As I work as a freelance writer, there’s no boss to glare at me if I arrive at work a little late; my daily commute is around about 3 seconds, as it consists of me walking from my bed to my computer. However, given the nature of freelance work, I have to take what I can get whenever it arises, so if I’m not up and at my desk by 9:00 a.m. I may miss out on some decent assignments and end up living off tinned tuna for the rest of the month. Again. This is why I was very intrigued when Arise advertised itself as ‘The Best Alarm Clock’.
Any alarm clock that features a fairy already has something going for it; however, the Arise fairy turns out to be a bit of a wicked witch if you snooze too late, as she emits a plethora of sounds that are designed to wake you from your slumber. However, she can also be a fairy DJ and select songs from your iTunes library with which to rouse you (hint: get rid of any ambient tunes if you want to get up early and start downloading some death metal…)
You don’t always have to use the app in the morning; if you fancy a power nap, you just tap the app a few times and you’ll be set to awake in an hour, or whatever the allotted time may be. The ease of navigation in the app is impressive, as its ‘MagicMenu’ allows you to negotiate the app with ease.
One feature that I really like about the app is that you can create volume fade-ins by specifying the start volume, end volume, and time to fade in, allowing you to have smooth awakening. You can also set alarms patterns that play at certain times apart from each other; for example, you can have one sound that auto-snoozes after two minutes only to come back five minutes later …perfect for the dozy sleeper or those that rush back to bed once they’ve silenced the alarm!
Arise isn’t just for waking you up; the app can also lull you to sleep with music from your iPod library or using one of 11 environmental sleep loops which are between 2 to 11 minutes long; the beginnings and ends of these tracks seamlessly blend so that there is no obvious point at which the sound repeats.
Summary
I was apprehensive when I saw the price tag on the app; however, Arise does so much more than a regular alarm app or your iPhone’s inbuilt alarm. The elegant, accessible interface, the quirky fairy that greets you each morning, the fact that you can play songs from your iTunes to lull you to sleep or wake you up…it all adds up to one big bargain in my eyes!
Pros
- The whole design of the app is really smooth and beautifully laid out.
- The fairy has a particularly nice face to wake up to…better than some of the faces that I’ve discovered in my bed after a drunken and debauched night!
- You don’t have to wake to an irritating BEEP BEEP BEEEEEP!!! (Unless you really want to…)
Room For Improvement
As $1.99 is fairly steep for an alarm app, maybe a promotional giveaway could be on the cards?
