If you have a high frequency hearing loss (the most common kind) - then you aren’t likely to hear a thing coming out of the alarm clock of your digital watch. Alarm clocks beside the bed are a different matter- you can usually adjust the volume and have it set to a cacophonous radio station.
Before a trip that I made to Peru I did a search on the internet: “watches for the hearing impaired”. I came up with a couple places and I decided to try a watch called the VibraLight 3. This watch has a vibrating alarm clock that jolts your wrist and you awake. This seemed like just the right watch and it came in a number of nifty colors and styles reminiscent of my classic Casio.
The watch turned out to be an utter failure.
There were several times when I needed to wake myself up in the middle of the night to make it to a bus stop or an airport on time. The ramshackle places I chose to stay in didn’t offer and wake up service as an alternative. Each time I needed the alarm it ended up shutting itself off when I rolled over in bed- the sensitive alarm on/off switch was large and easily got hit in the middle of the night. All it took was one lousy toss and turn and the alarm shut off with the touch of a button. At least they could design the watch button so that you had to hold it a few seconds to really turn it off.
The vibration of the alarm is enough to wake a light sleeper like myself out of bed. But I only once experienced the alarm actually working. Instead I just figured out to use the power of suggestion and get myself to wake up on my own internal alarm clock. I successfully did this before a plane flight. I think what really happened- I was just so nervous about the alarm clock not working that I never actually fell into a deep sleep.
The watch was a real disapointment -the watch was otherwise very cool. I’ll let you know if I find one that works.
