Nintendo Alarmo Version 3.0 Review: No More Half Measures

Version 3

The Nintendo Alarmo was released for Nintendo Switch Online members nearly half a year ago in October 2024. In that time, Nintendo has added a couple of new alarms: namely, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Bros. However, up until now, Nintendo hadn’t really addressed any of the major issues with the alarm that I detailed in my original review.

With the recent release of Version 3.0, Nintendo has finally improved some of the complaints I had with the original software. Obviously, there’s no fixing hardware complaints such as the screen not being OLED (and, yes, for $100, you bet your butt it should have been OLED), but there is always room for software improvements.

In version 3.0, I’m happy to report that Nintendo Alarmo is now not a total embarrassment. But it’s still not worth $100. 

Hallelujah, You Can Now Preview Alarms

First of all—and Nintendo deserves no credit for taking half a year to introduce this—but you can now preview alarms before you set them. It’s absolutely astonishing it took Nintendo this long to fix this issue, because it was so annoying to test alarms before this update. Again, this is a $100 alarm, and for that price you should expect it to be a premium experience, and not missing obvious and easy-to-implement features.

That said, it’s still better late than never.

Sleepy Sounds: Improved…Not Fixed

Secondly, you can now set sleepy sounds to play for any length of time between 1 and 60 minutes. While this is certainly welcome, you still need to set your bed-time to play sleepy sounds (you can’t just play them whenever you want, outside of a defined bed-time).

I don’t understand why there’s a 60-minute limit. Sometimes it would be nice to have ambient Nintendo music playing throughout the day. Would it kill Nintendo to just let you set Sleepy Sounds to play for any length of time you want? Why is there any limitations to begin with? I’m not going to pretend that this is a difficult issue to address. This should be easy for a multi-billion-dollar company.

Multiple Alarms: Improved… But Again, Not Fixed

Finally for the big improvements, you can now set an alarm for each day of the week. In my first review, I complained that you couldn’t set multiple alarms. But my complaint isn’t actually solved in this new update.

My problem was that I wanted to set multiple alarms throughout the same day. Or, in other words, I wanted the freedom to set unlimited alarms whenever I wanted. You know…like a smart phone, tablet, computer, or other smart alarm.

Sure, being able to set your alarm every day of the week is a welcome improvement, but why the hell is there any limitations to begin with? This is a $100 freakin’ alarm clock, and it can’t even do basic things that pretty much any other piece of tech can do.

Other, Trivial Matters

There are other minor improvements in this update, like being able to dim the screen a little bit more, and you’ll now be able to view the MAC address of your Alarmo even when you’re not connected to the Internet. Because I know everyone was just clamoring for that improvement.

Yeah, Nintendo, don’t give us a way to check the weather, or set multiple alarms, or listen to ambient music…just let us view the MAC address offline. That’s what we need. That’s what we paid $100 for.

Half Measures

Nintendo Alarmo remains a perplexing device. Instead of just fixing the glaring issues completely, Nintendo has decided to take half measures—which to be honest is even more infuriating than if they just didn’t update the device at all. Nintendo: if you’re going to through the trouble of updating this thing, why even enforce any limitations? Just correct the problems once and for all so you don’t need to release more updates.

Conclusion

Nintendo will probably improve things further, but based on this update, I don’t think Nintendo Alarmo will ever be great software-wise. And in terms of hardware, well, there’s nothing Nintendo can do.

I mentioned in my original review that Nintendo would need to add multiple new alarms per month to make this thing worth it, and clearly they haven’t done that.

So, based on Version 3.0, Nintendo Alarmo is still not worth $100, and while objectively it’s a better device than it was in late-2024, I’m somehow more disappointed in this thing now than I was back then. 

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