The Dreamie alarm clock has helped me stop using my phone in bed.

I have achieved the unthinkable. I learned how to sleep soundly through the night without my phone next to my bed. Please applaud. I’m not sure this incredible feat would have been possible without my Dreamie alarm clock.

If you feel like you’re bragging about brushing your teeth this morning, you’re not a target of Dreamy. But I definitely do. I’m not the only one who feels so attached to my phone that I’m basically a cyborg.

I know that using your phone in bed disrupts your sleep, and that poor sleep disrupts basically everything about your mental and physical health. But before Dreamie, I spent more than a decade with my phone by my bedside every night. I’d spent tens of thousands of nights so glued to the glowing rectangle that I couldn’t imagine the horror of waking up in the middle of the night without my phone.

I am not completely helpless. Over the past few years, I’ve developed a habit of reading before bed, which has helped me feel noticeably more relaxed when it’s finally time to get some shut-eye. Still, I never slept well. (Just ask my parents, who suffered endlessly by taking me to see museum exhibits about the Titanic as a child and making me think I was going to die on the Titanic.) Sometimes, when I can’t turn my noisy brain off, the only thing that gets me to sleep is to close my eyes and listen to a podcast or audiobook (unless it’s about the Titanic).

The person who designed the Dreamie seems to be going through the same pain I am. Because what sets the Dreamie apart from other cool alarm clocks is that it’s ridiculously simple. Dreamie can play podcasts.

But before you can watch the podcast, you’ll need to zoom out first. Here’s how Dreamie works:

In “ambient” mode it’s just a regular clock, but there’s another set of modes to organize your sleep routine.

“Relaxing” begins your daily routine and signals that it is almost time to go to bed. I set it to sound like the crackling of a fireplace with a soft orange glow. This light fades and glows to mimic real fire. I leave the fireplace on for about 25 minutes and usually read a book during that time. It then goes into “noise mask” mode, which is set to sound like a thunderstorm. But if you feel sleepy early, you can turn it on then. The sound you choose will play until the wake-up routine begins, and the “sunrise” light will slowly brighten until it’s time for your alarm to sound. (You can also choose no sound if you prefer.)

Dreamie’s biggest feature is ‘return to sleep mode’. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you can turn on “Back to Sleep”, which plays media of your choice, whether it’s a breathing routine loaded on the device, a different soundscape, or a podcast you want to listen to. You can pre-select episodes or shows to help you feel more awake without having to scroll through the interface in the middle of the night. You can choose to use your Dreamie with Bluetooth headphones, so it won’t disturb you if you share your bed with someone else. But you have to wear headphones to sleep.

Dreamie supports Wi-Fi, so you can download all the podcasts you want from the Internet. For this, we have podcast architecture to thank. Podcasts are distributed as RSS feeds, so any developer can create their own custom RSS app, which is how Dreamie can play. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate RSS, one of the last relics of the open internet that Spotify has actively tried to quash in favor of walled gardens.)

I’m baffled that this feature is so useful to me. Usually when I wake up and can’t go back to sleep, I have to pick up my actual phone and turn on a podcast. But you know, I’m a millennial. This means that if you receive a notification after falling asleep, you will reflexively open it before turning on your podcast or audiobook. From there it was a series of bad decisions that kept me awake for two hours in the middle of the night.

My own actions are to blame here, but I know my bad habits are not unique. A survey of 2,000 American adults found that 87% of us sleep with our phones in our bedrooms. There’s no scientific research to prove that looking at your phone too much makes you sleep worse, but I do have data to back up my experience. With Dreamie, you can simply swipe down to turn on “back to sleep” mode and listen to geeks talk about baseball statistics.

My bad phone habits last until the morning. When I wake up in the morning, I usually spend about 30 minutes scrolling through my phone before getting out of bed. But when you’re not distracted by your phone, you can get out of bed a lot quicker and start your day feeling like a human rather than a hungry, caffeine-deprived zombie who needs to pee.

The Dreamie costs $250, which is expensive for an alarm clock. At least there are no subscriptions or companion apps to download. Despite being very feature-dense, the user interface is very simple, similar to the iPhone Watch app.

Sometimes while testing the Dreamie, I would “cheat” and use my phone in bed to listen to audiobooks (sometimes I just want to listen to something specific and not a podcast). At first, in keeping with the spirit of Dreamy, I refrained from using my phone for any other reason. But that wasn’t realistic. I had no choice but to use my cell phone in the middle of the night.

Due to technical limitations, I’m not sure Dreamie can realistically support apps like Libby or Libro.fm. Maybe in the future Dreamie will offer a way to upload your own media, including audiobooks downloaded.

Towards the end of my review period for the Dreamie, I also started testing the Brick, which I used to block every app on my phone at night except the podcast and audiobook apps. At $59, it’s cheaper than the Dreamie, so I think you’ll get most of the same benefits from the Brick if you actually buy one of these devices. Still, it’s nice to be able to leave your phone in a completely separate space. Even if your phone is “bricked,” it’s still your phone. And do you really want your phone to be the last thing you look at every day?