Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 review

One-minute review

The Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 is a wake-up light that rouses less harshly than a normal alarm, and the daily or weekly alarms can be configured precisely to your personal taste in brightness, duration and sound accompaniments. Lumie claims the sunset and sunrise function “promotes production of melatonin”, and helps stop late night doom-scrolling on Twitter by promoting a more relaxed sunset wind-down.

Melatonin aside, the system is one of the best ways to wake up we’ve tried, only really outgunned by its bigger, more tech-packed siblings. Although the controls can be fiddly, and basic setup is relatively complicated, segueing into and out of sleep is a surprisingly painless experience. In addition, the dimmable bedside light function is excellent, preventing the usual scrabble in the dark for a phone charger plug.

The tech on offer in the Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 is limited though, with no Bluetooth, aux input, or DAB – just an FM radio.

If you’re looking for an excellent alarm clock and bedside light in a compact and stylish package, the The Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 is a great choice, but it’s easily outshone by its own bigger siblings, which offer a wider variety of audio choices, admittedly at higher price points.

Price and release date

The Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 was released in September 2018, and has a recommended retail price of £129 (about $180 / AU$240). That's a mid-range price for a wake-up light, sitting in between the premium Philips Somneo and the entry-level Lumie Bodyclock Spark 100.

Design

The Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 looks friendly straight out of the box, a rounded smile of an alarm clock light. The flecked grey marl cloth base conceals the speaker elements and offers a touch of recognisable smart-speaker-style class, while the domed light diffuser on top makes clear there are lighting priorities afoot.

Underneath the translucent light cover, there lurks an ISO 13485 Medical Devices, QMS standard LED bulb, which can mimic the colours of a real sunrise and sunset - warm white, orange and red. Alongside the sunset/sunrise, you get 15 built-in sounds, as well as an FM radio with the ability to store five preset stations.

At 12cm (4.7in) deep, 21cm (8.3in) wide and 18cm (7in) high, the Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 is an excellent size for the average bedside table or chest of drawers, especially as it effectively usurps any bedside lighting you may already have. It weighs in at 0.65kg (1.43lb), which gives it enough heft to not be knocked over in the early dawn scramble.

The clock can be set to nine different European languages, which is probably why the controls are mainly unlabelled, and the retail box includes a main power adaptor with a 1.8m cable.

Performance

The best thing about the Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300 is the dimmable bedside light, which toggles up from off to a low red glow, through amber and finally into a brilliant white LED blaze that's searingly bright.

This light is the heart of the device, gradually dimming to the sound of your favourite relaxing tunes (sunset setting), and similarly ramping up to your desired brightness in the morning (sunrise setting). As a wake and sleep device this is useful, and as a bedside light it’s invaluable, removing clutter and improving on a standard switched light.

Setup is a complicated business, even once you’ve managed to work out which of the three rocker controls does what, and navigating the exact detail of your wakeup or sunset snooze is surprisingly complex. For example, to set a ‘sunset’ requires setting a duration (15–90 min), a nightlight option (which controls the light level at which the sequence will finish and remain on for the rest of the night) sound type, track and volume.

Triggering the sunset (bottom right) then counts down the duration, fading the light, but not fading the audio unless you selected ‘fade’ in the volume too.

In short, the longer you play with the Lumie Bodyclock Shine 300, the more the UI seems to have been borrowed from a much more complex alarm clock/light, with dependencies that seemingly make little sense in this device. (For example, not fading the audio in sync with the light might make perfect sense if you were listening to an audiobook for example, but with only FM radio here, that’s an unlikely scenario.)

That said, once you have navigated the options and run the ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’ routines a few times, you’ll iron out any kinks pretty easily, ending up with a cheerful little sleep tool. A tap on the top lights the LCD screen briefly to check the time, and the default level of that screen is set gloriously low (it auto-dims based on ambient light), so no dazzling night-time displays here.

The FM radio can store five presets, just like in the 90s, and can also be used as a sunset or sunrise audio source. Other sources are preloaded, including birdsong, waves, white noise and crickets at night. The speaker quality is fine as an alarm clock and occasional radio, but we’re not talking premium audio by any means.

There are, inevitably, some more left-field noises, including Goats and Osprey (inexplicably), Cafe (which sounds like a raucous city centre cafe), Steam Train (Hogwarts express meets Waterloo in rush hour), and Thunderstorm (the sound of an full-on storm right overhead). Some of these are unlikely choices for a calming moment or two, but it’s a fun few moments skipping through the crazier ones which are presumably intended as alarm noises.

First reviewed October 2021

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This article is part of TechRadar's Sleep Week 2021, our in-depth look at sleep and how to snooze better. We've teamed up with experts in their field to bring you proven sleep techniques and tips to help you drift off easier, and to stay asleep for longer, and have rounded-up the very best sleep kit to transform your bedroom into a den of zen. So from Sunday 31 October to Sunday 7 November we'll be sharing interviews, features and essential buying guides with the aim of helping you to sleep better than ever.

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