WakeMate Wristband Pairs With Your Smartphone, Promises To Wake You At Your Ideal Wake Time [Sleeping With Your Smartphone & Willing To Hack Your Sleep Cycle A Bit, Try The WakeMate For The Ideal Wake Up Time]

Posted on TFTS by Robert Nelson on Wednesday, 29. June 2011 under: Clocks,Time, Health and Hygiene, Household Tech, Mobile/Cell Phones, Personal Devices

Forget the studies that tell you sleeping with a smartphone, or grabbing one first thing in the morning is not the ideal way to get a good night sleep. Instead, a new product called the WakeMate is encouraging you to sleep with your phone close by, which is paired with the WakeMate wristband.

And while we should clarify that they are not suggesting you use your phone for anything other than a bedside alarm, we tend to think that if found close by — it will get used. That said, the first thing in my hand each morning (aside from a cup of coffee) is a smartphone. But before I digress any further, there is the WakeMate, which is a wristband that you wear while you sleep and it is touting the ability to “calculate the ideal wake time closest to your alarm setting” so you wake up feeling more refreshed.

Anyway, according to the details on the WakeMate website, you set your alarm to wake you at a latest possible time. For argument sake, say that wake time is 7AM. And from there, once you fall asleep, the WakeMate monitors your sleep cycle and judges the optimal time to wake you. But worry not because you will not be waking up hours in advance — its the perfect time in a cycle. But more specifically, it will be within a 20 minute period from your must-wake-by time.

In addition, there is also the web-based Wakelytics which will allow you to login online and check things such as your “nightly sleep score” as well as the number of nightly awakenings, the time it took you to fall asleep and more.

Bottom line, for $59.99 you can purchase a WakeMate and could potentially start waking up a little easier. And I only say could because I have yet to test this myself, though in some strange way — I really want one. Of course, I have also been sort of eyeing a Fitbit and really love tracking my runs and bike rides with Runkeeper. In other words, I may just like having data on myself.

Source

John Marshall
I just left this as my Amazon review and am ‘sharing’ it around the web elsewhere as a warning to others as well:
I bought the Wakemate in July. I was disappointed to find that after almost 2 months it still wasn’t going off to wake me up. It would record data, but not actually go off at during the wake up window.
I contacted customer service TWO months ago regarding it. At first, they were going to replace the device. After I shipped them the device, I waited a month before sending them another email. That email was replied to saying that they ‘hadn’t received my device’. After I sent them a message with the tracking information, I stopped getting replies.
Worst case, this company is just a scam. You can’t find a number that will ring to a real person and they don’t reply to email or Twitter, which is bad when you have a device that has such a spotty record (take a look at some of the other reviews about this thing). Best case, they are just a small company that isn’t ready for prime time. Either way, I would steer clear of them and save your $60.
You take your chances, and I would say that if you buy this device, you are not buying it with any warranty and don’t expect any support. I have no tolerance for companies that don’t stand behind their product, and while the information about my sleep patterns was interesting, the support failure makes this an automatic failure.