WakeMate sounds really cool but I don't sleep alone. It's all about waking you at the perfect time isn't it. That means I get woken up all refreshed and my partner is going to be cranky? Not designed for couples?
Well, if you use any alarm clocks isn't that the case already?
I've been using my wakemate for a few weeks now in a shared bed, but my girlfriend wakes up several hours earlier than me. Since I'm able to ignore her alarm I've never had an issue.
I imagine that since the wakemate wakes up fairly gently (most of the alarm sounds it comes with are pretty calm) and since it tries to wake you up during your lightest sleep, your partner is likely not in their lightest. At worst they could rise to near-awake until you shut off your alarm.
Even if you could have two wakemates syncing together finding a shared near-awake state to wake you both up might be statistically difficult :)
It's actually a little weird. When you wake up with a normal alarm clock there's usually a sharp delineation between asleep and awake. With the WakeMate since it gets you during near-awakeness you feel as though you've already been waking up for several minutes when your phone suddenly stated chiming.
It's not like in sleeping pill commercials where the woman wakes up and gives a happy stretch, instead it's just that your brain is already booted up, there's isn't a wait time for it to start functioning.
If you didn't have enough hours of sleep it won't magically make you fully refreshed. However, we can often survive on less hours of sleep than we think if only we wake up at the right time. And I know that for me if I wake up at the wrong moment it can ruin my day (I remain tired all day even if I've had adequate hours)--this is something WakeMate definitely seems to help with.
Edit: I've found it to be a tad overly tight but I'm a pretty big guy. After a couple of uncomfortable nights I inverted the band which helped a lot and now it's just fine. The device is attached to a pocket on the "inside" of the band, when you invert it the pocket is now on the outside of the band, and the device itself no longer constricts the circumference. It's still just as tightly couples to my arm movements though so I don't believe accuracy has been affected.
Another thing to keep in mind is Wakemate works by measuring movement during your sleep.
I've noticed that if I'm asleep with my Wakemate running and my girlfriend is working on her laptop in bed or gets up to fix a drink the movement created can show up on the Wakemate and affect my score.
It's ok for couples but definitely the ideal situation is people sleeping on their own, I think.
I've been using my wakemate for a few weeks now in a shared bed, but my girlfriend wakes up several hours earlier than me. Since I'm able to ignore her alarm I've never had an issue.
I imagine that since the wakemate wakes up fairly gently (most of the alarm sounds it comes with are pretty calm) and since it tries to wake you up during your lightest sleep, your partner is likely not in their lightest. At worst they could rise to near-awake until you shut off your alarm.
Even if you could have two wakemates syncing together finding a shared near-awake state to wake you both up might be statistically difficult :)