SleepTracker Wristwatch Review
If there is one thing that I know about my own sleep history,
it’s that it is either a hit or miss. There are times when I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the
world, and then there are times, when I awake from my slumber feeling like some
groggy eyed zombie. This is not a good experience, to say the least, especially
since I go to bed at the same time every night (9pm). What if I told you that there is a device to aid you in
having a more predictable and pleasing waking experience? The good folks at
Innovative Sleep Solutions LLC gave me the opportunity to try out their
Sleeptracker watch, and I took them up on it. For 15 days, I used the
Sleeptracker and took it through its paces. The Sleeptracker differs from that of a conventional
watch, in that it monitors your sleep cycle and is designed to detect when
you’re almost awake and then awakes you at just the right time, thus, feeling
invigorated.
Setting up the Sleeptracker was very easy and the included instructions were easy
to understand and to follow. Initially, it took some time getting use to
wearing this watch to bed, but after a few days, it was ok, although the
bulkiness of this watch left my wrist perspiring at times.
Using a built-in accelerometer, the watch knows when
you’re in an almost awake state by monitoring for brief periods of movement
typically lasting 30 seconds or less. The Sleeptracker is sophisticated enough
to distinguish between when you’re sleeping as opposed to getting up to use the
bathroom or getting a drink of water.
The
watch has a very readable display with four buttons that are used to
set up the
device. On the right side of the watch face is the large oval mode
button.
Pressing this button will cycle through the different watch modes:
Time, Alarm,
Window, To Bed and Sleep Data. On the face of the watch is the Set
button.
Pressing and holding this button for a few seconds will allow you to
change
settings in the current mode. The two buttons on the left side of the
watch
allow you to move up and down through settings and the recorded sleep
data. The
top button on the left also doubles as the backlight button. You set
the alarm time as the time that you must be up by.
Then the Window time can be set to 0, 10, 20 or 30 minutes. Setting the
Window
time to 10, 20 or 30 means that the alarm may sound between 10, 20 or
30
minutes BEFORE the set alarm time. The time the alarm chimes is
dependant on
when the Sleeptracker thinks that you’re at an almost awake time. The
To Bed
time is set to 30 minutes after you think you’ll be asleep. This is the
time
where the watch will start monitoring for almost awake times while you
are asleep. The Sleeptracker will keep track of all the almost awake
times during the night and record them as data 1, 2, 3, etc. It will
then
calculate your average time between almost awake times and store that
as data
A. This data is only stored for the previous night’s sleep cycle. The
next
night is overwritten. A nice feature would be the ability to offload
this data
via a mini USB cable or Infrared to your computer or PDA for future
analysis.
As is, you’ll need to write it down if you want to save it.
While I may have not found the Sleeptracker aesthetically
pleasing to my eyes (I think a design overhaul is in order—including
shrinking the size and offering it in an assortment of colors), I think it
serves its purpose in just being that……monitoring your sleep! During those
15 days of testing, I woke up feeling refreshed 12 times when the watch sounded
off within the time that it thought I would be all bright eyed and bushy
tailed. The other 3 times, I awakened, feeling very groggy and tired. I was
impressed with my results, but I should remind you that every person’s results
may be different. So, the jury is still out pending more results. If you want to get a SleepTracker for yourself, it retails for $148.99 at SmartHome. - Kevin Geter
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