Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsExtremely promising but misses the mark in a few major ways
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2020
I bought the Wakey almost as soon as it was released and used it for about eighteen months. This is an extremely promising product and a v2.0 (or a good firmware update) could make it perfect, but it's not there yet and it doesn't look like it ever will be - as of the date of this review (2020-10-17) the firmware hasn't been updated in well over a year.
All the features are, at a glance, great. White noise generator, Bluetooth speaker, Qi charging, alarms - all of this sounds great, and it *almost* is. To be clear, certain features are perfect, or at least work as expected. As an example, Qi charging pads are notoriously finicky and that's no different here, but if a buyer knows what to expect then they can't fairly claim to be disappointed. The brightness issue has been mostly resolved via firmware update, sound quality is solid, the alarms are all pleasant-sounding and work as expected.
Where the Wakey really falls down is in and around its Bluetooth functionality. Connecting to the Wakey to set alarms or play music is fine. What's a real drag is that the Wakey requires an active Bluetooth connection for white noise. In fact, the Wakey itself doesn't seem to have a white noise generator, but instead, the white noise is streamed over Bluetooth. There are a few of problems with this design:
- My wife and I both like to have white noise, but our sleep schedules aren't necessarily perfectly aligned. To have white noise, my phone needs to be paired and streaming the white noise over, so if I wake up earlier and leave the bedroom the white noise stops - or if I need to work late she's stuck trying to fall asleep without the white noise.
- Sometimes the Bluetooth connection is a bit spotty and the white noise skips and stutters. This is every bit as distracting as one would think. This has awakened me countless times, and ultimately is the reason I retired the Wakey.
- Connecting as a Bluetooth speaker means that all sounds come out of the Wakey at night. I use Do Not Disturb on my phone, but some contacts are still set to ring through and instead of just pinging my phone, it comes through the Wakey. Since the volume is set reasonably high for white noise, the ringer or text tone is then very loud.
The wounds are salved somewhat by just how customizable the white noise is - all the different options can be set to individual volume levels, so if you want quiet farm animal noises underneath a loud rain, you can have that - but not having a basic white noise built into the Wakey is a real missed opportunity bordering on false advertising.
The other particularly irksome characteristic surrounding Bluetooth is the Wakey's propensity to reconnect to my phone randomly. I'll disconnect my phone from the Wakey when I get up, make some coffee, head into my office, and the next thing I know the text messages I'm receiving are coming through the Wakey and waking up my newborn and my wife. Or maybe I'm standing on the road in front of my house watching my kids ride bikes and I miss a phone call because I'm just in range of the Wakey and it's decided to connect again and now my ringer goes through the Wakey instead of the phone speaker. It's little stuff like this, every single day.
I think all of this could be fixed via a firmware update, but here we are in October 2020 running firmware 0.60, same as the summer of 2019. I hope Anker will address some of these issues but at this point I would be very surprised.
The Soundcore Wakey is decent, but I didn't spend $99 for "decent" and that's why the Wakey is so disappointing. I'd consider buying a v2.0 if these issues were addressed because it's *such* a promising product, but otherwise it's a bit difficult to recommend.
