When someone asks you how you slept last night, how do you answer? Maybe you say that you slept “okay” or “not that good.” While the benefits of a good night sleep are without question, it’s very hard to observe and record our own sleep habits with any sort of specific detail or accuracy because, well, we are asleep. Ultimately, it’s hard to improve sleep and reap the benefits of that sleep if we’re not sure what goes on late at night in the first place.
That’s where the Zeo comes in. This revolutionary device not only measures how much you sleep, but how you sleep. The Zeo does this by recording your sleeping patterns and giving you a “ZQ” score; a number that takes into account the time it takes you to fall asleep, the times you wake during the night, total sleep time, time in REM, time in deep sleep, and time in light sleep.
At first glance the Zeo just looks like a typical alarm clock. The only recognizable difference is that the Zeo comes with a headband that charges on top of the device. This headband is what you wear at night to record your sleeping patterns. (A headband may seem like a sleeping hindrance, but I’m a very light sleeper, and the headband didn’t bother me at all. Just be sure to put it on tight enough so that it doesn’t slip off during the night, which can affect your data.)
When you wake in the morning, all of your information is right there in the Zeo. You can immediately access your stats, including time you were awake and times you woke up. (Plus, as another way to measure rest, you can enter how you feel each morning on a scale of 1 to 10.) The Zeo actually charts all of this information for you right away on the display.
Once you know how you slept, breaking down the information is easy as well. You simply take the SD card out of the Zeo, plug it into your computer, and upload the info to the
Zeo website. On the website you can analyze the specifics of your ZQ score and graph your sleep history. There is also a sleep journal so you can be more specific about the details of every night’s sleep. The depth of the website is impressive.
Even better, when you first sign up and create an online profile, you select goals such as "getting to sleep faster" or "improving your focus during the day." Zeo then creates a “sleep coach,” a personalized, 7-step process towards better sleep. (A free iPhone app was recently introduced, which is essentially an extension of the website and features 3 distinct functions: the personal ZQ breakdown, the daily sleep graph, and a personal sleep trend report. You can check that out
here.)
The Zeo is really one of the most interesting gadgets I’ve ever used. What is most impressive is the extra features available through the website and the iPhone app. The folks at Zeo could have simply introduced their product as a way to measure sleep, but they’ve really gone out of their way to make sure sleeping data is presented and analyzed in a way that helps the user really understand their sleeping habits. And that can only lead to better sleep.
You can find a lot more information and purchase your own Zeo
here.
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