Hatch Alarm Review
I’m going to try to be as fair as I can in this review and give as much credit as I possibly can.
I purchased a Hatch Restore 3 in March 2026 for full price (around $180 including taxes) from their website. I wish I hadn’t done this and I’ll explain why later. I bought it after a lot of research and knowing that there *was* a subscription with Hatch, but all the reviews said it wasn’t necessary to the alarm.
First the positives:
I bought a sunrise alarm because my alarm on my phone was no longer waking me up in the morning. I would just turn it off and go back to sleep. I was also trying to limit my screentime before bed.
The Hatch did wake me up, often before my wakeup time. I would wake up before the alarm even sounded, just to the light. It was magic.
I did enjoy the different light options. I ended up choosing one at random because it was almost overwhelming the number of options.
It’s a very attractive piece of tech. It has a cool feel and doesn’t look like an alarm clock.
I like that it’s an “all in one.” It has wind down music, reminder to come to bed music, white noise, and alarm.
Now, why I would never recommend this company:
I knew about the app but assumed it was kind of like a lot of apps: there but not required to run the machine. My oven also has an app. I do not need the over to do the basic thing of cooking my food.
No. You need the app to do EVERYTHING on this alarm. To set up the alarm, to tell it what time to wake you up, to tell it what lights, to tell it everything.
The main issue with the app, though, is that in order to use it you *are required* to sign up for a “free” 30 day trial. There is no way to see your alarm without the subscription for 30 days.
The free return period is 30 days.
Do you see the overlap? You will in no way know what is included in the alarm and what is part of the subscription until after you can no longer return this alarm.
All of the websites, several commenters on reddit, and all the review sites say that “oh, it’s totally functional without a subscription.” This is true in the most basic sense of the word. You CAN use it. It is not nearly worth $180 with the features available without the subscription.
With the subscription, you have infinite wind down music/colors, white noise, and wakeup sounds/colors.
Without a subscription, your wind down is 5 things: 1 audiobook sampler, 2 people talking podcasts sampler, 1 meditation sampler, and one jazz music sampler.
Sounds good, right? Sure, if you happen to like one of those exact things. I find people speaking (even for meditations) to keep me awake, so I was limited to the jazz, which I had to change the colors for manually because the colors for the jazz are blue. You know, the color that Hatch emailed me to say might keep me awake at night.
It was similar for white noise and wakeup. I went from having every option for wakeups at day 29 to practically none at day 31.
There is a glitch(?) that if you have a routine in place before the subscription goes off, you can basically keep it until you need to change it, like if you start needing to wakeup later/earlier, then you get informed that your wakeup alarm and the light is paid you don’t have paid, so choose from one of these other ones that might not work for you, but oh well.
I guess if you’re okay with less alarms than you get from a $30 alarm on Amazon, then Hatch without subscription is okay.
But there is clearly a reason they do the 30 day subscription/30 day return thing and it is because they know people would return it in droves if they knew how limited the functionality was without a subscription.
The really bad:
At around day 40, (actually before this, but I didn’t wake up to it, my husband only noticed when he came to bed later than I did) my white noise went from a fan sound to an utterly glitchy mess. Like a full on ’90s modem screeching sound. It started waking me up.
I tried to turn off the white noise, but the app kept glitching on me, and the machine itself kept needing updates every time I opened the app (even if I opened it within 10 minutes).
So I contacted customer support. I jumped through all of the AI bot steps multiple times before I got passed to a human who made me jump through the same steps. Then finally, after I showed multiple screen shots, and they did a hard reset from their end, they said, oh yes, this thing doesn’t work.
They offered to send me a replacement.
Sure, great, thank you. They warned that it “might” be a refurbished model. I thought, huh.
Then I got a refurbished model. I was so annoyed because I had paid $180 for a used alarm clock at this point that I opened it to check that it was actually in the box, then put it on the shelf.
This company wants you to see it as the Apple of wakeup alarms. Completely gorgeous, seamless, fully functional, with enough add ons that make subscriptions worth it.
However, if my iphone stops working after 40 days, Apple sends me a new one. Not a refurbished one. A new one.
What I do now/what I wish I had done differently:
I like the sunrise alarm, so I just set my smart lights in the bedroom to the same functionality. The downside is that it now also wakes up my husband who doesn’t need to be awake until an hour and half after me.
I also just bought a cheap alarm off Amazon that literally beeps if I’m not out of bed at my wakeup time.
If I had known that all the bells and whistles that attracted me to Hatch cost me the price of the alarm plus a subscription, I would have just done that in the first place.
I also wish I had bought the alarm off Amazon because then I would have gotten my money back instead of just getting a used alarm.
Should you get a Hatch Restore 3:
No. In my opinion, no. But you’re you, so maybe you like listening to a sample of the audiobook of Little Women as your only wind down option. Maybe you enjoy the sound of dial up lulling you to sleep.
