Dreamy Alarm Clock helped me stop using my phone in bed

I achieved the unthinkable. You can now sleep soundly throughout the night without having to put your phone next to your pillow. Please refrain from applause. I don’t know if this superhuman feat would have been possible without the Dreamy Alarm Clock.

If you feel like you’re bragging about how you brushed your teeth this morning, you’re not Dreamie’s target audience. But I certainly am, and I’m not the only one who feels attached to my phone as if I’m basically a cyborg.

We know that using your phone in bed disrupts your sleep, and poor quality sleep disrupts everything else regarding your mental and physical health. But before Dreamy, I spent over 10 years with my phone next to my pillow every night. I mean, I spent tens of thousands of nights so attached to my shiny square that I couldn’t imagine the horror of waking up in the middle of the night without it.

I’m not completely helpless. Over the past few years, I’ve developed a habit of reading before bed, which has made me noticeably more relaxed when I finally close my eyes. Still, I never slept well (just ask my parents, who gave me endless trouble when I was a kid by taking me to see museum exhibits about the Titanic, which made me think I was going to die aboard the Titanic). Sometimes, when I can’t drown out the buzzing in my brain, the only way I can sleep is to close my eyes and listen to a podcast or audiobook (unless it’s about Titanic).

Whoever designed Dreamie seems to be having the same pain as me. What sets Dreamie apart from other fancy alarm clocks is that it’s hilariously simple. That is, you can play podcasts.

However, before you can access the podcast, you will need to zoom out. Here’s how Dreamie works:

In “Ambience” mode, it’s just a regular watch, but it has another set of modes to configure your sleep routine.

“Relax” is the beginning of your routine and signals that it’s almost time for bed. In my case, I set it up to mimic a real fire, with soft orange light and the sound of a fireplace crackling. The light goes out and shines. The fireplace burns for about 25 minutes, and I usually read during that time. Next, go to “Noise Mask” mode. I set it to sound like a thunderstorm, but if you get sleepy early, you can turn it on at that point. Whatever sound you select will play until the wake-up routine begins, and the “sunrise” light will gradually brighten until it’s time for your alarm to go off. (You can also select no sound if you prefer.)

Dreamie’s biggest feature is its “sleep return mode.” If you wake up in the middle of the night, turn on Go Back to Sleep and it will play the media of your choice, whether it’s a breathing routine loaded on your device, another soundscape, or a podcast you want to listen to. Choosing episodes and shows ahead of time will make you feel more awake without having to scroll through the interface in the middle of the night. Dreamie can also be used with Bluetooth headphones, so if you share your bed with someone else, it won’t get in your way…but you’ll need to wear the headphones to sleep.

Dreamie is Wi-Fi enabled, so you can download the podcasts you want from the internet. For that, we can thank the podcast architecture. Podcasts are distributed by RSS feeds, so any developer can create their own custom RSS apps and play them in Dreamie. (Think for a moment about RSS, one of the last relics of the open internet, which Spotify is actively trying to kill in favor of its own walled garden.)

I’m embarrassed that this feature is so useful to me. Usually, when I wake up and can’t go back to sleep, I have to pick up my actual phone and turn on the podcast. But hey, I’m a millennial, so if I get a notification after I fall asleep, my reflex is to open it before I turn on the podcast or audiobook. From there, a series of bad decisions led to me waking up for two hours in the middle of the night.

My own actions are to blame here, but I know that my bad habits are not unique. One survey of 2,000 American adults found that 87% of us sleep with our phones in our bedrooms. I don’t need a scientific study to prove that looking at your phone too much can make you sleep worse, but there is data to back up my experience. With Dreamie, just swipe down to turn on “Go Back to Sleep” mode and listen to geek talk about baseball stats.

My bad habit of talking on the phone in bed continues until the morning. When I wake up, I spend about 30 minutes scrolling through my phone before getting out of bed. But if you don’t get distracted by your phone, you’ll be able to get out of bed much earlier and start your day feeling like you’re a human instead of an empty-caffeinated zombie who has to pee.

The Dreamy costs $250, which is a lot for an alarm clock. At least there are no subscriptions or companion apps to download. Although quite feature-rich, the user interface is very simple, similar to the iPhone’s Clock app.

While testing Dreamie, I would sometimes “trick” myself into listening to audiobooks on my phone in bed (sometimes I just really wanted to listen to something specific that wasn’t a podcast). At first, I tried to keep the Dreamy spirit alive and avoid using my phone for other reasons. But that wasn’t realistic. I ended up using my smartphone in the middle of the night.

Due to technical limitations, I’m not sure if Dreamie can realistically support apps like Libby or Libro.fm. Perhaps in the future, Dreamie will offer a way to upload your own media, such as downloaded audiobooks.

Towards the end of my review period with Dreamie, I also started testing Brick. I used this to block all apps on my phone at night except for podcasts and audiobook apps. At $59, it’s more affordable than the Dreamie, so if you were to buy one of these devices, you’d get pretty much the same benefits as the Brick. Still, there’s something nice about being able to leave your phone in a completely separate room. Even if your phone is “broken,” it’s still your phone. And do you really want your phone to be the last thing you see every day?