Lighten Up! - $19.95 Uses Your Own Lamp.

This light does what it's supposed to do well and at a reasonable price. If you've never tried a light alarm, you should. It is a gentle, peaceful and effective way to wake up and it feels more natural and relaxing. I wake up happier.I've owned the more expensive type of sunrise light that's made to look and operate like a bed table alarm clock and I prefer the Lighten Up 308. The 308 has a more even light increase, it is completely silent and so far has remained cool while operating. Also, it can handle up to 300 Watts (the competitor only 200) so if you really want to light up a room you can. And the 308 is much less expensive than competing models. I prefer to have a separate alarm next to the bed, so don't need something that looks like an alarm clock to handle the light, too. The 308, and the tangle of lamp power cords plugged into it, sit on the floor under the bed out of the way. The table top unit I owned meant that the power cords were in the way. I use the 308 as a set-it-and-forget-it unit, kind of like a light timer.If you want to use the lights during the day, have the 308 stay on for the maximum time after full illumination is reached and use the switches on the lights to turn them off and on, then you need to remember to turn them back on before you go to bed. Or you could just dedicate a couple of lights to the 308 and have different lights for regular use. Or you could leave the 308 in reach and use its manual light switch.The only cons are that the instructions are somewhat vague and the timing needs to be set for each day of the week. But, it wasn't that hard to figure out and now that it is set, it just lies on the floor and does it's thing. Also, it comes with a warning that it could be damaged if it is unplugged or loses power while the lights connected to it are on. So, if you want to turn the lights it controls off manually, you need either to use their switches or use the 308's control panel. You can't use a powerstrip or unplug it. This warning also means that there is a risk that a power outage while the lights are on could damage it, but this is a small risk. You can unplug it from the wall once the lights connected to it are turned off.Finally, none of the sunrise alarms work with CFL or LED light bulbs. They only work with old-fashioned incondescent bulbs. Since the light alarm is on for only about an hour a day, the energy loss is not great. Someday the technology may advance to the point where light alarms can work with LED's but apparently it hasn't happened yet.Overall I am very pleased with this purchase. So far (about a week) it's worked well and does exactly what I need it to do.UPDATE: Have used for about 5 months and it still works great. The only minor issue I have with it is that it's internal clock tends to run fast so I needed to adjust it once.UPDATE: Have owned this for over a year now and it still works great.UPDATE: Over two years and working fine, though it still runs a bit fast. Happy to own this product.

Works fine, except supposedly using anything but an incandescent will break it. So, I used an incandescent. It worked for a while, months even, but now it has completely failed. The screen won't display anything and the buttons do nothing. It functions entirely as an extremely expensive light switch now.A proper engineer could have made it much more robust, capable of utilizing dimmable LEDs, etc. It should not have broken so quickly, even though I followed all of the directions. It seems like an amateur electronics project.

Now that it's pitch black at 6AM, I do find this helps me wake up more gradually. I've only been using it a few days, but I like it and already ordered a second one to try out on my kids. I'm one of those people who likes to set the alarm clock early and hit the snooze bar a half dozen times before eventually dragging myself out of bed. I still hit the snooze bar a few times, but this seems to make the transition easier, and the gradual light isn't as jarring as my wife turning on the overhead light in the room all of the sudden.It wasn't obvious to me from the picture, but there is an on/off/timer switch on the control unit so you can turn the lamp on and off during the day if you need to use it to read or whatever. (It attached to the lamp by my bedside, so I'll turn it on a bit before bed to read, and the move it into Timer mode.) This was important since I am using this on my bedside table and was worried I wouldn't be able to use the lamp for anything other than an alarm clock.I absolutely recommend this, but I will list a few cons like some other people have:1. Lights: It only works with incandescent bulbs. This is not a big deal (don't mind wasting a few extra watts for a short time per day), but it may be hard to find incandescent 60W bulbs in a few years. It would be nice if it worked with dimmable LEDs, but I'm hesitant to try it given the warnings. I may just start hoarding 60W bulbs.2. Controls: Not too bad to use, but could be better. My main complaint there was that there didn't seem to be an obvious way to skip a day. I don't really want the thing to go off on Saturday and Sunday, but the only option for that seems to be to just leave it turned off on the weekend. (Just moving the switch in the "off" position for the weekend seems like the only solution to this, but then I have to remember to move it back on Sunday night.) Also, doing the exact same setting for M-F was a little tedious. A simple weekend/weekday setting probably would have been preferable for 95% of the users who get up the same time M-F. The interface was also slightly unclear when the value was saved, but it ended up pretty much working as I had hoped.