Horizn vs. Hatch Restore 3
Straight talk up front: Horizn is pre-launch. You can't buy one yet, and the Hatch Restore 3 is a shipping product you can. This page compares what we're building (and wake up to daily) against its vendor-documented facts, sources named. Where it wins, we say so.
The Restore 3 is the best-marketed device in this category and, by several reviewers’ lights, the best you can order today. This page isn’t here to argue with that. It’s here because the Restore 3 and Horizn represent the two opposite answers to one question: should a bedside alarm depend on anyone else’s computer?
Hatch’s answer, per its own documentation, involves an app, an account, a required free-trial signup at setup, Wi-Fi, and a subscription for the full library. Horizn’s answer is a local web page on your own network, no account anywhere, and a schedule that keeps firing with the internet down. Neither answer is wrong. They’re for different people. The table below lays both out, sources named, so you can tell which person you are.
The five criteria, side by side
| Criterion | Horizn | Hatch |
|---|---|---|
| Brightness at your pillow | Room-scale light from a full LED strip along the wall, not a bedside puck. Honesty note: we haven't bench-measured lux yet. Real measured numbers will be published here when we have them, distance stated. | Hatch publishes no lux figure for the Restore 3. Wired found it bright enough to wake; Tom's Guide notes rivals like the Philips have brighter light. Absence confirmed in Hatch docs; Wired; Tom's Guide |
| Quality of the sunrise ramp | A gamma-corrected biological brightness curve with four tunable points, a separate pre-dawn glow phase, and a color-trajectory dawn (violet → magenta → ember → amber) rendered at 60 fps on a dedicated real-time core. Because the light is hundreds of individually controlled LEDs, the colors exist across space at once. The blush spreads along the wall like a sky, something a single-emitter lamp cannot do by construction. | Sunrise lead time adjustable from 5 to 60 minutes before the alarm, with settable target brightness. Hatch support docs |
| App, account, subscription | None, ever. Control is a local web page on your own network: no app store, no account, no cloud, no subscription. The alarm keeps its schedule with the internet down (network is used for time sync only). | The Hatch Sleep app and an account are required for setup, and setup requires starting a cancelable Hatch+ free trial, per Hatch's own support article on the subject. Wi-Fi is required. The full light, sound, and routine library is Hatch+ content at $4.99/month or $49.99/year; the free tier keeps the core alarm and 40+ sounds. Hatch's own support documentation |
| Power-outage behavior | If power returns mid-dawn, a catch-up mode rejoins the sunrise where it should be. Every alarm decision is logged on-device, so you can see exactly what fired and why. | Schedules run while the device is connected to Wi-Fi; Hatch documents no offline mode for the Restore 3. Hatch support docs |
| Will it work in 10 years? | Built from standard parts (ESP32 controller and commodity LED strips), with over-the-air firmware updates and no server anywhere that can take it down. | The hardware carries a 1-year warranty; setup and the full feature set route through Hatch's app, account, and servers. Its long-term life is tied to theirs. Hatch product page and support docs |
| Price | Pre-launch. Join the waitlist for first-run access | $169.99 listHatch product page |
Where the Hatch genuinely wins
- Wired rated it 8/10, bright enough to wake, with praised physical controls
- Tom's Guide, after 2–3 months of testing, judged it the best sunrise alarm you can buy online
- Genuinely lovely industrial design, consistently praised across reviews
- A deep content library of sounds and routines, and a free tier that keeps core features usable
Choose the Hatch if: you want a polished sleep ecosystem (sounds, meditations, routines, beautiful design), and an app, account, and optional subscription are an acceptable part of that deal.
And if the dawn itself is what you care about
That's the gap Horizn exists to fill. Join the waitlist for first-run access, or read the guides to see how we think.