Have you ever awakened from a full night's sleep and wondered if you actually got any sleep at all? Or felt like you were finally drifting off to sleep, just as your alarm went off? Well, the Sleepace RestOn sleep monitor is designed to unravel all the mysteries of the night using a sensitive monitor and sleep app. Gizmag notched up some early nights to see how the system performed.
The Sleepace RestOn, from the same company behind the Nox smartlight, is a non-wearable sleep monitor that's claimed to be the best sleep monitoring appliance in the world.
It consists of a 2 mm-thin sleep monitor with proportionsresembling the strap of a car seatbelt. The monitor is laid flat across the mattress, underneath the fitted sheet. It wraps over the edge of the bed and issecured in place with a magnetic lid after fitting a sheet over the top. And that's about ascomplicated as it gets.
The monitor is discreet and comfortable, and doesn't have any trailing power cords running to an outlet. In fact, one charge of its internal battery with the provided USB cable will give you amonth's worth of use. The device's patented structure packs medical-grade sensors that Sleepace claims enables it to produce results comparable toprofessional medical vital signs monitors.
Once you install the free Sleepace app (available for iOS or Android) on your mobile device and enter your name, age and gender, you simply press"start sleep" and the monitor immediately begins recording your heart and respiratory rate. The monitor communicates all your sleep data to the app viaBluetooth, tracking your body movements, sleep cycles and sleep quality.
Once you awake and press "stop sleep," the appcalculates your sleep score and provides helpful advice about the factorsaffecting your sleep and what the potential health risks might be. For example,if the monitor records bradypnea or tachypnea (slow or fast respiratory rate),it will tell you exactly how long this lasted, the normal respiratory rate fora person your age and tips for managing this in future.
The app offers an impressive amount of technical detail aboutthe quality of your sleep, with information about the different sleep stages, thetotal percentages of deep, mid or light sleep achieved, and the possible impactthis may have on your long-term health, as well as the day ahead.
It will also advise on how to achieve abetter quality of sleep each night – what to be mindful of and even whatenvironmental factors may be contributing to your sleep quality. The app will, for instance, give information about optimal temperatures for the bedroom, tell youto avoid strenuous exercise six hours before bed if you have been restless, and let you know how much time to spend outside if you woke uptoo many times during the night. It will also drop some handy hints about alcohol and sedative use.
The app has over 200 of these sleep quality analysis reports and actionplans, to help get you on track. You will also be able to see in chart form what your overallsleep looked like for daily, weekly or monthly time periods, showing the length of time it took tofall asleep and how many times you awoke or moved around.
The app even warns if you have gone to bed too late or overslept,providing clear information about the average hours per night a person in your age group should sleep and the potential impact that this might have on your day, withadvice about diet and exercise and the optimal time to go to sleep in summerand winter.
Unfortunately, the designers at Sleepace have not been able toiron out the kinks in terms of sharing a bed with another person. If you bothhappen to be lying on the monitor at any point, the scores will not be accurateand may record double the heartbeats and respiratory action throughout thenight.
And in case it's crossed your mind, the monitor does not record non-sleep-related nocturnal activity. So if you happen to get frisky while the monitor ison, the app might only register an increase in your vitals ... and won't offertips for improved performance.
Just a warning, though, the data collection can become quite addictive and you may findyourself becoming competitive with your partner over who had a better night'ssleep and why. This is especially true when using the Family Cloud, a secureservice that enables users to add family members to an app, enabling viewing of each other'ssleep data from anywhere in the world.
We found the Sleepace RestOn system simple to use, barely noticeable at night and capable of delivering more comprehensive sleep data than a wearable fitness monitor like the Fitbit. After following the recommendations, our sleep score steadily improved from as low as 65 out of 100 to a final score of 100.
The Sleepace RestOn works with Apple iOS 7 and later, and Android 4.3 and later compatible devices. It's available for US$149.
Product page: Sleepace
