Customer Reviews

SleepTracker Pro Sleep Monitoring Watch

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I give this new version 5 stars. I have had the original sleeptracker for two years now and I love it. This new version is even better. I guess the sleeptracker company has been reading some of the reviews on the first generation watch. Now they have added what we want.

The pro advanced sleep watch has what we have been asking for.

First the buttons are smaller and no button on the face of the watch, so it won't be as easy to accidently push them while sleeping.

Second is the alarm. You can set if for vibration,chime or both. That is what I've been wating for. No matter where your hand is, under your pillow or blanket you can feel the alarm if set to vibration. The vibration is strong enough to wake you out of a sound sleep. Works great. No more waking up the wife or husband, depending on who is wearing it.

Third is the software to sync to your pc (only for windows) sorry MAC users. The software allows you to sync via usb. The charting in the software is very detailed and allows user to customize info as wanted. Much easier than charting manually every morning in excell like I was.

Now the cons:
The watch in my opinion is ugly. I would only wear this watch to bed. Would not be caught dead with it on the street. It's kind of big for the wrist. The strap is a combo of black and orange. Not something to wear to work. I guess most of us would just wear it to bed.

Overall I love the watch. It works very good with no problems with the sync to the computer, once the software is installed correctly. Like I stated before with the vibration alarm and the software link, this watch is a winner.

I might add that I did have trouble with the software on the cd. For some reason it failed to install on my computer.I had to go to the Sleeptrackers web site and download their version which is identical to the cd.. Maybe I had a bum cd.

I've used the older version for about a year. I liked it, but it would stop recording from time to time, I think I was rolling over and mashing buttons in my sleep. That's not a problem with the new version, the buttons are smaller and better protected from accidental pushes.

It's considerably bigger than the original, too big to be a practical day to day wristwatch like the old one. It's a small price to pay for the added functionality in my opinion.

The data transfer via USB cable works perfectly, no more typing for me. The software for analyzing the data is rather simplistic for my taste, but here's the good news, the data are stored in native MS Access format! So if you're a data geek like me, you can build your own reports and do your own analysis. I'm so happy they didn't go with a weird proprietary format.

I used to wake up grouchy and groggy all my life, that's now a thing of the past with the SleepTracker. If that's all it did it would be worth it. The data recording feature is an added bonus if you're like me, and need to determine the effect of different medications on your sleep patterns.

I've bought a Sleeptracker Pro from Amazon in Oct. '08. I've tested it for ca. 3 weeks in both US and EU, including the few jet-lagged days in between. Bgnd info on the tester: I buy and test sundry bio-feedback devices that may help me to improve, or document, my sleeping patterns.

My 1-st take on Sleeptracker Pro: A good & simple idea with a flawed --alpha-- implementation. Good enough for a prototype, useful for geeks and novices, yet a let-down for folks expecting hassle-free results, or for advanced users.

The idea is simple: Use a motion sensor to inferr the wearer's current sleep stage. While it can't tell the diff between deep sleep and resting (not moving), or, a longer meditation session, the concept is a practical approximation. The execution, though, is unnecessarily limited. Rarely i've actually stumbled upon a potentially useful device so unfinished as this...

Items that can be improved.

1. Please consider adding a "Free Sleep One-touch" record function, w/o having to set both the "to bed" and the "alarm" time. This type of acquisition window reduces the consumer benefit (to simplify the development effort?). I'd like to press once to start the sampling, and once more to terminate it. Man people would like to analyze their sleep w/o actually using the alarm.

2. Extend the user memory (e.g., by 100-1000x), enough to store a few weeks of sampled data. Currently --unless one doesn't download daily to a PC-- each night will over-write the previous' session data. While FLASH memory costs cents/MB, the S.Pro stores merely a few 'user' bytes, forcing one to either daily download or loose data. When a 4GB USB stick costs a few $, one would expect an $180 device to squeeze more than 0.1KB of user data.

3. Relocate the "Mode" button to make it accessible while the USB clip (the 3-prong gotic device with USB cable) is attached. BTW, it's quite an irony to have the *only* button needed for USB transfers being blocked by the USB clip... Or just use a mini-USB port (water may become a problem, but it should actually matter for this device).

4. Software: Reminiscent of the 80s + GUI. While the GUI is relatively clean, it's mostly an empty shell devoid of the needed functionality. Please enhance the s/w beyond its still alpha version where it's stuck since '07. At least pls. allow the data to be deleted, added/inserted, shifted and displayed in more useful ways.

5. Pls. allow the user to set the "eagerness" of the alarm, which currently starts always on the FIRST motion during the window. Explain clearly with examples or a picture how the alarm window works. E.g., the 20min interval is NOT centered on the alarm time, but it's ahead of it. With larger windows, this means that the user must accept to sleep less; a few times the alarm woke me up nearly an hour earlier. Perhaps I could've slept 1-2 more deep episodes before the final alarm...

6. Allow once per month downloads (repeat) w/o over-writing the data.

7. Provide more suitable statistics. The average can be misleading when placing 5 billionaires (Gates, Buffet etc.) i the same room w/ 95 homeless and concluding that this must be super-rich's assembly. Median and variability could better describe a sleep made of 3-4 long segments (90min. each) plus a dozen 8-12 min. tracks.

Net: A good idea w/ a coarse 1-st implementation (actually this is the 2nd or 3rd generation), slow in technically improvements. Marketing seems to trump technology thus far, because with a tad more thought the hardware and the software could be greatly improved - to reach new markets.

Does it actually work? Yes, with limitations. The commercials have fuelled some false expectations, of more than the actual device can do. This is a basic alarm watch with a built-in motion sensor (like those used in most 2.5" hard-disks to avoid crashing the heads) that will go on at the 1-st move detected during the alarm window. The trade-offs are obvious...

Is it worth your money? Yes, if you have some moderate sleep problems and enough discipline in your daily schedule to work on them. No, if you expect an true sleep monitor (headband sensors) or a reliable, thoughtful and straightforward tool.

IMHO it's a thoughtless raw design that could do much better. I rarely had to resort to adjectives such as 'thoughtless' until now, yet there's little engineering attention paid to this product. A shame. I gave it 3 stars to reward the idea, which by now is common in many other products.

gusat"atsign"ieee.org

Update Febr.'09: The Glow button no longer works w/o pushing really hard - but it's still functional. A few s/w bugs have caused the watch to display wrong Data A, and to repeat the same readings for 2 nights.

I've had the sleeptracker pro for about 5 months now. The concept is great and the sleep tracking works well.

The main problem is that it's not loud and doesn't vibrate much. The audible alarm is approximately as loud as a standard watch's alarm. The vibrator is pretty mild out of necessity -- it's gotta fit in a watch and use a watch battery while maintaining some battery life.

So what that means is if you're the kind of person who needs extra help waking up this watch can't deliver. It seems like it would be a good way for a light sleeper to wake up. Perhaps this would be a great watch for a light sleeper that wants to wake without waking their significant other.

When you look at the watch descriptions, it sounds like it is a high tech devise that detects your sleep cycles, but it actually has nothing to do with the 5 stages of sleep cycle. It basically detects when the watch is moved, you know, just like the Nintendo Wii knows when you swing the remove control. It beeps when you move your arm or turn over, and their idea is that you tend to move when you are in the lighter stage of sleep.

The problem I have with this that when it beeps, I wake up for a second but fall back to sleep right away. It does not snooze like a normal alarm, so once you missed the time you set, the watch does not go off again. So the watch does not help me getting up and is basically useless for me.

There is also a glitch in the time calculation. When it records your sleep for more than 8 hours, it shows a totally incorrect time. I asked the manufacturer about this, and they confirmed the problem and told me that they would send me a software patch to fix the problem. Unfortunately, a month passed, three months passed, and 8 months passed now, they keep giving excuses and they still haven't come up with a fix yet. I am disappointed with this matter.

After evaluating this watch, I think this watch is overpriced for what it does. If you are a heavy sleeper like me, it probably won't help you getting up in the morning, and if you are a light sleeper, you probably won't need this watch in the first place.

I would say I like the watch design, but other than that it was useless (at least for me), and on top of that you can not return it because it is considered a "dangerous good".
If anybody is seriously considering buying it, I would suggest borrowing somebody else's.
I read a lot of the reviews and I really was excited to receive it, because every day I wake up very tired, unfortunately it didn't work for me.
1. It is too bulky and sometimes during the night I woke up because the watch is so uncomfortable
2. The watch works based on your movement, if you almost don't move at night, it will detect very few almost awake moments
3. According to the manual if it doesn't detect an ideal almost awake moment, it will sound at the moment you set the alarm, but only ONCE, that means if you are in a very deep stage of your sleep you will have only ONE chance to wake up.
4. Based on my above point you will require a backup alarm, and it is a very expensive alarm ($175) that requires a backup alarm
5. The alarm has to be set on a daily basis; it doesn't have any option to set it from Monday to Friday, weekends, etc.
I read a lot of people love it, which was the reason because I bought it, but it didn't work for me and I cannot recommend it at all.

I owned this product and used it occasionally but ultimately did not find it particularly valuable (I did not feel that waking up somewhat more refreshed was better than waking up a little later...).

The real problem, though, is that one night, after I had owned the product for several months, but not used it much, the sensors on the watch shorted and gave me a series of small electrical burns on my wrist. This was a couple of months ago and the scars are still there.


The company was very responsive, explaining that they thought this problem had been solved, and reimbursed me the entire purchase price. However, I still have the scars, and wish I had never bought the watch.

I'm always very tired in the mornings and have trouble waking up. The Sleeptracker is supposed to find an "almost-awake" moment to wake you up, feeling refreshed. I really wakted it to work. It didn't.

The first night I tried it it didn't monitor my sleep at all and it didn't wake me up. The next night I tried it it woke me up but I certainly didn't feel refreshed. The following mornings it woke me up sometimes and sometimes not. The alarm is very quiet, according to the manifacturer because it doesn't need to be louder because it wakes you up when you're almost awake anyway. Problem is, if it doesn't find one of those "almost awake" moments, it rings at the time you set, no matter how deep you sleep. And it only rings once. If you miss it, you better have another alarm clock set or you won't wake up. I overslept twice in the first week I tried the Sleeptracker Pro. It also has a vibrating alarm but it's very weak.

Before going to bed you're supposed to set a "to bed" time. The easiest way to do this is to press the "Down" button when the watch is in "to bed" mode and it automatically sets the "to bed" time at thirty minutes later. This would be very easy if the "down" button had worked. Unfortunately it only works sometimes. I've had to press it up to ten times before it sets the time and it's just as frustrating every time. And getting pissed off about an alarm clock doesn't make it easier to fall asleep.

Another problem is the software that lets you track your sleep history. You connect the Sleeptracker with a USB cable to the computer and upload the data (the watch can only store one night's data for some unexplicable reason so you'll have to do this every day or lose data). Here you can see your almost awake moments and when the alarm went off. You can also click to see your best and worst sleep sessions, but there's no explanation of what makes a sleep session good or bad. I haven't noticed any pattern. Occasionally I get the error message "Sleeptracker not found". I emailed the support and asked about it and they told me there was some weird bug that gives that error message on Sundays and told me to uninstall and download the software from their website. Looks like they haven't been beta testing the software.

And this is the feeling I get for the product as a whole: that it hasn't been tested. It's hard to believe the Sleeptracker Pro is an improved version of the original Sleeptracker, because there are so many little flaws that would easily have been found and fixed if they had done any testing at all before marketing it. As it is, the Sleeptracker Pro feels like an unfinished product. If it was as sophisticated and effective as it claims, it would have been a great product, but it's not. In its current state it's really just a novelty item that might have been fun for a tenth of the price, but there's nothing to justify paying $180 for a product that is impractical to use and doesn't do what it's supposed to do. I really wanted this to work but I returned it to get a refund.

This product is simply amazing. Having heard about it in 2006, I was intrigued to purchase it at that time. However, people complained that the volume was too low and that the buttons would be pressed during your sleep. I decided at the time that I wasn't going to pay $150 for something that had these problems.

In December of 2007, I came upon the new and improved Sleeptracker Pro. It was supposed to improve all the problems that were present in the original Sleeptracker and adds even more needed features. The best improvement by far is the vibration feature.

I have been using this Sleeptracker for 3 weeks straight. Out of the 21 days I have tested it, there has not yet been any day where it did not find an "almost-awake" moment (using a 30 minute window). However, of those 21 days, 2 days I slept through the alarm. This is not the fault of the product, but rather my fault because I only average 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Make sure you setup a backup alarm just incase you happen to sleep through this alarm.

But yes, considering I get on average only 4-5 hours of sleep a night, I can confidently say that 19/21 days I have woken up FANTASTICALLY. Every day I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go.

I highly recommend you give this product a try. I can almost guarantee that you WILL be addicted to it and wonder how you ever lived without it. This is one of those products which can truly change the way you live, and one day you will look back at the "old days" where people woke up to a fixed alarm.

My expectations may have been high, since I am in the field of sleep medicine. I saw the info on the watch and mistakenly thought it would give me data on what stages of sleep I was experiencing, and for how long. This watch only records the near wakeful events. This may be partially helpful for those who want to work on their sleep hygiene, but it was somewhat of a disappointment to me. I could not get the item to connect to the computer on a couple of occassions, but it did after a few tries. It mostly does record properly.