When I wind down at night, I sleep better, But I often forget to, I get stressed about tomorrow, and end up sleeping worse because of it.

The Hatch Restore 2 has a ton of features that completely solve these issues.

The Overview

This is hands down the best bedtime ritual/wind-down machine on the planet. I was super impressed with the app’s polish and ease of use. The sunrise effect and adjustability are also pretty decent and bright enough to be effective.

If you’d like a sunrise alarm clock but also love the idea of improving your nighttime routine, this is a great buy for the price.

Pros

  • The app and routine builder are very well done
  • Looks great on the nightstand, unlike many other clocks!
  • The sunrise is powerful enough to be effective
  • The light is fairly flicker-free!

Cons

  • The sunrise light is a bit dim compared to other options
  • You have to pay a subscription fee for routine features
  • Emits EMF, this is a downside to some

The Hatch Restore 2

The Hatch Restore 2 is essentially a sunrise alarm clock that doubles as a bedtime/morning routine creator.

First of all, I think this thing is gorgeous (I like industrial design):

front of hatch restore on table

The Restore also comes in three colors, I got the Putty version.

hatch restore 2 model colors
Pictured left to right: Latte, Putty, and Slate

And it looks great on a nightstand!

hatch restore sideways in bedroom

It comes with a cute little fold-out instruction manual that walks you through the physical controls:

hatch restore instruction booklet
It’s pretty simple.

The two buttons on the top, Rest and Rise allow you to easily start, stop, and fast forward through your chosen routines (more on that later).

hatch restore top buttons
They’re big and easy to find in the dark.

Tapping above or below the clock face will change the brightness of whatever light is being displayed while tapping on the left or right will change the volume.

pressing brightness button on hatch restore
I found the controls responsive and easy to use.

And that’s pretty much it for the actual physical controls!

The Subscription Model

Hatch+ costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year ($4.16 per month) and gives you access to the routine features of the app.

hatch restore 2 free version app
The free version is essentially a sunrise alarm clock + white noise machine.
hatch app homepage
The paid version unlocks the routine builders.

Now some people throw up at the sight of another subscription, but if you’re not already drowning in them, I thought the routine builder was super well done and I enjoyed using it, Hatch is also constantly adding new content. So if this has a chance of improving your sleep routine, I think it’s worth the cost.

Plus I think there’s this element of “I’m paying for this so I better use it” that can help you stick to your routine and take your sleep more seriously.

Plus it comes with a free month so you can try it out and see if you like it!

So What’s in the App Anyways?

Given all the subscription model hate online, I was expecting to dislike this product.

But wow did this app blow me away! It just feels like the perfect combination of settings and features and they’re all executed well.

hatch near bed

It feels like I made it. So let’s see what it’s all about.

Clock and Display Settings

This may seem like a boring place to start… but there was even some nice thought put into this!

You can do things like change the daytime or nighttime clock face brightness or even have it turn off completely at night. If you have the clock face off at night, you can tap the clock to turn it back on temporarily.

OR, if you know you’re the type to stress out over what time it is when you wake up in the middle of the night, you can strategically turn this feature off, so you can’t be tempted to find out!

clock and display settings
24-hour time is also an option.

Let’s get into the real meat though…

App Homepage

On the homepage, you’ll find several things arranged in order.

  • Cue to Unwind
  • Unwind
  • Sleep
  • Sunrise Alarm
  • Morning Moment
hatch app homepage
further down hatch app homepage

These might seem overwhelming and confusing at first but they’re not. Let’s start from the top and work our way down.

Cue to Unwind

The cue is essentially a light and sound combo that reminds you it’s time to chill the F out and get ready for bed. You probably need this, we all do.

Stop doom scrolling, stop checking your email, turn off the TV, stop working on your stressful side project (me cough cough), and go chill out.

hatch cue to unwind settings
Set this cue an hour or so before your bedtime.

Read a book, make some tea, stretch, meditate, journal, you know.

You can set the volume for this high so you hear it outside of your bedroom, and then just turn it down once you need to.

Unwind

The Unwind section lets you create 3 routines, which can be started anytime by pressing the Rest button on top of the clock.

There are premade routines you can choose from (and edit) or you can make your own!

unwind routine selection screen

These “routines” are a series of “steps”. These include meditations, short fictional stories, little podcasts, narrative adventures, classical music, lo-fi, nature soundscapes, ASMR, etc.

There are many options to choose from, and several of them “randomize” daily. Hatch is also constantly adding more content to the selection as well.

For example. When writing this article, “It’s Crime for Bed” has over 140 tracks, meaning every night you’ll get a different story. It would take you over 4 months before you heard a repeat! And by then there would be more.

hatch app its crime for bed details

Customizing the Steps

Now each step has its own set of customizations.

You can change the volume as well as the length of the step, however, some steps are hardcoded to their times such as the Its Crime for Bed episodes which are always about 17 minutes long.

its a crime detials screen

Many come with their own special dynamic “light pairing” such as the blood orange sunset lighting found in the Its Crime for Bed episodes, you can, of course, change this to any other lighting you’d like.

The lighting options range are:

  • Sunsets
  • Solid
  • Dynamic
lighting options screen

There are just a ton of options that allow you to dial in a routine that feels unique and special to your tastes and moods.

Putting it All Together

The power of the Hatch routine builder really shines once you build one specific to you.

Let me give you an example:

Imagine you’re preparing for bed with a calming 20-minute yoga or stretching session. Afterward, as you get into bed, you’ll listen to a relaxing story to wind down. Once the story ends, you’ll transition into a peaceful 5-minute meditation. Finally, you’ll drift off to the soothing sounds of nature, which will gradually fade out, helping you fall into a deep, restful sleep.

Sounds pretty nice I think! And the best part is once you have this setup you just press the button and go, the audio and light cues help to keep your mind on what you should be doing.

Here’s what that looks like:

hatch restore routine screenshot

I quite like history so I went with the history stories 😀

Sleep

After your routine finishes, you have the option of turning on a “sleep” function.

This essentially plays ambient white noise either for a specified amount of time or until you tap the rest button again.

white noise sleep settings
You can also use a light here, but I wouldn’t.

I think it’s pretty cool that the Unwind routine can transition straight into white noise if you want that. If you’re curious, we’ve recorded all of the options for you to preview here:

And up next, we finally have the sunrise feature!

Sunrise

For the sunrise, you can select from 11 different sunrise effects and various kinds of audible alarms.

hatch restore sunrise light and sound options

Here is where you select your sunrise:

hatch restore sunrise selection screen
These are all mostly the same, with some exceptions… which we go over below!

The actual sunrise itself can be customized for time, day, total brightness, and duration:

hatch restore 2 sunrise settings
Sunrise duration can be set anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes and will finish its ramp-up at the specified alarm time.

There are quite a few audible alarm options, I tend to avoid these on sunrise alarm clocks but you may want them, so we’ve recorded the sounds for you to preview here if you’d like 🙂

Morning Moment

Now after you wake up and turn off the sunrise, you can set up your morning moment, which is kind of like the opposite of an evening routine.

morning moment section
Here I have a short 4-minute guided movement routine followed by some jazz.

Again, it’s a little thing, but I liked this additional feature. Here’s what the detailed selection screen looked like for both of these options:

rise and shine selection screen
sunrise jazz piano details screen

There are more meditations, music, and some of Jaida Hall’s motivations if that’s your thing (certainly wasn’t mine)…

morning moment audio selection options

But overall the Morning Moment is a nice touch to round out the Hatch Restore 2’s routine features.

Testing the Hatch Restore 2

Of course, we put the Hatch Restore 2 through our usual in-depth light testing, let’s dive in!

Total Light Output

We started by placing the Restore inside our integration sphere. This allows us to measure lumens or total light output as well as the ramp-up for each sunrise to see which ones we like best!

hatch restore 2 inside integration sphere 2
Here is the Restore read to be shut in the sphere!

Since the Restore has many different sunrises, we wanted to see if some were better than the rest.

This is the kind of sunrise ramp-up we like to see, a gradual logarithmic increase:

And here are all of the Restore’s sunrises over 30 minutes or so:

As you can see, many of them are odd. Tropical Morning starts quite quickly, not so good. Conquering Fuji just never gets very bright, so it’s useless. Morning Stroll has a slow build-up and then a very sudden increase, not ideal. Same with Portland Lighthouse after it dips.

In my opinion, the best sunrise effect comes from Morning in Prague. The ramp is best with this one, and it’s also one of the brightest.

Here’s a video showing what the sunrise effect looks like.

All told this isn’t the brightest sunrise alarm clock we’ve tested, but it’s certainly bright enough directionally, which we’ll go over next.

Lux Measurements

Since what’s important is the lux, let’s look at that next. I recommend starting your sunrise at around 250 lux which can be achieved with the Restore.

hatch restore 2 lux testing
Testing the Restore’s lux output at about 6 inches.

Let’s look at the lux data from Morning in Prague since that’s our favorite sunrise.

hatch restore 2 lux distance data from morning in prague
Deep pink indicates a higher chance of early or delayed awakening.

If the hatch is about a foot away, it’s quite easy to achieve 250 lux, and at this distance, you’d even want to dim it to around 75 percent to start.

Either way, the Hatch Restore 2 is quite useful as a sunrise alarm clock.

Flicker Testing

For those concerned with light flicker, the Restore performs quite well here!

hatch restore 2 flicker testing
We also test each lamp with our LabFlicker meter.

No matter what mode we put the Restore on, the flicker never entered a high-risk waveform pattern, so there’ss nothing to worry about here.

Overall Thoughts and Impressions

I’m pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed using the Hatch Restore 2!

The subscription fee to unlock the full breadth of features is a turn-off to some I think, but even without that, it’s a very user-friendly sunrise alarm clock with scheduling and white noise noise features.

It’s also hands down one of the best-looking sunrise clocks out there if that’s important to you!

Hatch Restore 2 Sunrise Alarm Clock

hatch restore 2 product image

Pros

  • The app and routine builder are very well done
  • Looks great on the nightstand, unlike many other clocks!
  • The sunrise is powerful enough to be effective
  • The light is fairly flicker free!

Cons

  • Sunrise light is a bit dim compared to other options
  • You have to pay a subscription fee for the routine features
  • Emits EMF, this is a downside to some

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