A closer look at Nintendo’s adorable Alarmo clock

Look, I’m a sucker for instant gratification. It’s often one of my favorite things about living in New York City. This morning, Nintendo announced its $99 Alarmo clock, and when the company’s store in Rockefeller Center opened a couple hours later, I walked in and picked one up. Did I feel a little iffy about paying $108.91 after tax for a plastic alarm clock? You bet. But fortunately, in my field, this counts as a work expense. (Technically, this product is called Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo — but no one is ever going to refer to it that way. It’s Alarmo.)

The Verge’s senior entertainment editor Andrew Webster will have a full review of Alarmo coming up, but I wanted to check it out for myself. Mostly, I was curious about the audio quality. If the speaker in this relatively tiny clock sounds tinny or shrill, that would ruin the whole concept for me.

Turns out, you don’t need to worry about that. I haven’t tried all of Alarmo’s various sounds, but even the Super Mario Bros. theme that plays during the setup process eliminated my worries that it would sound like crap. That setup routine is actually quite lengthy and might prove to be a bit much for a child. You choose the date and time, of course, but you’re also led through configuring the clock’s motion-detection features, which takes a bit of time, and I didn’t see any way of skipping it. Alarmo’s millimeter-wave presence sensor works with bed sizes ranging from twin to king, and the screen is meant to face the middle of your bed.

The display is not a touchscreen, nor is it round. (And I feel like Nintendo’s promotional video exaggerates its size a little.) It does automatically adjust brightness based on ambient lighting. One fun little detail is that the clock screen and typeface will change depending on the alarm you’ve chosen. Whenever the regular clock is showing, the character onscreen will also move from left to right based on your own movements if you’re within range of the motion sensors.

You control Alarmo with the buttons up top. The large dial can be turned to navigate menus and pressed to make selections. There’s a back button to the left and a notifications button to the right. I’ve barely used the clock, but presumably, this is where you might get notified about your sleep metrics. (There’s no serious health monitoring or anything like that; don’t expect Mario to warn you about snoring or potential sleep apnea.)

The top dial lights up in a range of colors; you’ll see quite a few within the first few minutes of using Alarmo. Aside from the core alarm functionality, Alarmo also has sleep sounds that you can doze off to. Nintendo plans to offer new sounds that can be downloaded to the clock once you've linked a Nintendo account. (When you access this menu, a prompt advises younger users to seek out a parent or guardian.)

Is this thing absurdly expensive for what it is? Certainly. But for its demographic, it’s very cute, and there are small, thoughtful Nintendo touches throughout the experience — and I’ve barely dug in.

Here are some more photos of the $99 Nintendo clock.

Update, October 9th: The article has been updated to clarify that a Nintendo Switch Online subscription won't be needed to install future Alarmo scenes.