I’ve used the Loftie clock + lamp combo for a little while and tested their brightness, blue light, sunrise effects, flicker, and more!

Let’s jump into it and see what these devices have to offer!

The Overview

Loftie’s two-phase alarm didn’t work for me, but if you like having an audible alarm, Loftie is worth trying. The white noise and sleep sounds are great, and I appreciated the portability and battery power. The personalized AI stories are neat but I’m not sure if they’re worth subscribing to Loftie+ for.

If you like the Loftie Clock, the Lamp is a great companion with its red light mode and dimming. But if you’re mainly interested in a sunrise effect, there are better options out there.

Loftie Clock

loftie clock product image

Loftie Lamp

loftie lamp product image

The Loftie Clock + Lamp

Loftie sells both a “two-phase” alarm clock and a sunrise lamp. If you don’t want both, they can work independently of each other.

loftie clock and lamp on table
They both have an interesting look to them.

Let’s jump into each one and their features below, or you can jump to testing here.

Getting to Know the Clock

The Loftie clock is both an alarm and an evening wind-down sound machine.

It comes equipped with a nightlight (shown below), and things like meditations, sounds, and stories to listen to before bed.

loftie clock beauty shot
It’s got a nice sleek modern design and comes in multiple colors.

The Lofite stands out from the Hatch Restore 2 because it doesn’t require a phone for full functionality, making it ideal for those who want to keep their phones out of the bedroom at night.

It comes equipped with 3 buttons for this.

top of loftie clock

The large button turns the nightlight off and on, turns off the clock face when held, and functions as a back button in the menu. The small button on the right is for selecting something, and the arrows are used for navigating and adjusting volume. I found it super easy to use!

loftie clock buttons

The clock is also battery-powered so it will function during a power outage! Charging is done via USB-C on the back.

loftie clock battery charging port

The clock face can also be changed between white and amber in the app.

loftie red mode setting

I preferred using the amber clock face:

lofite clock and lamp amber and red on nightstand

Pressing and holding the snooze button will completely turn off the clock face if you prefer a darker bedroom.

Loftie’s “Two-Phase” Alarms

In the alarms menu, you can set or edit alarms and change the volume or wake-up or get-up tones.

Now the difference between a wake-up and get-up tone is Loftie’s special sauce.

The Loftie alarm clock plays a wake-up tone for several seconds 9 minutes before you’re scheduled alarm. The idea is to rouse you gently from deeper sleep stages into a lighter sleep stage. If you have the Loftie Lamp this is also when it would begin its sunrise.

9 minutes later, the wake-up alarm is the one that’s supposed to fully wake you up.

loftie clock alarm settings in app
Alarm settings can also be changed in the app.

I’m audibly a light sleeper, so I found the first get-up tone woke me up every time no matter how I set it… so I prefer using a sunrise alarm only.

But if you prefer an audible alarm, the two-phase alarm is cool and worth trying out.

Wake Up Tones

We’ve recorded the wake-up tones here for you to preview if you’d like 🙂

Get Up Tones

And here are the get-up tones!

Sleep Sounds

Now the Loftie clock also doubles as a white noise + sound machine. I found the selection good and the audio quality was on par with a decent Bluetooth speaker.

Just select sounds:

loftie clock sounds menu option

Choose one of the many options:

loftie sounds preview
I’m partial to a good campfire.

There are a lot! Below are recordings of all the options at the time of this article.

What’s nice about the Loftie is that you can bring it anywhere you want at night. If you wanted to listen to the campfire in your reading nook before going to bed, for example, you could easily do that.

Playlists & AI Stories

Similar to the Hatch Restore, the Loftie boasts a collection of meditations, stories, breathworks, affirmations, and more.

playlist clock face

These can be started within the Loftie itself and don’t require the app or the subscription.

playlist 3
playlist 1

There are quite a decent amount of choices within each category.

Now if you pay $5 a month for Loftie+ you can create your own AI story in the app and upload it onto the clock.

stories page
All of these are do-it-yourself AI-based.

It gives several prompts and then sends a story your way! They’re full-voiced and sound pretty good, If I didn’t know any better I’d have assumed it was a real voice-over.

And they’re very relaxing and chill, perfect for evening use. However, I’d have preferred to see some kind of general “get to know me and my preferences section” so that I wouldn’t have to fill out a long questionnaire each time I wanted to make a story.

It’s a bit much to “make” my own story assuming I’d like a new one each night. It’s just too much like work for something that’s supposed to be relaxing.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth lets you play audiobooks, podcasts, or music through the clock’s speakers.

It does of course emit EMF when you do this:

emf with bluetooth transmitting

So just don’t use this feature if you prefer to avoid EMF near your bedside.

Getting to Know the Sunrise Lamp

Since I love sunrise lamps, this was what I was originally interested in from Loftie, so how is it?

Well, it’s a tall lamp, that’s for sure!

loftie lamp on table

The Loftie lamp has two buttons:

loftie lamp buttons
The small button on the bottom turns the lamp on and off and switches scenes, while the up/down rocker changes brightness.

It comes with preset options like red, orange, and reading modes.

app lamp settings

Here’s what those can look like:

loftie clock and lamp gif

But of course, it’s also got a sunrise alarm feature, which is what I was curious to try out.

Now oddly, the sunrise will start at the alarm time you set, unlike every other sunrise alarm clock out there which finishes at the alarm time, unless you pair it with the clock, at which point it starts 9 minutes before your alarm time. Weird I know.

There are 13 total sunrises to choose from:

app lamp sunrise selection

But again it’s worth noting that these only last 9 minutes and you can’t change the total brightness or duration, so it’s a fairly limited sunrise device.

Testing the Loftie Lamp!

We wanted to measure the total brightness for the Loftie lamp sunrises, so we put it into our integration sphere!

loftie lamp inside integration sphere
This allows us to capture and measure all of the light.

Lumens and Sunrise Curves

Checking total lumens, we see that the Fiji sunrise comes out on top.

The sunrise ramps themselves begin gradually which is nice, but they do rise quite dramatically near the end. Not the best.

To give you an idea of what the Fiji sunrise looks like from the Loftie Lamp here is a sped-up version:

There are some sudden increases in brightness at the end that don’t seem to show up in our 30-second test intervals, but they are also much slower than that in real time.

Lux and Proper Distances

To determine how effective the Loftie Lamp is at certain distances, we need to test lux.

testing lux on loftie lamp
Testing the directional lux of the Loftie Lamp

We can see that Fiji is still on top, but Budapest makes an appearance here as well!

This probably has something to do with the way the colors are stacked in the Budapest sunrise. Either way, these two are your best bet.

I usually recommend starting a sunrise alarm practice at about 250 lux, and since the Loftie lamp isn’t very bright, that’s somewhere between 6 and 12 inches away.

loftie lamp sunrise lux distance table
Darker pink indicates a higher chance of early or delayed awakening.

Flicker

We test flicker as well in case that’s a concern of yours.

testing loftie lamp flicker

While there is some mild high-frequency flicker, it’s the lower-frequency stuff we worry about so this isn’t too bad. Below is a table with the flicker from each sunrise.

Testing the Clock

Of course, the clock also emits light, so I was curious to see what that looked like through the brown opaque plastic at the bottom.

testing loftie clock
Getting a spectral analysis of the Loftie Clock nightlight.

Spectral Analysis

The main light is 2700K but drops down to a warmer 2300K through the plastic.

loftie clock bottom leds
Bottom view of the Loftie Clock nightlight LEDs
loftie clock unfilitered light Spectral Power Distribution Graph
loftie clock filitered light Spectral Power Distribution Graph

The plastic cuts down on the blue and increases the red, so that’s good, as this is meant to be used at night.

loftie clock nightlight filtered vs unfiltered spectral power distribution graph
Here’s a direct comparison of the filtered and unfiltered light. Kind of interesting to see that 660nm peak appears out of nowhere through the plastic!

But even the small amount of blue light left shouldn’t be a big deal. The nightlight is very dim and the lux output is less than 1 just a few inches away.

Flicker

We tested the flicker on this as well:

testing loftie clock flicker

I was happy to see that there’s barely any!

Good job Loftie.

My Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m not a big fan of the two-phase alarm; it just didn’t work for me. However, if you prefer the security that an audible alarm gives you, Loftie’s system is worth trying out.

The clock also offers some great white noise and sleep sounds and can be taken to other areas of the house since it’s portable and battery-powered, so I liked that aspect.

It also has the wind-down routine stuff packed inside, and I loved the fact that the whole thing can effectively be used without your phone nearby. Overall it’s a neat little alarm clock with a great user experience.

If you’re sold on the Loftie Clock, the Lamp is a great addition since it works hand in hand with the two-phase alarm. I also liked the red light mode and the dimming. But if you’re not getting the Clock, and are primarily interested in the sunrise effect, there are much better options.

Loftie Clock

loftie clock product image

Pros

  • Don’t need a phone or subscription to use the onboard content
  • Doesn’t emit EMF unless using Bluetooth streaming
  • Excellent sound machine with a nightlight
  • Looks great and has an easy to use menu system

Cons

  • Two-phase alarm didn’t work for me personally
  • Have to pay monthly fee for the AI stories if you want those

Loftie Lamp

loftie lamp product image

Pros

  • Red light mode is great for the bedroom
  • Rising sunrise effect is cool and interesting
  • Button controls are simple to use

Cons

  • It’s a bit expensive for what you get
  • Sunrises are a bit dim compared to other sunrise alarms

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