The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer_® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging … now that’s positivenergy™.

Product: The Lark

Price: $ 129

What It’s Good For: Getting vital information about how well you sleep and waking you up without annoying your partner.

Who It’s Good For: Anyone who works too hard, sleeps too little and sees diminishing returns; anyone whose partner needs to sleep in.

Limitations: Wristband isn’t actually attached to sensor; no way to alter alarm once it’s started.

Bottom Line: Not the most advanced technology out there, but a very convenient, user-friendly sleep aid and silent alarm.

---

---

Every human being alive wants a good night’s sleep, and given that it should (if done right) occupy a third of our entire lives, the business of getting a good night’s sleep ought to be one of the largest on the planet.

Which it why it’s a surprise that the launch late last month of the Lark system for the iPhone ($ 129), a wristband and app combo that tracks your sleep, hasn’t made a bigger splash. It is, in short, the easiest system ever created to help you get a good night’s sleep. As an added bonus, it uses vibration rather than noise to rouse you, so it won’t wake up your significant other.

Prior to the Lark, the best sleep system I’d seen was the Zeo alarm clock ($ 200). The Zeo asks you to wear a slim-fitting headband with a lightweight chunk of brain-reading circuitry in one end. What you get in return is total access to your sleeping brain. Throughout the night, using transmissions from the headband, the alarm clock tracks which one of four sleep states you’re in, from deep sleep (the kind that makes you feel like a million dollars) to REM sleep (the bit that’s interesting if you’re into lucid dreaming.) In the morning you get something called a ZQ — a “sleep score” out of 100, basically — which you can try to improve on night after night.

But the troubles with Zeo are many. The ZQ would only really be interesting if we all started using it, and could therefore trash-talk each other’s ZQs in some kind of massively multiplayer sleep improvement game. That is what the company was aiming for; it hasn’t happened yet. The alarm clock featured an interesting graph of your night as it was unfolding, but lacked the one thing that could let you live with such a thing in your bedroom — a dimmer button. (Ironically, Zeo’s literature advises you to kill extraneous light sources for better sleep.) Also, you try strapping on a headband at bedtime every night.

The Lark delivers on Zeo’s promise — in a manner that is somewhat less informational but way more user-friendly. This time, it’s a wristband rather than a headband. It feels like putting a watch on when you go to bed. But the plastic velcro-wrapped doohickey, which recharges on a tiny nightstand, is transmitting to your iPhone the whole time. The Lark app runs in the background on the iPhone, so your phone can be off the whole night. (Always a good idea to keep an iPhone plugged in when it’s running an app for seven or eight hours, of course.)

So what do you get in the morning? Well, the Lark can’t read your brain. It can’t tell you when you’re in REM sleep or deep sleep, which is a pity. But once you’ve strapped it on, the Lark is like Santa Claus — it sees you when you’re sleeping and knows if you’re awake.

How? Because the wristband is incredibly sensitive to tiny movements. It turns out that when we sleep, we’re as good as paralyzed. All those rolling over tricks we do at night are actually brief moments of wakefulness. And if you’re awake, you’re moving, if only slightly. Go ahead, try to keep your wrist perfectly still for more than a minute. Try pretending to be asleep. The Lark knows all.

In the morning, you’ll know how long it took you to fall asleep (a very good indicator of your sleep health), how many times you woke up in the night and how many hours and minutes you slept for, cumulatively. For $ 60 more, you can get access to a “personal sleep coach” via the Lark website, as well as a Myers-Briggs-style assessment of your “sleep type.” But I’m not sure that extra cash is entirely necessary here. Simply seeing a string of four, five or six-hour nights in the “sleep history” tab on the Lark app, alongside the admonition that “you slept too little,” is enough to shame you into doing all the stuff sleep experts tell us to do: head to bed earlier, banish light sources and TVs from the bedroom, and don’t drink in the few hours before bed.

The Lark isn’t perfect, of course, being a first generation device. There is no way to change an alarm once you’ve set it, and there are too few instructions included in the box. The velcro wrist strap simply wraps around the sensor, which means the two can get easily separated when plugging it in to the rechargeable dock. And would it have been so hard to include an iPhone charger in the dock itself, rather than making you plug a charger cable into the back?

But none of these caveat are worth avoiding the Lark for, if you’re interested in learning how you sleep and learning to sleep better. The vibrating alarm worked every time for me, and I’m often harder to wake than a bear in January. If you’re worried, though, there is a backup alarm sound available on the app under the “peace of mind” setting. A few weeks with this device and the hope is that you’ll have plenty of that.

---

Series Supported by Energizer_®

---

The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer_® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging. Energizer_® has always been designed with performance and responsibility in mind … now that’s positivenergy™.

The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer_® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging … now that’s positivenergy™.

Product: Soundmatters foxL v2.2 Bluetooth Speaker

Price: $ 199

What It’s Good For: Taking high fidelity along with you in a palm-sized package.

Who It’s Good For: Frequent travelers who own Bluetooth devices and like to listen to music; well-heeled audiophiles who appreciate great sound in a small form factor.

Limitations: No auto-off function, pricey.

Bottom Line: Hold this hotshot in your hand and feel its incredible power. Such sound has never shoehorned itself into such tiny speakers and been worthy of such praise. Even though you get a lot of original technology for your money, it’s pretty expensive at $ 199.

---

---

There are plenty of Bluetooth speakers in the world, but none are like the foxL v2.2. Even though it’s a mere 5.6 inches wide, this 9.5-oz speaker rocks some downright amazing sound.

Although it feels like metal, Soundmatters has constructed the speaker out of something it calls “glass-filled composite,” otherwise known as fiberglass, the same thing surfboards are made of. That makes it lighter than it would be if it were built entirely of metal. That light weight and its small size practically beg you to take it with you on your next trip.

We can thank ex-NASA engineer and actual rocket scientist Dr. Godehard Guenther for the clever ideas that went into this product. Revered in the audio industry, he’s figured out unique ways to get maximum sound out of the smallest amount of space.

The speaker’s two 25mm drivers are powered by four digital amplifiers, pumping out a total of 8 watts of power, which is a lot for a speaker of this size. Dr. Guenther has freed up space inside the speaker by moving the “BassBattery” toward the outside, where it’s also utilized as a moving part that he calls a “moving wall radiator” that generates a surprising amount of bass.

Let’s put it through its paces. After four hours of charging a battery that’ll run for about five hours on a charge, the foxL was ready to go, its Bluetooth radio pairing up almost immediately with a laptop, iPhone and iPad 2. If you don’t want to use Bluetooth, you can plug any audio device with a standard headphone jack into the foxL’s auxiliary port.

So what is the overall effect of all this serious engineering? Astonishing sound, that’s what. It’s a kick to turn this thing on and hold it in your hand, feeling it rocking your arm from fingertips to elbow with its vigorous sound.

But it’s when you put it on a solid surface that its true nature is revealed. There’s actually enough bass pumping out of its little drivers to make you feel like moving your feet. Even though its optimal listening distance is about three feet away, it sounds good from further out, too. Plug it into an AC outlet or USB port, and suddenly it’s running on twice the wattage than the battery, giving it a noticeable increase in oomph. It’s remarkable.

It also performs admirably as a speakerphone, and if you have it linked to a smartphone via Bluetooth, when a call comes in it immediately turns into speakerphone mode, letting you answer the call with a slightly awkward routine of pressing and holding a Bluetooth button. And its built-in mic faithfully reproduces your voice, sounding better than most speakerphones I’ve used.

Summing up, if you can afford it, you’ll want to take this whippersnapper along with you on your next adventure. It’s beautifully designed, pumps out plenty of clean sound even at low volume and plays loud enough to entertain a rowdy crowd.

Come along on a tour of the foxL Bluetooth speaker in this gallery:

---

Series Supported by Energizer_®

---

The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer_® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging. Energizer_® has always been designed with performance and responsibility in mind … now that’s positivenergy™.