INITIAL IMPRESSIONS 
THE SLEEPTRACKER doesn’t come in a fancy package, nor does it contain any sort of add-in accessory. Of course, I didn’t expect either of these things. It is simply a watch. The box basically lets the buyer know what features they can expect out of the product. On the back there is an interesting chart that shows the typical adult sleep pattern. Seeing this changed my mindset from believing that the product was a gimmick, to thinking that is just might be the real thing.
The watch itself is actually very basic in its presentation. Don’t expect to turn heads by wearing it. Don’t get me wrong, as it doesn’t look bad – just average. There are four buttons on the watch – Mode, Set, Glo, and a fourth that is unlabeled. This fourth button can be explained as a “down” or “minus” button. It is used when setting the time, to reduce the number shown. Now, the action takes place on the back of the watch. There is a tiny area that you can see is what will monitor your sleeping state, letting the alarm know when to sound.
SETTING UP THE SLEEPTRACKERThe SLEEPTRACKER came with batteries already installed, so all I needed to do was program in the time and date, along with my preferences. Here is how it went:
Alarm: While this sounds self-explanatory, it really isn’t. The SLEEPTRACKER’s goal is to wake you up and the most optimal time for your body to not feel tired and sluggish. The time that you set on the alarm is actually the latest time that you want to wake up. I set mine to wake me up no later than 6:00 AM.
Window: The window setting allows you one of four choices - :00, :10, :20, or :30. Let me explain this one as well. The window setting is basically the number of minutes before your alarm that you will allow the SLEEPTRACKER to wake you up. Since it monitors your sleep pattern for the optimal moment to wake you, you need to give it a window of time so that it can choose the point within that given time period that you are most awake. I set mine to wake me up whenever it felt best within a 30-minute window. The earliest it would wake me would be 5:30 AM, and the latest was 6:00 AM.
To Bed: The To Bed setting is the time you expect to go to bed. The SLEEPTRACKER starts to monitor your sleep pattern thirty minutes after the time you specify in the To Bed area. I set this to midnight, which meant the SLEEPTRACKER would start monitoring my sleep at 12:30 AM – whether I am in bed or not.
Data: As the SLEEPTRACKER monitors your sleep through the night, it saves the times that you were the most awake during the night. You can review this information on the Data screen. It doesn’t really help you much, but it is interesting to take a look at your sleep pattern.
USING THE UNIT
Okay, this is the easy part for a change. The only thing that the SLEEPTRACKER needed to do to be a success were:
Tell the time
Wake me up without me feeling sluggish or overly tired within my specified window
Monitor my sleep data correctly
Now, I had no doubt that the SLEEPTRACKER would perform just fine as a digital watch, which it did. Setup was simple, and after it was done, I could tell the time and date. However, this watch sells because it wakes you up like you have never been woken up before. I went to bed that evening at the time that I told the SLEEPTRACKER that I would be in bed by. During the night, my baby woke up crying, which in turn woke me up. I remember getting up at about 2:10 AM to calm him down and get him back to sleep. In the morning, I heard the alarm go off. I checked the watch, and it was 5:47 AM. Oh, and yes – I felt perfectly awake and satisfied with the amount of sleep I got. I didn’t feel the need to hit a snooze button of any sort.
After I got up, and did the toothbrush thing, I checked the sleep data. It was very interesting to see the times that the SLEEPTRACKER had recognized as my light sleep/awake moments. Most intriguing though, was that it marked 2:11 AM as one of those moments – right after my son woke up crying!
The truth is, I have been testing this watch for about a week now, and there was just one morning that I was not awakened by it. It was a morning that I simply stayed up way too late to even hear the alarm. That is the thing though. The alarm is not loud – it is audible only because it usually goes off when you are in a light sleep mode. If it doesn’t recognize an optimal time within your window, then it just goes off at your designated alarm time. If you are too tired at that point, that is your problem
