I really appreciate all of your comments of insight and gratitude. In an effort to make my evaluation that much more objective, I'm responding to your comments.
Comment: You can also try putting up double sided tape where the cat scratches. They hate that
Thanks! I'll try that. The cats have been behaving themselves for the most part lately.
Comment: FYI, you do not have to set TO BED - That is only if you wish to study your sleeping data... The alarm will work regardless of TO BED being set or not.
Point well-taken. I suppose I can just set an arbitrarily early 'TO BED' time and just consciously remember when I went to bed the night before if I want to record data. That makes the usage of Sleeptracker a reasonable amount easier.
Comment: I seem to be reading that your biggest complaint is that the Sleeptracker doesn't work if other things (alarms, cats) wake you up anyway. That seems pretty straight forward. It also implies that you're always being woken up at non-ideal times. Isn't that valuable information in and of itself?
There is no doubt that Sleeptracker has at least provided me with the motivation to remedy these annoyances, and in certain cases, the watch provided me a bit more quantifiable data regarding the effect of what might disturb my sleep.
In fact, I considered recording the time while I was asleep using my laptop and listening to the time segments immediately preceding my 'almost awake' moments to determine whether they were induced by an annoyance or just me. However, that was a bit much for my study at this time....maybe for a future study. Plus, I decided that, to a certain extent, there are annoyances that I can control (the cats, etc.) and others that I cannot control as easily (noisy people outside on occasion--of course I did call the police about the people at the pool @1AM last night).
Comment: Wow, some excellent (albeit slightly disappointing) insights. Your sleeping environment sounds like a challenging one, but not more than for a lot of people I suppose. That was a good point about the novelty of the watch factoring in to how awake you feel, the watch definitely needs more than a few nights before it can be judged for that reason.
As weird as it may seem, I do think that the "Wow" factor played a role in my first Sleeptracker success (I may have slept more lightly due to its novelty).
Comment: Thanks for the much needed review. It seems too good to be true from the Gear Live review. So it will be nice to have an objective 2nd opinion before I buy the watch. If this thing works as well as GL says and you verify that then I will be 1st in line.
The Gear Live review is a large reason why I purchased the watch. As a result of my Sleeptracker experience, I hope that in the future I am better able to look beyond a very positive (or negative) review and analyze the underlying data for that review.
Comment: To keep it from beeping when browsing the menus, simply press the GLO button first; the watch will not beep while the backlight is on.
Thanks!
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4 comments:
I really appreciate your taking the time to give us your thoughts on the watch. Like you, I bought the watch & am mixed about the results. The concept is fantastic, but the results ... so-so.
Remember those Mean Joe Green commercials for Mattle Electronic Football II when Mean Joe Green looked at that little game & said, "Who's in there?" I want to know the science behind this watch. What's the difference between this watch and me buying an Iron Man? Sometimes I am not convienced there is any, and this is a big placebo. And what info is there to prove me I am wrong except something a snake oil salesman (or woman :-) ) could say (e.g., This is patented technology! Oh ya, where's the patent #? It isn't on the watch/webpage or anything else. One would think if they had the patent they'd make some noise about it. Or even a patent pending. Prove it!).
Unlike you, I live alone in a quite place. So my experiences probably are idea of this sort of thing. Yes, the first 3-4 nights I had the "wow" effect and didn't sleep really well. Two things interesting about that: (1) the oddity that I would have a "wow" effect & not sleep well and (2) indication of a placebo effect (i.e., it is all in my head). After I got over the 3-4 day wow period, it worked well on some days, but as I got used to the watch I just slept right threw it. Mind you, I did get become awake enough to fumble & press all the buttons in a manner that would look like, "Just shut this dang thing off so I can get back to sleep." Thus, I've had several alarms at 7:23 and I finally wake up a 8:10, naturally. I can't say this watch does any better than chance with waking me up at my most awake moments. I'd love to be proven wrong, but where is the hard evidence other than what some people experience that might be nothing more than a placebo?
I'm returning my watch. For $50, I'd keep it; but $150, no. As I said at the start, the idea is fantastic & I look forward to version 2.0. Timex or some other big company needs to buy these guys out and run with this idea and put the R&D and marketing of that R&D out there to prove that this product can work effectively.
As for the actual watch, it isn't as bad a a lot of people say, the front button on mine was firm enough that it wasn't pressed down. The design is something I could wear to work and not be a laughing stock (wanna see a huge watch, look at Microsoft's Smart Watch by Swatch). Overall, it looks like a $20 watch. There was one thing, the batteries might have been charged when I got the watch. I say this b/c when I set the watch the digital read out kind of faded like the battery was weak. This could be the root of my problems, but, if it is for $150, I think they'd make sure a nice, new battery was in there.
If you do end up returning it, I'd be interested to see how that process goes. I know a lot of companies offer 30 day money back trials but it ends up being very difficult to get them to take their product back. Thanks for the great perspective on the SleepTracker!
I bought a sleeptracker as well, and I've not been terribly impressed so far. I'm definitely considering returning it.
I should point out that you CAN kill the ringing alarm -- it's documented on page 9 of the manual. You can press and hold the bottom left button to turn off the alarm, or press and hold the top left (GLO) button for the "snooze" function that will cause the alarm to sound again at the alarm time.
It's important to HOLD the button -- the alarm continues if you just press and release the button.
An effort that is not compromising. I admire you intelligence in putting up an article like this.
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