Sleep Time by Azumio Review

Sleep Time promises the user not only an alarm clock that will wake them up, but also a sleep analyser that will judge when it’s best to set the alarm off. It’s an interesting feature, and one that definitely warrants further investigation.

Sleep Time developer, Azumio, claims that a regular alarm clock often wakes the user when they are in a deep sleep, therefore they will wake up feeling tired (which sounds rather familiar, as it happens to me every day).

Sleep Time allows the user to set an alarm time, and then a 30 minute “wake-up phase”, and by using the iOS device’s accelerometer the app will monitor the user’s movement, analyse the sleep pattern and decide when in the 30 minute wake-up phase to sound the alarm.

The idea behind this is that Sleep Time will wake the user when they are in the lightest possible sleep, reducing the risk of them emerging from their bed like a bear with a sore head. This wake-up phase can be adjusted to 10 or 20 minutes, or even turned off entirely so the app acts as just a regular alarm.

It’s extremely interesting to check out the graphs showing off the user’s sleep pattern. A number of parameters are shown, such as time spent awake, time spent in light sleep, and time spent in deep sleep.

Apparently my sleep efficiency is 57%, which doesn’t sound that great. In fact, so light was my sleep that the app woke me several minutes into the wake-up phase.

The user interface for Sleep Time is extremely simple. A clock face shows the time, and the user drags the clock hand to what time they want the alarm to go off. Turning the alarm off can be done by hitting the power button, or pressing the relevant icon for two seconds.

The only downside to Sleep Time is that it can’t be run in the background. This may not be an issue for some, but I know that I frequently wake up during the night and groggily check any emails that may have come in, and that would require exiting the alarm app and having to set it again.

Sleep Time is a good app. While I can’t prove or disprove the claim that it’ll make the user wake up feeling fresher (that would require a lot more testing), it does have a lot of features.

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