Hi, I'm Ethan Green from Nosleeplessnights.com, and in this video I'm going to be doing a review
of the Lumie bodyclock Shine 300. This is a wake up light which is designed to help
you fall asleep faster and wake up more gently in the morning. It's made by Lumie, which is a
UK based company that have been making light therapy devices for over 25 years.
It's a class one medical device, which is one of the things that sets it apart from a lot of the
budget wake up lights sold online at the moment. I actually paid £109.99 for it myself, so it's not
exactly cheap. However, Lumie do have some more budget options as well as the more expensive ones.
The core idea behind the wake up light is that it's supposed to help encourage regular sleep,
and help you fall asleep more easily in the evening, and wake up feeling more refreshed in the
morning. Now, the idea in the evening is that the slow fading of the light with the sunset feature
just helps trigger your body's melatonin production, which then keeps your circadian rhythm
in check and helps you fall asleep – ideally. In the morning, the idea is that the light fades in,
it does the reverse of the sunset, and it's just more gentle and more soothing to wake up rather
than jolted out of bed with a sudden alarm clock. Lumie also say that it may help with winter blues
and seasonal affective disorder, although it's not technically one of their SAD lamps, which
they do make as well. Now when I review sleep products, and I review a lot of sleep products,
it's very rare that I use the word ‘love’, but I do love my wake up light. I’ve found that this is
a really fantastic device, particularly in the night time - I really love the sunset feature.
However, it's not exactly perfect. There's still a couple of gripes, so we'll be talking about those
as we go through this review. But me personally, just from the outset I’m going to say that this
is a device that I really, really like. Let's take a look at the sunrise and sunset features
in action then, which are the main functions of the Lumie Bodyclock. I took a video earlier
of the sunset over 15 minutes, and here it is sped up so you can see the color transition.
I do apologize if the video quality isn't so great for this section, or you see any flickering.
Honestly, I struggled to film the light in action. I like that you can choose the starting brightness
and the time the sunset lasts, and choose to have it fade to black or to a dim night
light that stays on. What I love is the warmth of the colors, and the slow fade from white to red
and the rich deep reds towards the end. I find it makes me feel really drowsy
and I often fall asleep before it turns off. [ambient background music plays]
And here's the sunrise in action, also sped up so you don't have to watch it for 15 minutes. There's
definitely something very pleasant about waking up as the light slowly fills the room. Since using
it, I’m sure I’ve been waking up in a better mood most days. It's just a nicer way to wake up than
a loud alarm clock. It is worth noting that the sunrise will start before your chosen alarm clock.
So, if you choose to wake up at 8:00, for example, and select a 30 minute sunrise then it'll actually
start at 7:30. And when it reaches 8:00, the radio or the sounds will come on if you've chosen them.
I do like the flexibility that you have in controlling the way the sunrise and the sunset
operate. There's just different ways that you can control the intensity of the brightness, the time
that it takes, what happens when it finishes, to have it just how you like. Okay, so now let's take
a look at some of the settings and the different features that it has, and how the interface and
the buttons work. The first thing to say is that the manual is clear and comprehensive, which is
good as there are enough settings to warrant 16 pages of instructions. I'm not going to go
through all the settings as that would take ages and turn this into an extremely long video manual,
but I will give you a quick overview and some thoughts on them. First of all, it's worth
pointing out that the display is auto dimming, so it will change according to the brightness of your
bedroom. Underneath there is a button to turn it off at night if you prefer and you can tap the top
if you want to see the time at any time. The small black buttons on the front here are used to access
the main settings, to select the sound option or turn it off, to activate or deactivate the alarm,
and to activate the sunset. In the main settings, there's a screen to adjust the language, the day,
and the time. There's one for the alarm. One for the sunrise. And one for the sunset.
With the alarm, something I really like is the fact that they've got two options - weekly or
daily. You can select one daily alarm time and then just start it when you go to bed,
or you can set a weekly alarm to change the alarm for each day independently.
The main issue I have here is that you need to use multiple buttons to set the alarm,
and they aren't clearly labeled, so you need to follow the manual and it does take a bit of
time to get used to them. When you adjust the sunrise, you can select five minute increments
from 15 to 90 minutes. You can also select the final brightness and the alarm source if you do
want sounds. Personally, I just have the sunrise but occasionally I’ll have the radio as well.
The actual light part of the sunrise will start before your alarm time and reaches
maximum brightness at the time you selected, and the sounds will come on then as well. As for the
sunset, the sunset's similar to the sunrise just in reverse really, but there are a couple of key
differences. For example, you can fade it to dark or to a night light setting. As for the audio,
with the sunset you can have none at all if you prefer, or you can have it turn off at the sunset,
or you can have it continue after the sunset but slowly fade out. And to start the sunset,
you can just press the sunset button on the front and it will start from the current brightness.
Overall, I think it's fantastic to have so much freedom to fine-tune the sunrise and the sunset,
but the buttons won't be suited to people who prefer very simple, easy to operate devices.
And you'll probably need to keep the manual unless you're a Olympic level Kinder Surprise assembler.
Another feature of the Lumie Bodyclock that I really like is the reading light. All you
need to do is press the button to change the brightness level and then it will stay that
way anytime you want it to. You can choose any of the incremental brightness levels,
just the one that you find comfortable to read, and I find this much more warm and comfortable
light to read than my normal lamp. So yeah, I’ve removed that and I’m just using the Bodyclock
now. What I like as well is that when you do have the light selected and you're ready to go to bed,
you can just put your book down and hit the sunset button and then it will start from there,
or you can change the brightness a little bit and start the sunset from there. So for me it
works really well as a reading light and I’m using it all the time at the moment. And if
you'd like to sleep with the night light on, you can also choose a dimmer setting and the sunset
will fade to that color rather than darkness. I don't use that feature personally, but it's a
useful one for people who don't like to sleep in the dark. The night light will stay on all night
if you want it to and, again, you can choose the brightness, such as a deep red or a warm orange.
Okay, so now let's talk about the audio side of the wake up light. For me, I think the
most important thing to take into account is the fact that it does have a radio and inbuilt sleep
sounds. And actually, I do quite a lot of reviews of white noise machines so I feel like I’ve got a
good understanding of what makes a decent set of white noise and nature sounds that you can listen
to when you're falling asleep or waking up in the morning. So I’ll be talking about those as well as
the radio. Now, this is also one of the areas that I think could potentially be a deal breaker for
some people, mainly because it doesn't have DAB, just FM, and also because there's no audio input,
and also because the speaker isn't that great. However, it did win a Quiet Mark
award specifically for not being a particularly loud device that can interfere with other people
in the surrounding area. So it's worth bearing in mind that it’s not designed to be a loud speaker.
So, let's have a listen to the radio and some of the sounds. There are five radio station presets,
which you have to manually find and save, and the display doesn't name the station.
[Music: Lizzo - Good as
Hell (feat. Ariana Grande)] [Music: tears for fears – shout]
As for the sounds, it's great that there's so much variety. There's 15 different inbuilt
sounds to choose from. Some of them are good, like the birds and the thunderstorm;
others are a bit more dubious, like the ping pong and goats - not really my style. I timed
them on about a minute and a half loop, which is longer than a lot of white noise
machines so it's pretty good in that respect. Let's have a listen to a few of the sounds.
[Animal and nature sounds
play]
The speaker quality, for me, just doesn't match the light. It's fairly quiet and lacking in bass
really, so although it's acceptable for quiet listening in bed, if you're an audiophile you
might be disappointed. I review a lot of white noise machines as well, and this one wouldn't mask
external noise as well as most of those do. So yeah, this is really one for quiet listening. It's
also a shame there's no audio input or Bluetooth functionality, so you can't listen to another
audio device. If you don't like the radio or the inbuilt sounds then that could be a deal breaker
for some people, but for me it's really all about the light with this device, and the audio is just
something that I use from time to time. Now, having said all that, I do like the fact that
you can choose to have the light on its own, or the light and the audio, or just the audio.
It's good that they give you that flexibility, and really, if you are going to use it as an alarm
clock then, you know, why not have some radio come on with the light in the morning? It's better than
having no noise at all if you're a heavy sleeper and you don't tend to wake up without any sound.
Okay, now let's talk about some pros and cons quickly. For me, the most important pro is that
it just works really well as a wake up light. I love the fact that the LED lights in there just
fade really nicely from bright white down to a deep red. It just works really well as a sunset
simulator and also as a sunrise simulator. A lot of wake up lights, especially the budget ones,
tend to jump through the colors, and this one just has a really nice fading effect.
It just works really well and it's done well I think. Secondly, I like the fact that there's
a lot of different functionality. You can really change the features and adapt them and have a lot
of flexibility to get the settings just how you want them. I like the fact that you can change the
times of the sunset and the sunrise independently. You can change it from 15 to 90 minutes, and
there's just lots of different ways that you can adjust the settings. I also like the fact that the
design is quite nice. It doesn't look too big on a bedside table, it's quite small and unobtrusive,
it just looks quite nice sat there as well. I also like the fact that you can have some audio
if you want to and even though it's going to be in one of the cons, it's good that it's got,
you know, the radio if you want it and some sleep sounds built in. So there's a lot of different
options to play around with the sunrise and the sunset, which is really the main thing for me:
it's got flexibility and the different light settings which are really good.
As for the cons, for me, I think there's really four things to consider. Firstly the price - it's
not a cheap device. As I say, I paid £ 109.99 for it in the UK. Secondly, is the fact that the audio
isn't done particularly well. It would have been nice to have a DAB radio built in, and I know the
more expensive model does, but this one doesn't - just FM. And the sleep sounds and the radio,
they're just not particularly loud either which may or may not be a good thing depending on your
point of view. Yeah, I think the audio could have been done a bit better to match the quality of the
light. Thirdly, the fact that the instructions are just quite long because there's so many
buttons and features and functions that it's quite tricky to work out how to use it at first. So if
you're not someone that likes poring through a manual and playing with different settings,
and kind of having to understand the fact that the buttons aren't exactly the most intuitive, then
this might not be the one for you. And finally, there is the fact that it just looks a little bit
dated in terms of the actual control and the timer panel there. I think it could have been
modernized a little bit. But for me, those are really the only cons and they're kind of not too
bad considering how well it performs as a wake up light in my opinion. So my final verdict is that
as a wake up alarm clock and a sunrise simulator the Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 is fantastic. I
really like using it for those features. Sure, the audio is a bit underwhelming, and the instructions
and the buttons aren't exactly the most intuitive. But once you get to grips with those, I think it
does its main job really, really well. So there you go, that's my review of the Bodyclock Shine
300. I hope that you found this video helpful. If you did, and you'd like to buy it then you
can find a link to do so below in the description. And also please subscribe to my YouTube channel so
you keep in touch and see future videos. Thanks again, this is Ethan from No Sleepless Nights.