Feels like an untested, unfinished product
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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.
Rating: 1 stars