I love the feature for quick timers on the top of this watch and got it because I wanted something cheap, reliable, and easy hour chime. My hearing has got so bad that I couldn't hear the chimes at first, especially the timer ones, when they went off. But I've become more sensitive to it after a little while. If you have high frequencies hearing loss this watch may not be what you are looking for, however for a real wake up alarm you should always use two alarms anyway, and you should pick something louder than this. I believe I did use it years ago for that function though when my hearing was better. I like the stop watch on this better than my sports watch, too so I prefer to use this one for certain functions.