You can choose for the lamp to follow the natural sunrise and sunset times based on your location, which in most of the world changes a little day by day. Or you can set custom times in the app. I didn’t want the lamp’s sunset actually to begin at 7:30 pm every day, so I set my sunset to 9:30 pm. As night fell each day, the lamp would slowly reduce its blue light, just as a normal sunset does. It signals your body to start winding down and readying for sleep.
You can also set how gradually the lights fade in and out, respectively—up to an hour—and the brightness and temperature of the light. The lamp can be connected to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant if you’d like to integrate it into your smart home, but it isn’t required.
I did have some issues. Sometimes the light routine got stuck when I plugged in the lamp or turned it on, and I had to toggle one of the four “schedule override” settings on and off to get the lamp to enter its preprogrammed routine. These overrides let you set the light for a specific task, including sleeping, reading, relaxing, and working.
Using it outside your bedroom is also odd. Assuming you don’t live in a dorm room or a studio apartment, you’ll have to carry the Skyview 2 into your bedroom each night and plug it into a wall so that the sunrise function wakes you up in the morning. It won’t do you any good if it’s going through its sunrise routine in some other part of the house where you’re not sleeping. But then you’ll have to pick it up and move it into another room—an office, the living room, or wherever you spend much of your day—to benefit from its all-day light-shifting pattern and sunset routine. If you find yourself annoyed or slowed down by small tasks like that, it’s something to keep in mind.
The lamp itself is built well. The wide, metal base prevents it from tipping over from anything less than a good whack, and the light enclosure is so thick you could probably knock down bowling pins with it. The lens is frosted enough that I could look right at it without blinding myself. It also stayed cool to the touch, no matter how long it’d been on 100 percent brightness.
So, Did It Light Up My Life?