Catch Some Zzzs with Zeo
We love to quantify our lives. Counting steps in the day. Counting calories burned. Counting the beats of our heart in a minute. We love to inform ourselves about ourselves in a scientific manner. The cool new device to do this is Zeo, a head strap sensor and a specialized alarm clock to read, then upload and analyze data about your sleep patterns.
At first, I was skeptical. You have to put a headband around your head while you sleep at night. The head strap sensor relays information to the nifty high-tech alarm clock. Luckily the headband was much more comfortable than I suspected, with extra cushioning around the snags and sensors (though I usually took it off an hour before I woke up fully because it gets annoying by then). It also relays in real time, which is almost comical, as it tells you you are awake if you look at it while in bed. It also tells anyone else in the room, which blows your cover if you’re trying to fake sleep. The alarm clock has several different type of alarms, the traditional alarm for a specific time and the ‘SmartWake’ feature tries to wake you up at a natural awakening point within a set time frame, when you’re sleeping the lightest according to your sensors, similar to the SleepTrackers that we’ve previously reviewed.
The sensor records information about you while you sleep and displays this in a very cool timeline graph on the alarm clock. The first night I tried it, it showed me I had gotten over an hour of deep sleep, over 2 hours of REM sleep and that it had taken me 36 minutes to fall asleep. Zeo also has an online system where you can upload all your data and take a closer look at it. They say the device is not a substitute for a medical professional and that if you are having sleeping problems, to consult your doctor- but to my mind, it is obviously built for those with sleeping disorders that would like greater insight into their sleep. As an informational tool goes, the Zeo was fairly easy to setup and use, and even kind of fun- but it feels in need of refinement, integration in other ways, and different sensors than the slightly-awkward headband.
If you would like further details on your sleeping over the long-term, you can go online and upload your data to the MyZeo site. The information from the alarm clock base station is saved onto an included SD card, which you can plug into your computer- a bit cumbersome. Zeo requires you to register online, which I find to be somewhat invasive as I would have preferred a simple software package that I could download to my computer and keep secure. Additionally annoying, and I hope they change this, is that it does not seem like you can bypass most of questions. So, in order to further use a purchased product, the customer needs to answer where they heard about the product, their address, phone number, job position, and a ton of other identifying and borderline unnecessary information before they can access their long-term sleep data. Now, some of this may be useful, and various reasons are given for the questions, but certainly it should be the customer’s choice. Nonetheless, they had good questions online about sleep habits and it seemed like the Zeo would be a good tool to chart your long-term sleep health.
The Zeo Personal Sleep Coach is available from Amazon.com for $249 and from MyZeo.com for the same. And, if all of their wonderful information helps you sleep better, then you’ll be able to count minutes of REM sleep instead of sheep.
