I bought this small $10 clock so I could avoid looking at my phone in the morning. The alarm is progressive and the ticking is as close to silent as possible. There’s a button to illuminate the time in the dark that also doubles as a snooze button. Perfectly simple and useful. — CD

The strange American habit of switching hours twice a year for Daylight Savings is a real bummer if you have wall clocks. Glancing at a clock, BTW, is a lot more handy than pulling out a phone. The solution to Daylight Savings hassle is to get an “atomic radio” wall clock which uses radio signals from government atomic clocks to keep perfect time and update themselves during seasonal changes. They come in analog or digital varieties. For several decades we’ve used La Crosse analog atomic clocks (about $22) in our kitchen and office for constant precise time and never need to think about them. — KK