So what exactly does this thing monitor?  Your heart rate? 

I mean how is it determining which stage of your sleep pattern you are in?

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I’ve had the SleepTracker watch for almost a month now, and I have a far more critical view of it then the one presented in the review on this site. The issues are not related to the functionality of the “sleep tracking” (which work), they pertain to design and build quality of the watch overall.

Essentially, the design and quality of the watch are terrible.

Regardless if it looks nice or not (and as stated in the review on this site, you won’t turn any heads by wearing the watch), the placement of the buttons is horrendous. Specifically, the “set” button is locate on the face of the watch. Its a big button, and its also very sensitive. You can imagine what happens at night, when you are wearing this watch, and you somehow move your arm such that your hand is resting with the top of your wrist against a pillow, or a blanket. The button gets depressed, and goes into “set” mode in whatever view you left it last. Probably that the “date and time” view. So, it’ll start beeping at you every second that the “set” button is depressed.

That’ll end up waking you up, albeit not at the time you thought you were going to get up. This makes the watch unusable. An analogy would be that your nice new Mercedes runs just fine, but the key gets jammed in the door half the time you open it. Kinda of makes it useless to have the car.

So, the quality of the buttons, and their placement, are a big issue. Its a watch that is almost exclusively meant to be worn in bed (and it is therfore ironic that it is water-proof to 20 meters—but not if you press the buttons!—says the manual. Those buttons I tell ya!) and in bed you are going to end up laying on your arm at some point at night I guarantee it, and then the watch is going to start beeping at you.

For $150, you’d think they could have figured the button placement out.

I might as well add my thoughts about the sleep tracking part as well: yeah, it works. The manufacturer doesn’t tell you exactly how it manages to know when you are awake or almost awake, but it evidently does a good job of it. One can make an educated guess and infer that it monitors your temperature, or pulse, or even the electrical differential of your skin. Probably not the motion of your arm, since its quite common to move in your sleep. At any rate, it tracks your sleep. For at most 8 hours. For only one day.

Somehow the budget constraints placed on the button design also extend to limiting the memory. The extra 4K of RAM the thing would need to track your sleep for another hour or two, or lord, even for more than just one day, was just beyond the design constraints I guess.

Well, thats my take on the SleepTracker. Is it worth $150? Hmm… I guess that depends on just how hard it is for you to get up in the morning. Seriously, it needs more polish. A steal it is not.

And how did I deal with the “Set” button making the watch beep and wake me up all the time? I put a big thick piece of gaffer tape on it, so that the light pressure of my arm resting against a pillow or the bed isn’t enough to depress the button. Does it look good? No. Then again, you aren’t going to wear this watch outside of your bedroom anyway.

I give it a 7 out of 10.

-Z

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According to their site, the Sleeptracker uses “patented software” that “continuously monitors signals from your body that indicate whether you are asleep or awake.”  I figured maybe that patent information would give a little more info on to how the thing is supposed to work, so I tried looking up the patent.  According to the U.S. patent office’s searchable databases ( http://www.uspto.gov/index.html ), there have been zero patents awarded to Innovative Sleep Solutions.  So, either the company making these watches does not hold a patent pertaining to it (maybe someone else’s patent?), or somehow the patent is excluded from the US patent office’s search, which should not be the case.

Either way, although the hype the company puts out on the watch’s supposed capabilities surely makes me want to buy it, I tend not to trust any product which is marketed exclusively in absence of the science behind its supposed functioning.  In other words, it smells fishy, and the only way to get rid of that fish smell is to give more than just hype to us more intelligent “consumers”.

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Like the reviewer Andru explains, you have to set the time you go to bed, and the watch will start to monitor your sleep pattern thirty minutes after the time you specified. Does the watch blindly assumes that you will be in sleeping state after 30 minutes, or does it start monitoring your heartrate (assumed) and wait for the moment you actually fall asleep. I know some times it takes me up to 2 hours to actually sleep after I go to bed.

If the watch doesn’t exactly takes the time you go to sleep but an estimated time, I might as well look in the graph an set my alarm at the time it supposes.

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so do you have to wear the thing all day? Seems like not, which is a good thing, imo, because I hate wearing wristwatches. It might be nice if they used a regular bedside clock, with the sensors in a wirelessly connected cloth band. Wristwatches are uniformly uncomfortable, ime, something more breathable and lighter would be an improvement. Otherwise, sounds intriguing; hope this type of product becomes more commonplace.

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Can this product withstand a shower day-in and day-out?

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Well I ordered one!

Apparently their order site doesn’t work well with FireFox 1.02 as I go halfway through the order process when the crseen following the shipping info screen wouldn’t show up.

I jumped over to IE 6 and was able to complete the order.  I’ll post a review over at http://www.mikeylosesit.com after I’ve used it for a while.

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Intriguing!

Well the neurological theory behind this is sound—it has been established for decades that you go through cycles of REM/non-REM sleep which get progressively shorter through the night, and you wake up very easily in one or the other (I forget which).  I’m just curious as to how this thing detects it.

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I’m hyped about this watch, but as previous posters have said, if they don’t explain how the technology works, how can any consumer trust it?  For $150 I better damn sure know how it works.  I think that people who buy this watch also should be careful of the fact that your body also has it’s own internal clock and is used to waking itself up at a certain time, thus the body knows when to be in a light sleeping stage at that time period.  I would be interested if someone were to test this watch at non-normal waking hours and see if it works then….

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Sounds great, fishy, but great.  My favorite part of the website is the FAQ section:

“On average, how many almost-awake moments do most people experience per night?

There really is no average, because everybody sleeps differently.”

If the software is patented, then why not tell us what the device is monitoring?  Think the 30 day money back guarantee is legit?

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I wish they had this when I was in college!

I went through the order process until the last step and then chickened out. I think I’ll wait until more reviews are in, the price comes down, or the company releases the second generation model. The problem with the “Set” button being easily bumped in bed sounds pretty annoying.

As far as the science behind all this, I have a neuroscience degree so here’s what I can tell you:
The principle behind it is perfectly sound. Alarm clocks make us feel crappy because they usually go off when we’re in the middle of a sleep phase in which our body would not normally wake up. Sleep phases are easily distinguished with electrical sensors placed on the head (that’s how they do it in sleep labs), but I’ve never heard of it working via the wrist. I would imagine this is working through pulse measurement, since that’s been built into watches before. That’s assuming that pulse rate can be used to measure sleep phases, I don’t know.

The problem with judging something like this is that there can be a placebo effect, just like with magnetic bracelets and copper necklaces or whatever. The quickest way to test this in an informal way would be to have someone else (a spouse) flip a coin at night and set the “window” setting randomly to :00 or :30, without the user knowing which. Then remove all other time cues from the room (daylight, clocks). When the user is awakened by the watch alarm, he would record how awake he feels on a scale of 1-10. This would have to be done for multiple nights, say 14. Then at the end of the trial, if the nights with “windows” of :30 (sensor functioning) correspond with higher ratings relative to :00 nights (sensor nonfunctioning), the watch does what it says. If any of you are suspicious, try it and let us know

This watch would be great for people who don’t go to sleep at the same time every night, who don’t have windows in their rooms, or who don’t feel rested after a normal amound of sleep (8 hrs. for adults). But the old fashioned way to deal with these problems, if any of you don’t have $150 right now, is to always go to sleep at the same time each night, arise at the same time each morning, try to have daylight in your bedroom, and not underestimate the amount of sleep you need (usually 7.5 - 8 hours).

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I have been having tons of trouble waking up lately - pressing snooze a lot and feeling lousy. When I saw this review, I ordered the sleeptracker - still somewhat skeptical, but willing to give it a shot.

I received the box yesterday - the comments made by Znort above about build quality are true, but for me this was not a major issue - I will only be wearing the watch to sleep (which is not a problem - it does not need to be worn all the time to work). I did not have a problem with pushing the buttons accidentally.

Well, last night I wore it for the first time and it sure does work! I didn’t even get a very good night sleep (I had taken a nap after work yesterday and had trouble falling asleep), but in the morning I was awakened by the watch with no desire to press snooze - over an hour earlier than I usually wake up! Wow! I wish I knew how it worked, but so far it’s totally worth the price.

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Here’s an interesting paper about another device that gave me some insights into how this thing may work:

http://www.apexfitness.com/armband/SenseWearAsSleepDetectionDevice.pdf

Excerpt:
“The BodyMedia SenseWear Armband utilizes a proprietary multisensor array including a 2-axis accelerometer, heat flux sensor, galvanic skin response sensor (GSR), skin temperature sensor, and a near-body ambient temperature sensor.  The SenseWear Armband also offers the option of heart rate detection through the use of most commercial chest straps such as a Polar Heart Rate Monitor.”

Does anyone know if pulse can be measured electronically from on top of the wrist (where this device’s sensor’s appear to be)?  You’d think after getting BS and MS degrees in biomedical engineering I would know a little more.  Maybe after the Ph.D.

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FYI, I was curious and I think I found the patent application - it’s number 0050012622 “Monitoring and control of sleep cycles” by Sutton, William R. of Pleasanton, CA. It was submitted on January 20, 2005. Reading it, this sure does seem like the sort of patent that SHOULD be granted (as opposed to all of the silly business method patents that we constantly hear about on /.).

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hello ... well i just read the posts and convinced myself to buy it but only one doubt, i live in mexico so would like to know two things:
1st: How much is the delivery
2nd: how much time it will take
I hope someone answer my questions

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I’m also in the process of doing a review of this at http://waterflavored.blogspot.com/2005/04/sleeptracker-watch-review-30-days.html

Thanks for your review; it was helpful in my buying decision.

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Other possible patents…after doing a number of pre-grant patent searches, these are the ones that looked semi-similar to the description of Sleeptracker:

20040049132
20050012622
20050054940
20020080035

You can search for them at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html

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At first, I thought maybe you were paid or something to give such a good review. But, I have read a few other reviews out there on the ole internet that also give the Sleeptracker high praise. One such example is: http://www.cazz.org/archives/2005/04/sleeptracker_on.html

I’m impressed. I ordered one; here’s hoping it works for me.

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I just want to commend the customer support of the company. I reside in Indonesia and received a defective sleeptracker. Aside from who is to blame, Lee Loree has responded by sending me a new one and did not require me to return the defective one (of course I have emailed him several digital photos as proof).

Just received the new and working sleeptracker, and will try it on tonight.

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So, this device is based on an accelerometer.  I’ve seen research that has correlated motion to sleep (obviously), but not motion to sleep stage.  If anyone knows of any, please tell me.  Until then, I can’t warrant dropping this kind of coin on a watch that makes fantastic claims, but offers no evidence to back them up.  What a wonderful idea though—and not coincidentally a device we would all want.  Unless you have the disposable ka-blingly, my opinion is to wait on this, but hey, the company has done it’s research right?  It’s only a matter of time before they disclose all the unbiased evidence they’ve gathered to support their claims, right?

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This looks awesome!  After everyone’s glowing comments I think I am going to buy one as soon as I can get together the money. 

To respond to the people who seem to be offended that they don’t know how the watch works:  did you ever think that they might not have patented it at all?  Maybe the operation of the watch is a trade secret because maybe they couldn’t have gotten a patent if they applied for it?  And then it would be really stupid of them to tell us all how it works, wouldn’t it?  Just a thought.

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Hi Rebecca,

No offense, but anything technology related is usually patented because it’s known that good engineers can reverse-engineer most products and then produce a copy and sell it for cheaper (e.g. all the copycat products coming out of china/korea). So it would be an unwise business decision for them not to patent the technology because they could easily be undercut on price and cost by anyone who made it outside the US. That being said, what you said may true, however I think people want to know how the watch works because generally it seems a) too good to be true b) too expensive ($150) for just a watch not to know what you’re buying exactly c) good consumers want to know exactly what they pay for d) for most consumers, they don’t know how sleep cycles are monitored, it is not generally known.  IMHO I think there is a placebo affect for sleep devices, and I’m just wary of plunking $150 on a watch that the Company doesn’t explain how it works in their marketing (see post above saying it might work using an accelerometer (sp?)).  If it truly worked, a smart company would be shouting it out to the world how it worked and how good their product was.  That being said, I would love it if it was NOT patented because then I’m sure a cheap asian-made copycat is on its way for le$$!!

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I just got mine 3 days ago…I think I figure how this watch work in helping you waking up during that time that they say you are almost awake…
For 150$, you are getting a watch that have a little motion detector that detect your arm and wrist movement when you Twist and Turn during your sleep…Basically if your arm and wrist move around during the alarm window, the watch will try to wake you up…simple as that..The whole idea behind to make this work is that you have to have enough good sleep..and your arm and wrist have to move (almost awake according to sleeptracker) during the alarm window then it will do its job of awaking you…
I found out about this because I was testing the watch while I am fully awake..If the watch magically know that you are almost awake through internal body and psychologically, then it would be awesome..however the alarm didn’t went off until I move my arm…So they rely on this movement detection during your sleep to determine whether you are almost awake or not..Twisting and turning is the thing everybody does during sleep.. so twisting and turning doens’t mean you are ready to wake up… Only if you have enough sleep then you will have a good wake up when twisting and turning..if not, this watch will be just like many other watch..
...the GEARLIVE author was mentioning that the watch detect that he wake up at 2 something…well it is because he was moving around..and of course the watch would record that in the data…
So for something like that, do you think it worth the price of $150, I don’t know..but I think it is a fascinating motion detecting while sleeping watch..

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Knowing that it is an accelerometer makes me less inclined to buy it.  As does waterflavored’s now complete review (here -  http://waterflavored.blogspot.com/2005/04/conclusive-sleeptracker-watch-review.html). 

Paul, I think I agree with you now.  I didn’t really care how this watch worked, but I (wrongly) thought that it could somehow detect what level of sleep you are in.  I thought it was a much more sophisticated product than it actually is.

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Dear Sir,
      We will like to transact business with ur company by buying goods , our company sale’s wrist watch any new latest designer,  so kindly let us know the type of watch u produce in ur company we shall be looking for ur reply back.

  Thank’s

Sale’s manager

mr abey

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I’ve had the watch for 3 nights so far, and have only been wakened once. However, I get little sleep during the week, and am anxious to try it when getting more than my customary 5 hours.

I have had no problems hitting the set button, so my only issue is the quiet alarm at this point. Wish it had a volume set!

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Wait ‘till December for the real thing folks: http://www.axonlabs.com/.

These guys use neuroreceptors and a stand-alone unit that recieves transmission. They actually ARE checking your cycles, not motion, and algorythmically determine whether or not you’re likely to complete another sleep cycle (based on your personal average cycle length) to ENSURE you’re both up and ready to be so.

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I got this Christmas, worked great.  However, I noticed over time, now that I am used to the alarm, I just sleep through it.  When it wasn’t something I was used to, and when it was new and interesting… it was great.  Now that is is a noise that I have adapted too (sort of like sleeping near an airport), it only wakes me up about 20% of the time.  However, it is still worth having.  I may not completely wake up when it goes off (while supposedly in light sleep), but I have set another alarm clock at the time I set the sleep tracker.  So the sleeptracker nudges me awake a little, to the point where I am in semi dream state, not aware of conciousness, and by the time my regular alarm goes off, I do wake up feeling more refreshed than if I did not use the watch.

All in All, if you have serious (non medical) sleep problems like I had, it is definately worth buying.

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Wow..speechless..I want one! -whines- X3

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I had reservations about this product, especially since it cost so much. Man was it worth it! if this one breaks I will buy another one! I have never woke up easier in my life!  I called the company that made it directly. I bought the 2nd generation watch with the louder alarm (9/13/06) and I couldnt be happier. In the morning I dont feel dread anymore, in fact, it feels like I never woke up, like I am in one never ending cycle. Before, waking up was like smashing into a wall for me. I hated it and it felt terrrible. Now its the easiest thing ever!  I dont wear it during the day, but thats alright cause it is still worth every penny to me, to wake up so pleasanlty in the morning. My Point is: Waking up is now EASY!

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Hey this product looks really cool. I will for sure try it out. Oh ya Texas, you made some really good points, actually you sound HOTT. Can i get your number??? call me anytime *muah*

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Was wondering if any of the folks that reviewed it originally in 2005 still use the watch? Is it something that has fallen into a regular habit of use or is it collecting dust in the dresser? Can see how the device would be interesting for the first few weeks but want to know if people think it is good enough to use longer term. Thanks.

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Don’t be stupid. Of course it doesn’t work. Scientist have dismissed it long time ago. Think for yourselves. Free your minds!

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I smell loads of ######## and placebo.

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That’s kinda a crappy review.  I mean, sure the thing might have woken you up almost every time, but DID YOU FEEL UNUSUALLY REFRESHED WHEN IT DID?  I mean, that’s the whole point of the watch, yes?  To wake you up at an optimal time for you not to feel tired?  You didn’t mention anything about that!

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YEAH!!!

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John states “over an hour earlier than I usually wake up! Wow!”  Yet according to the specs, the MOST it can wake you early is 30 minutes.  I small a rat.

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The watch “works” (I say this lightly) by measuring body movement. You are likely to move following an arousal or light sleep and the watch picks up these movements and uses them as a trigger to set off the alarm. If you don’t move during your alarm window, the alarm will go off at your set time. These watches are simply an extension to actigraph watches.

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Learn how to speake english before you post….E-N-G-L-I-S-H

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I really hate using an alarm clock. I don’t know why for some reason alarm clock doesn’t work for me.

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As someone dealing with patents, I guess this is a patent that isn’t yet published. The patent office is churning slowly, and in addition do do get a grace period from you are granted national patent and until you decide what other countries you wish your patent in.

Most use a PCT application for this, that gives you a three year delay in about 140 countries.

This means that the patent may well be granted, but you are not allowed to reveal anything about it publically as if you do - you loose your right to patent it in other countries as it is then ‘common knowledge’ - and you can’t patent anything that is commonly known.

I’m critical too of course, but wanted to point out that there may be very good reasons for not being spesific about the contents of the patent. For my part - I constantly run around with NDA’s to the people I need to talk to in order to protect my patent.

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I’ve had one of these for a few years, and didn’t get any benefit from it.  It certainly wakes you up on time, but the maximum wake-up window is 30 minutes and the variations don’t have give appreciable difference to your waking habits.  In reality, getting up early makes little sense so you just end up ignoring the watch and snoozing until the time you’d normally get up - eliminating any possible benefit.

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You may look at <a href=“http://pavelfatin.com/sleeparchiver/”>SleepArchiver</a> – alternative cross-platform data manager for Sleeptracker-series watches.

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This watch looks pretty darn slick.

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I want to join robosapien becaz i want to reaseach in robotics.
I am from Greece and learning to read in English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Satellite tv, there are a number of earth-based socket programs on the maintenance, and at the interpretation of this role you will stir a bandwidth to the best fees, which are a wall above the market.”

THX 8), Akiko.

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This seems like a really great device to help you figure out exactly how much sleep you need to feel rested.

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I bought one of these and it is pretty slick until it breaks….“sigh’

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Great review, just what I thought about these watches as well. I was skeptic at first, but these things really work. Regarding their looks - I use mine only as an alarm clock at night. I have a much nicer one for the day… This is definitely where they can do some improvements. 

I bought mine through:
http://www.simply-wakeup.com/

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Thanks, I can see that there are many companies selling them at around $120.

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Interesting watch. I find with alarms that they ruin my sleep; my body tends to be almost waiting for it to go off and I don’t sleep properly. I like the sound of an alarm that’s not too loud. It also seems to encourage you to sleep go to sleep at the right time. Good review, thanks x

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