I grabbed the Buffbee mostly because I was tired of waking up to my phone alarm and immediately checking notifications. The idea of a dedicated alarm clock that also plays white noise sounded like a two birds, one stone situation.

Setup takes about 2 minutes. Plug it in, set the time, pick your alarm sound and sunrise duration. Nothing complicated here. The display dims automatically at night which is a nice touch, you dont want a glowing clock face staring at you while trying to sleep.

The sunrise feature is the main selling point and it works better than I expected. The light starts as a faint orange glow and gradually brightens to a warm white over whatever interval you set. I use 20 minutes. By the time the actual alarm tone kicks in, I’m already half awake which makes the whole morning less painful.

Sound quality on the white noise side is… fine. Its not going to replace a dedicated machine like a SNOOZ or Dreamegg. But for background noise while falling asleep, the rain and ocean sounds are good enough. The fan sounds are a bit tinny if I’m being honest. I wouldn’t buy this purely as a sound machine, but as a bonus feature on top of the sunrise alarm? Hard to complain at this price.

One thing that bugged me, the buttons on top are all the same size and shape. In the dark you’re basically pressing them by memory until you figure out the layout. Took me about a week to stop hitting the wrong one.

Battery backup keeps the time if you unplug it, but the alarm and sounds need wall power. So its not a travel option.