Digital watch with an alarm that will wake me up?

January 2, 2013 1:52 PM

I'm looking for a pretty cheap digital watch that has an alarm that will actually wake me up.

I'm traveling and would rather not have a separate battery-powered alarm clock. But I also don't want to spend an arm and a leg. Anyone have any experience with a digital watch with an alarm that will actually wake me up?

Thanks so much!

posted by makethemost to technology (8 answers total)

Do you have a smartphone? That's what I use.

Has the benefit of making you open your eyes, stare at a way-too-bright light and try to touch the screen enough to make it shut up. It's a hard to hit snooze on something like that.
posted by royalsong at 1:58 PM on January 2

You don't even need a smartphone: even the a bottom-of-the-line membrane-keypad monochrome dumb-phone will almost certainly have an alarm clock. And -- at least on the old Nokias I've had -- the alarm works even if the phone is entirely switched off.
posted by pont at 2:03 PM on January 2

Some additional information: I'm traveling and as such will have no other electronic gadgets with me. No cell phone for five months!
posted by makethemost at 2:03 PM on January 2

I'm traveling and as such will [not] have any other electronic gadgets with me. No cell phone for five months!

That doesn't really follow. Especially because it's nice to have a cell phone that you could use, if necessary, even if it is actually too expensive to use (or you could get a local pre-paid SIM card for local calls). Alternately, travel alarm clocks are pretty small and likely have volume control.

The Casio F91W is the canonical cheap watch with an alarm. How loud is it? Depends how deep a sleeper you are. It would probably wake me up.
posted by deanc at 2:12 PM on January 2

I'm a pretty sound sleeper. I wear a cheap Casio sports watch. When it's on my arm, I can sleep through the alarm. When I take it off and sleep with it on the pillow/night stand/tent pocket it's loud enough to wake me from all but the deepest sleep.
posted by piedmont at 2:15 PM on January 2

I can't recommend Casios, as the ones I'm familiar with aren't particularly loud (some are louder than others but none impressively so), and worse, only seem to beep for about 30 seconds come alarm time. Which means I'm prone to sleeping through it completely. If those issues won't be a hindrance, they'll be fine. But they've proven that a dedicated travel alarm is a better solution for me.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:39 PM on January 2

I'm a sound sleeper and my F91W wakes me up just fine when I use it.
posted by MuffinMan at 1:45 AM on January 3

piedmont, MuffinMan: my cheap Casio wakes me up reliably too (even for "get up at 4 to catch a flight" type situations where I'm in deep sleep), but I take the questioner's specification of "an alarm that will actually wake me up" to mean that the standard watch alarms don't do the job for him.

makethemost: consider a watch with a vibrating alarm -- look at online stores for the deaf and hard of hearing, who tend to stock such things. See also this thread.
posted by pont at 6:16 AM on January 4