Sunla Sunrise Alarm Clock
Wake up to light, not the alarm — without an app, an account or a subscription.
Free US shipping. Ships in 1–2 business days.
Key features
- Gradual sunrise. Builds from fully dark over 5 to 60 minutes, so you surface before any sound plays.
- Reverse sunset. Fades out at bedtime instead of up, with a sleep timer of up to 8 hours.
- 22 sounds on the device. White noise, rain, ocean, birdsong, lullabies. No wifi, no account, nothing to download.
- 17 light modes. Eight steady colours and nine dynamic ones that can move with your music over Bluetooth.
- Backup tone. Sixteen volume levels, because light alone does not wake everyone.
- No app, no account. A dial on top and four buttons on the side.
Tech specs
- Sunrise
- Adjustable, 5–60 minutes
- Sounds
- 22, plus a standard alarm tone
- Light modes
- 17 — 8 steady, 9 dynamic
- Alarm volume
- 16 levels
- Snooze
- Customisable, 5–20 minutes
- Sleep timer
- Up to 8 hours
- Brightness
- 20 levels
- Display
- Dims to fully dark
- Bluetooth
- Speaker mode for phone, tablet or laptop
- Controls
- Dial on top, four buttons on the side
- Power
- Mains, via the included adapter
We do not publish a brightness figure. The numbers this category prints are taken at the lamp rather than at your pillow, so they are not comparable — and we would rather not quote one we cannot stand behind.
What’s in the box
The Sunla clock and its power adapter. That is it — there is no app to install and no account to create.
Shipping
Free US shipping on every order, with no minimum. Dispatched within 1 to 2 business days and typically arriving 3 to 7 business days after that. Tracking is emailed as soon as it ships. US only for now.
30-night returns
Sleep with it for a month. If it has not earned its place on your nightstand, send it back within 30 days for a full refund — no restocking fee and no argument.
Why a normal alarm feels so bad
A blaring alarm doesn't wake you up.
It interrupts you.
Sound yanks you out of whatever sleep stage you happened to be in. If that is deep sleep, you get the grogginess, the heavy limbs and the fog that can hang around for a while after you are technically awake.
Sound alarm
One moment you are asleep, the next a noise is going off in a dark room. Your body has no signal that morning has arrived, so it starts the day on adrenaline.
Gradual light
Light builds slowly from complete darkness before any sound plays, so your body gets the cue it has been waiting for. Most mornings you surface before the tone ever sounds.
Your 6:30, minute by minute
Set one wake time. Sunla works backwards from it. The ramp is adjustable from 5 to 60 minutes — this is a 30-minute example.
Complete darkness. Nothing on, nothing glowing, nothing to keep you awake.
A faint amber glow begins, low enough that it does not jolt you.
The light is climbing toward full. Most mornings you are already stirring here.
Full light. The backup tone only plays if you are still asleep.
Four things in one
It earns its spot on the nightstand more than once a day.
It is not a gadget you have to learn
Set up in 3 steps.
Then never touch it again.
Plug it in
One cable into the wall. There is no wifi setup, no app to download and no account to create — the clock is already everything it is going to be.
Turn the dial to your wake time
The dial on top sets the time and how long the sunrise takes, anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes. Four buttons on the side do everything else.
Go to sleep
It works backwards from your wake time on its own, every morning, until you tell it otherwise. Nothing to charge and nothing to re-pair.
Free US shipping · 30 nights to decide
22 sounds, stored on the device
Something to fall asleep to
No wifi and no account needed — they live on the clock, so they play whether or not your phone is in the room.
Seventeen of the twenty-two shown. The rest are further white-noise and nature variations.
17 light modes
A night light too, not just an alarm
Eight steady colours for a bedside glow, and nine dynamic modes that can move with whatever you are playing over Bluetooth.
Sunla vs the thing you use now
You are not replacing a clock.
You are replacing your phone.
Which is the real reason a sunrise alarm is worth a nightstand slot.
Sunrise clock vs everything else
Compare honestly
Not one brand against another — a sunrise clock against the other ways people get themselves out of bed.
| Sunla | Phone alarm | Subscription sleep device | Basic alarm clock | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakes you with light, not noise | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Light builds gradually from dark | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Sunset wind-down at bedtime | Yes | Depends which one | Yes | No |
| Sound machine built in | Yes | Depends which one | Yes | No |
| No app and no account | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| One price, paid once | Yes | Depends which one | No | Yes |
| Display dims to fully dark | Yes | Depends which one | Depends which one | No |
| Nothing to charge | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Your phone stays out of the bedroom | Yes | No | Depends which one | Yes |
| Keeps you scrolling in bed | No | Yes | Depends which one | No |
Phone alarm is the alarm app on the phone you already own. Subscription sleep device is a bedside device that keeps some of its sounds or features behind a paid membership. Basic alarm clock is a plain bedside clock with a display and a buzzer. A half-filled circle means it depends which one you buy.
An alarm clock should not have a monthly fee
Some sunrise clocks keep part of what you bought behind a membership. Here is what that costs over three years, against paying once.
The membership figure is one real sunrise clock, not an average: a $169.99 device plus $49.99 a year for three years, which is $319.96. The same membership is also sold monthly at $4.99, which would be $179.64 over the three years, so the annual rate is the cheaper of the two and that is the one used here. Sunla is $59.99 once, and every sound and setting is included permanently. Bar widths are scaled to the larger three-year total.
What people are saying
Verified reviews from Sunla customers
Finally something brighter than my old one
I had a cheap sunrise clock before and honestly never noticed it turn on. This one I notice. I’ve been waking up before the sound alarm goes off, which has never happened to me.
No app was the selling point
Bought this specifically because it doesn’t need an app. My whole thing was getting the phone out of the bedroom and every other option wanted me to download something. Set it once with the dial and haven’t touched it since.
The sunset mode is underrated
Came for the wake-up light, stayed for the wind-down. I run the fade-out with the rain sound and I’m out in ten minutes. Didn’t expect to use it twice a day but here we are.
Great, small learning curve
Took me a couple of mornings to land on the right ramp length — 30 minutes was too gradual for me, 15 is perfect. Once it’s dialled in it’s great. Docking a star only because I wish the dial clicked more distinctly.
My last clock lit up half the room all night. This one goes black.
Worth it over the subscription ones
I was about to spend nearly three times this and then realised the good features were behind a monthly fee. This does the same job with nothing to sign up for, and I’m not renting my alarm clock.
That was the whole reason I bought it. I’m up at 5:40 and he isn’t, and a light on my side of the bed doesn’t drag him out of sleep the way my phone alarm did every single morning.
Using it as a reading light more than anything
Set it to one of the warm steady colours and it’s genuinely enough to read by without the overhead on. Two functions I actually use, which is more than I can say for most things I buy.
Good, but plan where you put it
It runs off the mains adapter, so it needs an outlet near the nightstand — no battery in it. Worth knowing before you order. The wake-up itself is exactly what I wanted and I’d buy it again.
The rain and the fan are the two I keep going back to.
Works, but I’m a very heavy sleeper
The light alone does not get me up — I have to leave the backup sound on and fairly high, which is not really what I was hoping for, and I had to work up to the longest ramp before it made any difference at all. If you sleep through a phone alarm across the room, go in expecting to use the sound. It is a nice object and the wind-down is genuinely lovely, so three rather than two.
Bought a second one as a gift
Set my sister’s up for her in about two minutes without opening anything. That was the test, honestly — if I had to explain an app to her it would have gone back in the box.
The 15 minute ramp is the sweet spot
Started on 30 and it was so slow I slept through the whole thing. 15 gets me from dark to bright fast enough that I notice it happening.
Bought it to stop doomscrolling at 6am
The phone used to live on the nightstand because it was the alarm. Now it charges in the kitchen and I genuinely do not pick it up until after breakfast. That alone was worth the money.
Lovely, wish the sunset went longer
The wind-down caps out where I want it to keep going — I would use a 90 minute fade if it had one. Everything else is exactly right.
Quieter mornings with a newborn
We needed something that would not wake the baby in the next room. Light does not travel through walls.
It looks like an object, not a gadget
Half the reason I bought this over the alternatives. No screen, no logo glowing at me, no app icon on my phone. It just looks like something that belongs on a nightstand.
Third sunrise clock, first one I kept
The other two were too dim to register and one had a display I could read from the hallway. This is brighter and it goes properly dark.
Shift work made this worth it
I am on rotating shifts so my wake time moves every few days. Turning a dial beats reprogramming an app every single time.
Simple enough for my dad
Set it up for him at Christmas and he has not called me about it once, which is a first for anything I have ever given him with a plug on it.
Great clock, the display icons are cryptic
There is a little row of symbols under the time and I still do not know what two of them mean. Not a real problem, but the quick-start guide could have explained them.
The rain sound plus the fade is the whole thing
I stopped needing a podcast to fall asleep, which I did not expect.
Works in a bright room too
My bedroom gets streetlight through thin curtains and I worried it would get lost. It does not — by full brightness it is clearly the thing lighting the room.
No notifications is the feature
Everything else on this list does this and also wants to send me a weekly sleep report. I did not want a sleep report. I wanted a light.
Snooze that does not ruin the point
Set it to five minutes and the light stays up while the sound pauses, so you get the extra few minutes without going properly back under.
The dial is the best part
I know that sounds like a small thing to praise. It is not. Two seconds to change my wake time, in the dark, without glasses on.
Good product, mine arrived with a mark on the base
There is a scuff on the fabric near the back that I am fairly sure was there out of the box. Support offered a replacement and I decided it was not worth the packaging, but it is the reason this is a three.
My partner and I wake at different times
She is up at six, I am up at seven thirty. Her light does not drag me out of bed the way her phone alarm used to.
Replaced two things on the nightstand
The old clock and a separate white-noise machine both went in a drawer. One plug instead of two.
Very good, slightly bigger than I pictured
Roughly grapefruit sized. That is fine on my nightstand but it would not fit on the narrow shelf I originally planned for it, so measure first.
Winter mornings stopped being awful
It is dark when I get up from November onward and this is the first thing that has made that feel less brutal.
Reading light at one end, alarm at the other
Warm colour on low in the evening, full sunrise in the morning. It earns the space twice a day, which I cannot say for most of what is up there.
No account, no email, nothing
Plugged it in and it worked. I did not have to agree to anything or give anyone my address twice.
Sound quality is better than it needs to be
I only bought it as an alarm but the Bluetooth speaker is genuinely fine for a podcast while I get dressed.
Not enough for me, returning it
I want to be fair: it does what it says and it is well made. But I have always needed something loud and abrupt to actually get up, and a gentle light is the opposite of that. The 30-day return was painless, so no complaints about the company — it is just not the right product for how I sleep.
It is the going-dark part I did not expect to care about
Every clock I have owned glowed at me all night. This one is properly off and I sleep better for it.
Showing 36 of 500+ reviews
Straight answers, including the awkward ones
Is it bright enough to actually wake me?
That is the reason Sunla exists. Most sunrise clocks publish a brightness figure taken centimetres from the lamp, which is nowhere near where your head is. Sunla is built around 18 inches — real bedside distance.
Why don't you print a brightness number?
Because the numbers this category prints are not comparable. They are taken at the lamp, and light falls off sharply between the lamp and your face. We would rather tell you exactly what we design around than publish a figure you cannot check against anyone else's.
I'm a really heavy sleeper. Will light alone wake me?
Possibly not, which is why there is a backup tone with escalating volume. Light gets you most of the way; the sound finishes the job.
Do I need an app?
No. No app, no account, no wifi setup. Everything is controlled from the dial on top and four buttons on the side.
Is there a subscription?
No. All 22 sounds and every feature are included permanently. We think charging a monthly fee for an alarm clock is absurd.
How long is the sunrise?
Adjustable from 5 to 60 minutes. Set it short for a quicker ramp, longer for a gentler one.
Can I use it just as a night light or sound machine?
Yes. The light and the sound machine both run independently of the alarm.
Does the display stay lit at night?
It dims to completely dark. You can also leave it on at low brightness if you prefer.
How fast is shipping?
Free US shipping on every order, dispatched within 1–2 business days, typically arriving in 3–7 business days after dispatch. See our Shipping Policy.
What is your return policy?
30 days, full refund, no restocking fee. See our Return & Refund Policy.
Do you ship outside the US?
Not yet. US only for now.
30 nights to decide.
If Sunla does not earn its place on your nightstand, send it back within 30 days for a full refund. No restocking fee, no argument.
Get Sunla — $59.99 Free US shipping · 30-day returns