Our quick take
Pure Twilight - 4.0 / 5
The touch-senstive Daylight lamp has been designed so that it can be turned on or off with one touch, while the brightness can be increased or decreased by keeping your hand on the surface until the light reaches the desired level. The brightness levels runs from 0 right up to an eye-blistering (not literally) 100. We’re not entirely sure that the highest brightness level needs to be quite that high as it’s far too bright to be used as a reading lamp, but it’ll certainly wake you up. We found the touch-sensitivity of the lamp to be a little temperamental - sometimes it responded to one touch and switched on or off, but sometimes it didn’t, although it seemed to work better when touched with the palm of the hand, rather than a just a digit or two. The general idea is that you set the lamp to come on before your alarm goes off so that you’re woken up gradually and gently. You can choose the amount of time that it takes for the lamp to reach full brightness. You can “snooze” the alarm either by touching the top of the lamp or by tapping the snooze button - with the alarm sounding again after 9 minutes. There are four independent alarms so that you can set separate alarms for weekdays and weekends, waking to a tone, digital or FM radio or natural sounds (along with the lamp, or course). You can also use the sleep timer to set the lamp to turn off gradually when you go to bed.
The selection of pre-programmed colour sequences comprises ocean, fire, wheat field, party and Rainbow. The Fire mode might sound slightly alarming, but it’s actually desinged to recreate the flickering of a fireplace, rather than something that the emergency services need to get involved in. The ocean option is a blend of greens and blues, wheat field offers yellows and greens and the rainbow option runs though the entire colour gamut. The Party mode is similar to a mobile disco, perhaps not something that you need on your clock radio, but it’s always nice to have the option. There’s also room to programme in three presets of your own if none of the mood options on offer float your boat. The fact that the lamp can be used as a nightlight means that it’s ideal for kids as well, and there’s even a selection of lullabies to choose from. The Twilight also offers Pure Sounds - a selection of continuous sound effects to help you to drift off to sleep, wake you up in the morning or simply to relax during the day. You can choose from babbling brook, crackling fire, ocean ambience, wind chimes, forest ambience, lapping waves, dawn chorus, cicadas (an insect sound), cockerel, church bells and our personal favourite - rain with thunder and lightning. There’s also a retro alarm and a digital alarm tone to choose from.
When it comes to the radio, you can programme in up to 30 presets for easy access to your favourite stations (both DAB and FM). In terms of audio, the Twilight is equipped with 2 x 2.5-inch full range drive units, offering a total power output of 5W. This means that the unit offers a pretty strong sound for a radio alarm clock, and manages to avoid the low-quality, tinny sonics offered by some cheaper competitors. On the rear of the radio, you’ll find connections for the power supply and headphones as well as an auxiliary input for hooking up iPods and MP3 players. There’s also a Mini-USB for software updates, along with a Pure PowerPort - a USB socket for connecting compatible devices such as mobile phone chargers and USB fans. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer enough juice to power anything with more than 500mA of current - so you won’t be able to use it to charge your iPad or iPhone, for example.
To recap
Not the cheapest alarm clock DAB radio around, but the flexible wake-up lamp, mood lighting and sound effects make this a good choice
