Wakemate Revisited
After months of deliberation, I am finally back to write my experience with the Wakemate. Let me start by saying this incredible device has helped me track an analyze my sleep. It has also helped me feel more rested when I wake up in the mornings. Overall this system has been pretty good.
Hardware – The wrist band was a little bit snug for me, but has relaxed more as I wear it. Its a bit bulky when your not used to sleeping with something attached to your wrist. I also have not had any issues with it connecting to my Droid X phone. The main computer in the wristband comes out easily for washing. It has a standard mini USB plug which worked with a USB charger I had kicking around.
Software – The software is extremely easy to use. The App installed without issue on my Droid X. I quickly setup the alarm and was able to start my sleep cycle. The only beef I have about the App is that if you go to another program or switch to the homescreen, then when you come back to the app, it is as if you opened it for the first time. It should be able to run in the background like other alarm applications. The included ring tones are quite pleasant.
Success – This product works by measuring your body’s movement through the accelerometer and transmits via Bluetooth to your phone. Once you wake up it uploads the entire nights data to the cloud for analysis. I have had a number of nights where I needed to stay up late working on a project and then wake up only after a few hours. After a few times of using the Wakemate, I was able to get nearly the same quality of sleep, but with alot less time actually asleep.
One night I went to sleep at around 3:30 am and had a meeting at 7:00 am. I set the Wakemate and it woke me up at 6:45. I didn’t feel the same groggy that I would normally feel because it woke me up from higher levels of sleep and not from within REM. The coolest part of this system is that it attaches a number to the result of your sleep. 100 being the best, 1 being the worst. It calculates the amount of time you were in REM, and each level sleep to determine how quality of a sleep you had. My average is 80 which isn’t too bad. You can also add tags to your sleep to describe your sleep so that you can further analyze your sleep pattern given certain tags. For example, I have the tag “Working Late” which I attach to any of my scores where I go to bed right after I finish work. I can go back and see if I get as restful of sleep when I fall asleep directly from work or when I have some down time.
Final Thoughts – This system is a great system if you are consistent with it. My biggest problem is that I forget to charge the device when I leave for work and then am unable to use it the next night because the battery is low or dead. The next problem I have is leaving enough time each night to set it up with and connect the Bluetooth. It is literally 2 steps to do this so this is pure laziness. I recommend this product to anyone looking to get more from their sleep, or that is a nerd and loves stats.
Cheers,
Mike