This discounted wake-up light could make getting out of bed in the mornings a little less painful

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PhilipsNobody wants to hate getting out of bed in the morning. In an ideal world, the snooze button wouldn’t have to exist — you’d be ready, willing, and well-rested enough to face the day the moment your alarm goes off. But the days are long, so it makes sense to wring out as much sleep as you can, no matter hopeless your attempts may feel.

With a wake-up light, however, those mornings might be a little less painful. You may have seen something like the Philips HF3520 before — instead of blaring a ringtone at you, the creamy white orb tries to wake you more gently, gradually brightening your room anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes before your scheduled alarm hits. It starts out dim, then goes up to an intensity of 300 lux by the time you want to get up. That should be enough to calmly snap you into consciousness, but if not, there’s still a built-in alarm (which is snooze-able) to beep you awake.

We can’t say something like this will cure a heavy sleeper, but others have, and the HF3520’s 4.3 Amazon rating (after almost 1,800 reviews) should tell you it works as advertised. If nothing else, it’s the sort of investment that should make you more conscious of how you sleep. Just try not to bury your face in your pillow.

This particular model is the highest-end entry in Philips’ lineup. It usually sits in the $120 to $140 range, but as of this writing you can use a $20 coupon to bring it down to $99. That’s still pricey for an alarm clock, but for the premium you get a higher maximum brightness, a wider variety of light colors, an FM radio, and more wake-up sounds. If all that sounds superfluous, the basic HF3500 model gets you the same general concept for $30 less.

Philips HF2520 Wake-Up Light (White), $98.41 (w/ $20 coupon), available at Amazon.