So, I am midway through the first 5 weeks of using the Dreem Headset. This is the period that apparently you need to start gaining optimum benefits. This is my mid term update.
The headset arrives in a well presented package with all the extras that you need to operate it, plus a quite neat and stylish carry case. The headset itself is about as attractive and minimalstic as it coul be and definitely a quantum step in refinement from the prototypes demonstrated a couple of years ago at the Weareble Technology Show in Excel. Actually it is quite comfortable, and although I am awarw of it when in bed, it does not bother me during the night. Although, when I have been extra restless, it has fallen off a couple of times in the 20 nights that I have worn it.
It is controlled by an app on your Android or iOS phone, synching via blue tooth. Although there is a feature on the headband which allows you to start it with last used settings using a touch pad. I actually used the latter for the first couple of nights, because I had some trouble with bluetooth synching, which required me to reload the app and re-do my settings to clear the problem.
The online technical support is pretty responsive and gives good support advice.
So what is it really like to use? well apart from feeling like a character from a Phillip K. Dick novel when I wear it, it does seem to work. There's a choice of sounds that you can play to get you off to sleep, e.g. soothing harp music, trcikling strams etc. You can also activate sounds to time your breathing to slow you down and there are some meditation options as well. This does seem to be getting me off to sleep quite quickly, despite the recent torridly hot weather we have been enjoying which usually keeps me awake for ages. The sound is very quiet and is supposed to use bone conductivity to transmit it from the headband into your ears. Though my slightly deaf wife can sometimes hear them and also finds them soothing.
In the middle of the night, the head set monitors your sleep using brain wave activity and plays "pink noise" to enhance deep sleep. So far I have found out that if I over consume alcohol there is not much deep sleep, but otherwise I seem to be getting around 10-12% improvements of deep sleep.
The final interesting part is that to wake you up gracefully, you can set an alarm and it then waits until about 20 minutes before your alarm time and looks for a light period of sleep to start plying your preferred sound, e.g. frogs croaking, to gradually bring you into conciousness. It's quite an experience to gradually realise that you are surfacing in the morning.
So how do I feel. Well, it seems to be working. I don't feel as exhausted as I did and the feedback from the app encourages me to think more about positive sleep behaviour, e.g. to go to bed a bit earlier and so on. The metrics it gives you includes things like, how long you took to get to sleep, how long you slept, how long your deep sleep lasted, how much deep sleep was encouraged by pink sound stimulations and your average pulse rate through the night. There's also an overall sleep quality score and the app gives you messages on how well you are doing and where you sit with respect to typical sleep patterns.
So overall I am pleased with the purchase and think that this is a positive thing for my wellbeing.
Would I want to see some enhancements? Yes. I would like a wider range of choices for the sounds getting off to sleep and I find the sea one particulalry wierd. I would also like a built in mask or eye curtain that I could use to block out light at night, because its difficult in hotel rooms and with modern street lighting to get a completely dark room at night. I would also like to see an anit-phase noise feature to cancel out ambient noise, because the recommendation is to use head phones instead in a noisy environment, but they are uncomfortabel in bed.
However for a first generation product, this is excellent and the best praise I can think of, is that my wife wants to use it, not realising that this would corrupt the stats. So perhaps a multi user feature would be good, if only to let partners try it out to see if it works for them without disrupting its machine learning qulaities.
So if you suffer from disrupted sleep and can afford the price tag, I would recommend that you get one now.
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