The Best Extreme Alarm Clocks

The Shock Clock 3 is a wearable wrist alarm clock that is extremely customizable—it vibrates, beeps, and zaps, and each setting has multiple strength settings and one to five repetitions; plus, you can customize the intervals at which the stimulus goes off. In these settings, the alarm vibrates for a set amount of times first, then beeps (if you opt for noise), and then finishes by zapping your wrist however many times you’ve set it for—the zaps at full strength can be quite painful and feel like a mild electric shock. The user can turn off the beeps and have a silent alarm through touch, which is good for people who are hard of hearing or couples sharing a bed with different wake-up times.

There are also advanced options to ensure you’re awake—you can set it to prompt you to do one to 20 jumping jacks, or if you have a printer, print out a QR code and put it elsewhere in the house so that you’re physically forced to move to take a picture of it—the alarm won’t stop sounding (or shocking) until you have completed the task.

This alarm got me up every day, but the biggest con was how glitchy it could be. Sometimes the zaps or other customizations I made wouldn’t engage despite being shown as “on,” and twice while wearing it, the device unpaired from Bluetooth while I was being shocked, and I had no way to stop the zaps until the device reconnected to the app, which took a (painful) moment. This alarm is pricey, and many other reviews noted the connectivity issues with the Bluetooth, which shouldn’t be occurring at this price point. But it woke me up every day—my skin has the red marks from zapping to prove it.

Clocky is a robot-like alarm clock on wheels that rolls away from you and falls from whatever surface you put it on. As the alarm sounds in a high-pitched R2D2-esque beeping pattern, the wheels begin to spin, so the alarm is “running away” and you’re forced to physically get out of bed to turn it off. It’s a good idea in theory, as it forces the sleeper to have to track the robot down (sort of a reverse Terminator situation). The alarm itself is pleasantly comical. Clocky catapults itself off a surface and the wheels spin backward and forward to move around the room; it doesn’t seem to have a huge range of motion, just a lot of beeping and whirring, which makes it seem more chaotic than it actually is.

While I never really had to go far to chase the alarm, it was overall successful in getting me out of bed and making me physically move, which helped me wake up for the day. The device feels cheaply made, and other reviewers cited problems with the clock keeping the set time and the alarm turning itself off while sounding (although I haven't encountered these problems).

There’s a lot going on with the Sonic Bomb alarm clock. It has a small 12-volt buzz-pad insert that vibrates the surface it’s touching—it can be placed under a pillow or fitted sheet, or between the mattress and box spring. It has a 113-decibel alarm for heavy sleepers (a standard alarm clock hovers at about 60 decibels), and the volume and pitch can be adjusted—helpful for folks with hearing loss in certain pitches or ranges. The alarm is pretty customizable—with high or low settings and adjustable pitch, volume, snooze length, alarm duration, and even the clock face's brightness. Although the vibration hovers at one level, you can choose between a vibration, buzz, or vibrate/buzz combo.

The alarm also has a place for a battery, so it doesn’t have to be plugged in to work and ensures that if the power goes out when plugged in, the alarm will still go off. I’d recommend this alarm for anyone hard of hearing or a deep sleeper—it’s highly customizable, which makes it adaptable for almost any type of snoozer.

Another vibrating alarm clock, this Roxicosly clock is one of the most reviewed nontraditional alarm clocks on Amazon. It is semi-customizable, as the buzzer goes up to 106 decibels with a bed shaker that can be used separately or together with the alarm. The vibrations provide a more subtle way to wake up by forgoing the jarring alarm sounds, and the escalating pattern of the buzzing helps ease the snoozer into wakefulness. The Roxicosly allows two set alarm times, and the snooze goes off every nine minutes. The dual alarms have five volume levels, with 106 decibels as the loudest, and the clock face has adjustable brightness in five levels.

The alarm also has optional battery backup (which requires two AAA batteries, not included) in case of power outage, plus a USB charging port. Setting the time and alarm is simple and the alarm “off” button doesn’t stick out, which minimizes the temptation to just turn off the alarm. The vibrations, along with the noise and adjustable intensity, helped me wake up more easily than other buzzing alarms—without making me feel like I needed to immediately turn it off so I didn’t have a cardiac event.