gentle rise of ambient Nintendo soundscapes. The source is a red Disney-esque clock on my bedside table: the Nintendo alarma I can’t believe this is real, a $100 motion-controlled alarm clock that delivers dozens of Nintendo sounds to you every morning.
Alarmo was announced out of the blue in October, right when many Switch fans were wondering when we’d hear about a Nintendo Switch 2. No Switch 2 news. Instead, there’s a limited-time souvenir worth $100. Alarmo is a classic Nintendo surprise left, just like this one small game consoles years ago, the new Play and watch models, Ring Fit Adventure And Nintendo Lab and that RC Mario Kart Live cars.
Check this out: Get started with Alarmo: Nintendo’s high-tech alarm clock turns waking up into a game
Unlike this one, however, this isn’t a game at all. It’s a thing. A musical, immersive Nintendo culture item that lives in your bedroom and communicates with you. I’ve been sleeping next to it for weeks. It sings me to sleep. It wakes me up in the morning. It shows me how I sleep. It’s cute – and it also feels like Nintendo lives in a clock and watches me sleep. Sort of.
Alarmo feels like a little companion. I’m shocked that Nintendo made a little red plastic clock that adds so much character, and yet I wish it could do even more. Unfortunately, Alarmo is not a personality. Imagine if that were the case? The clock’s responsiveness to my bed movements and the way it wakes up when I enter the room gives it a sense of awareness.
I’ve been to one Disney vacation this year, and Alarmo is the kind of theme park souvenir I could easily see Disney selling. I’m well aware that Nintendo has its own theme park at Universal in Los Angeles and Japan, and another one coming to Florida soon. I was able to see Alarmo in a gift shop in Super Nintendo World. (Maybe it’s already here or will be soon?)
Alarm from behind. The cute red plastic design feels very Disney.
As Nintendo expands into theme parks and movies, it is clearly evolving into a cultural entertainment brand. Nintendo Alarmo feels exactly like something that fits in that space. And hey, it’s a holiday gift. An expensive one, but for the most part absolutely adorable and charmingly made.
Don’t think about this much. Alarmo is a new clock, a nice musical gift for a child’s room or a Nintendo super fan. And it’s definitely charming and nice, but it’s also not something mind-blowing.
The room tracking sensors on the Alarmo radiate from the watch face and you are expected to place the Alarmo at the same height as your bed, preferably so it can look diagonally across your bed from corner to corner. That’s quite demanding, because bedside tables and bed configurations vary. I was lucky, but that meant I had to place Alarmo right on the edge near my CPAP machine.
When the alarm goes off, the top button lights up.
Alarmo knows when you go to bed and when you wake up, and the display turns on or brightens accordingly. When I’m back in bed when sleep sounds are due to play, it starts in bedtime mode with music tones from a few different game world options. When I get up, the clock plays a party as long as it can tell I’m getting up – usually that means I have to sit further on my bed, or I give up and use the top Alarmo button to turn off the alarm. Also, having someone else in bed can disrupt or activate the sensors. Do you sleep alone or not?
Alarmo uses a glowing, soft-touch top button to select options, pressing or turning it like a giant version of the Apple Watch’s digital crown. There are two other buttons besides the big one, one for backing up to a previous option, the other a shortcut for notifications or sleep record data. It does not have a touchscreen.
You can disable Alarmo or use the top button, which also sets the clock.
It has a USB-C plug, so you can supply it with power. There’s no battery to charge it, although a non-removable coin cell battery continues to set the time when Alarmo is unplugged.
There are a lot of Nintendo alarms to choose from, but not as many as you might think. Thirty-five alarm soundscapes come from just five games: Pikmin 4, Super Mario Odyssey, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon3 and Ring Fit Adventure. Where is Kirby’s Dreamland, I ask you? Where is Animal Crossing, or Pokemon or other Nintendo classics?
Alarmo is a Nintendo alarm clock. Serious.
Nintendo promises more downloadable sounds in the future, and linking Alarmo via the internet and a QR code with your Nintendo Switch Online account promises to bring extras, but not yet. It’s strangely limited as all its promises of Nintendo soundscapes come to life.
I love the Nintendo sounds, which can pulsate softly or energetically. They get louder as you delay getting up, and movement can create additional sounds and trigger a snooze mode for a while. The persistence and gentle rise of Alarmo’s mostly comforting sounds is a clever tech I’d like to see in other bed products or on my phone.
Alarmo tracks movements while sleeping, but what should I do with this data?
Alarmo records sleep data locally and deletes it after a year. It doesn’t do much. It remembers your time in bed, the time to wake up (get out of bed) and your movements while sleeping. However, the graphs are small and Alarmo consistently said I was in bed much longer than the Apple Watch’s sleep tracking did. It’s a nice attempt at wellness feedback, but not nearly enough. I prefer to view this data on my phone with a connected app.
The time I spent in bed… but this isn’t how much I slept.
Alarmo is whatever you accept. A cute and smart clock, a Nintendo sound souvenir or a compelling bed. I’ll give it to my kid next time and see what he thinks. It fits better with what Alarmo is going for, I think. I love the idea, and Nintendo’s style is all over this little clock. I wonder what a completely Nintendo smart home would be. I’m both terrified and enamored by the possibilities. But for now, know that Alarmo is only Alarmo for you and for itself.
