Just to be clear from the beginning, this is not intended to be a recommendation (or in this case, a non-recommendation) of the Wakemate product - this is just my personal experiences with the device.  There are plenty of people who love this device and it has changed their lives http://www.amazon.com/WakeMate-APPLE-STDWB-for-iPhone/product-reviews/B004XJ7PYS/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending  So if you are considering this product to enhance your sleep experience, please give it a try.

I had followed Wakemate since before it was a product.  They did a good job with pre-product promotion on twitter and blogs, and gained a decent following because of it.  I put off buying the product because I didn’t really feel I needed it.  After a while I got a direct-email marketing message asking me if I had any questions, and after a few e-mail exchanges I decided to give it a try.

Out of the box, it paired with the phone like advertised.  A downside was the wristband.  It was extremely tight.  I’m an average size male, and the wristband with the WakeMate device inside was so tight that my hand tingled.  I could turn it inside out, and that relieved some of the pressure, but it was still tight.  The downside with the band being inside out was the electronic’s connectors and switches were partially exposed.

The first couple of nights, everything worked as expected.  I received a “sleep score” for each night that gave a metric of how well I slept.  As expected, the one night I had a high number, I felt like I got a good nights sleep.  I could have told you this without the WakeMate confirming it for me.

The third day I put it on charge all day, lights indicated charging, but when I unplugged it it at night it showed only 63% charged.  What I think happened is it charged itself for 40 minutes, turned off the charger when the battery was full, and then ran itself down during the day.  By the time I used it at night, it had used up almost half its charge.  This is just my engineering guess.

I e-mailed WakeMate support with this concern and they suggested I let it drain down all the way and charge it again.  A typical response, but in my experience this is often a stall answer.  I have plenty of devices that charge themselves, and the ones that behave well manage their own charging profile.  Unless there is a defective battery, the device will work perfectly without special consideration.

With this support e-mail, I e-mailed them on Thursday May 19.  I didn’t receive a reply until Tuesday May 24.  That response time is totally unacceptable for a 2 line reply.  My exchanges with the CEO during the marketing push were responded to within minutes.

I continued using the device to give it a good chance.  The battery is still disappointing, but I can manage.  I’m more concerned about the results of using it.

Two nights in a row I woke up and the phone says that I have to power cycle the device to have it send the data.  I turn it off and back on again, and it sent no data.  So two nights in a row I got no data.  Another night, this happened and it sent data, but the data seemed incomplete (stopped at 5am when I slept until 8am).

In general, the data I get from the device is interesting, but not something I can actually act on.  It tells me I got a good nights sleep, but I could tell you that without any hard data.  Tagging sleep to see trends seem to have little benefit - if you drank the evening before or are stressed, you probably know how that behavior will effect your sleep.  The device confirms your hypothesis, but so does your own feeling.

One major selling point is that it will wake you up when you are at a light point in your sleep.  When you wake up at a light point in your sleep, you should feel better than if you were jarred out of a deep sleep.  Seems logical.  However, my experience is at the lightest point in my sleep, I wake up on my own without external help.  Every single time the device’s alarm went off, I was already awake.  Most of the time I opened my eyes, saw the time was within the wake-up window, and thought, “as soon as I move my hand the WakeMate alarm will go to go off.”  Sure enough, I was right.

I am going to return the WakeMate.  In summary, my issues are…

1. Uncomfortably tight wrist band
2. Disappointing battery charging behavior
3. Loss of data during some nights
4. Very slow technical support
5. Tells me something about my sleep that I already know
6. Doesn’t wake me up any differently than my own body clock