Little sounds creep around me. I think I hear something yelling or crying. It's Pikmin. I turn over, and little "success" pings sound. Am I controlling them? Are they OK? The sounds get louder. I sit up. The Pikmin cheer, and the noises stop for a bit. I think I'm in Snooze mode. The Pikmin will return.
I wake up like this to the gentle rise of ambient Nintendo soundscapes. The source is a red Disney-like clock on my bedside table: the Nintendo Alarmo, an I-can't-believe-this-is-real, $100 motion-enabled alarm clock that delivers dozens of Nintendo sounds to you each morning.
The Alarmo was announced out of nowhere in October, right as a lot of Nintendo fans were wondering when we'd hear about a Switch 2. No Switch 2 news. Instead, there's this $100 souvenir placeholder. Alarmo is a classic Nintendo surprise left turn, much like those tiny game consoles years ago, the new Game & Watch models, Ring Fit Adventure and Nintendo Labo and those RC Mario Kart Live cars.Â
Unlike those, however, this isn't a game at all. It's a thing. A musical, immersive Nintendo culture item that lives in your bedroom and interacts with you. I've been sleeping beside one for weeks now. It sings me to sleep. It wakes me in the morning. It shows me how I'm sleeping. It's cute -- and also, it feels like Nintendo is living in a clock and watching me sleep. Sort of.
The Alarmo feels like a little companion. I'm shocked that Nintendo made a little red plastic clock feel like it has so much character, and yet, I wish it could do even more. The Alarmo isn't a personality, sadly -- imagine if it was, though? The clock's responsiveness to my bed movements and the way it wakes up when I come into the room makes it feel like it's aware.
I've been on a Disney vacation this year, and the Alarmo is the sort of theme park souvenir I could easily see Disney selling. I'm well aware Nintendo has its own theme park at Universal in Los Angeles and Japan, with another coming to Florida soon. I could see the Alarmo in a gift shop in Super Nintendo World. (Maybe it's already there or will be soon?)
Alarmo from behind. Its cute red plastic design feels very Disney.
As Nintendo expands into theme parks and movies, it's clearly flexing into an entertainment cultural brand. The Alarmo feels like exactly the thing that fits into that space. And, heck, it's a holiday gift. An expensive one, but it's absolutely adorable and charmingly made, for the most part.Â
Don't think a lot about this one. The Alarmo is a novelty clock, a fun musical gift for the room of a kid or a Nintendo superfan. And it's absolutely charming and fine, but it's not a drop-dead amazing thing, either.
The room-tracking sensors on the Alarmo radiate out from the clock face, and you're expected to put it down at the same level as your bed, preferably so it can see across your bed corner-to-corner diagonally. That's kind of demanding since bedside tables and bed setups vary. I was in luck, but it meant perching the Alarmo right on the edge by my CPAP machine.
When alarms go off, the top button glows.
The Alarmo knows when you come to bed and when you wake up, and its display ambiently turns on or brightens accordingly. If I'm back in bed when sleep sounds are meant to play, it starts into its bedtime mode with musical tones from a few different game-world options. When I get up, the clock plays a celebration as long as it can see me getting up -- it usually means I have to sit up further down on my bed, or I give up and use the top Alarmo button and turn the alarm off. Also, having someone else in bed can disrupt or trigger the sensors. Do you sleep alone, or don't you?
The Alarmo uses a glowing, soft-touch top button to select options, pressing in or turning it like a giant version of the Apple Watch digital crown. There are two other buttons next to the big one, one for backing up to a previous option, the other a shortcut for notifications or sleep record data. It doesn't have a touchscreen.
You can move to turn off the Alarmo, or use the top button, which also is how you set up the clock.
It has a USB-C plug, which is how you power it. There's no battery to let it last on a charge, although a nonremovable coin battery keeps the time set if Alarmo is unplugged.
There are a bunch of Nintendo alarms to choose from, but not as many as you'd think. Thirty-five alarm soundscapes draw from only five games: Pikmin 4, Super Mario Odyssey, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3 and Ring Fit Adventure. Where's Kirby's Dreamland, I ask you? Where's Animal Crossing, or Pokemon or other Nintendo classics?
Nintendo promises more downloadable sounds in the future, and linking the Alarmo via the internet and a QR code with your Nintendo Switch Online account promises to bring extras, but not yet. It's weirdly limited for all its promises of Nintendo soundscapes come to life.
I do love the Nintendo sounds, which can pulse in gentle mode, or more energetically. They get louder as you postpone getting up, and movement can create extra sounds and trigger a snooze mode for a bit. The persistence and gentle rising of Alarmo's mostly comforting sounds is a clever technique I'd love to see in other bedside products or on my phone.
The Alarmo tracks my movement while I'm sleeping, but what do I do with this data?
The Alarmo does record sleep data locally, and after a year it's deleted. It doesn't do much. It remembers your time in bed, time to wake up (getting out of bed) and movement while sleeping. The charts are small, though, and the Alarmo consistently said I was in bed far longer than the Apple Watch's sleep tracking did. It's a cute stab at wellness feedback, but not nearly enough. I'd prefer to look at this data on my phone with a connected app.
Time spent in bed... but this isn't how much I slept.
The Alarmo is whatever you accept it to be. An adorable and clever clock, a Nintendo sound souvenir or an immersive bedside thing. I'll give it to my kid next and see what he thinks. He's a better match for what the Alarmo is going for, I think. I adore the idea, and Nintendo's style is all over this little clock. It makes me wonder what a full Nintendo smart home would be. I'm both terrified and charmed by the possibilities. But for now, just know that the Alarmo is only being the Alarmo for you and for itself.