Pavlok

The Pavlok is a alarm device worn on your wrist. It uses vibrations, beeps, and electric shocks to wake you up.

Models

The Pavlok has three generations, with the most recent one being the Pavlok 2. There is also the slightly cheaper Pavlok Shock Clock 2 which is functionally identical to the regular model, except the companion app has some features unrelated to sleep locked down.

Quirks

Pairing and Bluetooth connection issues

The biggest problem with the Pavlok is the inconsistent Bluetooth connection to the paired smartphone and painful pairing process. Pairing the device to the smartphone app is needs numerous attempts before it succeeds, even if the device simply disconnected but was already paired before, and there doesn't seem to be any effort by the device to reconnect automatically upon disconnection. This is compounded by the fact that the Bluetooth connection is prone to getting dropped. As of firmware version 5.11.0, the Bluetooth connection is a lot more stable than before, but the pairing problem persists, especially when either the phone or the device run out of battery and needs to be repaired after being charged.

Drifting clock

The onboard clock is very inaccurate and gets faster by about a minute every week, which is quite frustrating since you are woken up from your nap prematurely by a minute. The only solution is to resave all the alarms to the device from the app, which must be done well in advance of each sleep because of the aforementioned pairing issue which could make this process take a long time.

The "Jumping Jacks" feature

The device features a "jumping jacks" feature where the only way to dismiss an alarm is to perform a set number of jumping jacks. It's advised to not use this feature since it could reduce the lifespan of the device since it doesn't seem to be built strong enough to endure being tossed around and has already caused the failure of the device of one of our members.