Can the Zeo help me sleep through a crying baby?

Wearing a headband while I sleep?  That seemed to me a real dealbreaker.  Sure, I read dozens of the reviews of the Zeo already – most all of them positive.  Even more, tracking sleep is one of the bigger, easier personal data points that can be quantified (and then dissected and understood).  It took my attending the Boston Quantified Self meetup at the Zeo offices earlier this month to break down and spend the money.  Moving for my summer internship and a few late nights with my newborn son kept my Zeo sleep monitor and headband in the box until a couple of weeks ago.

My early verdict with the Zeo: thumbs way up.  To the notes!

The Hardware

Zeo Sleep Headband and Alarm Clock

The box arrives in my hand direct from the folks at Zeo.  For a startup, they have nailed professional packaging…also, simple and straightforward setup instructions (maybe one too many pamphlets included in the box).  A few of my notes about the hardware of the Zeo:

• First: the headband is incredibly lightweight and comfortable; it’s very easy to wear.  I sleep very well generally, though little annoyances can definitely keep me up tossing and turning.  The headband, one of the bigger Zeo-adoption-obstacles for me, is a non-issue.
• Second: easy, easy, easy to use.  I set the alarm clock, charged and wore the headband for the first night.  I awoke and placed the headband on the base  station – which then asked me how I slept (1-5 scale) – how nice of you to ask.  The steps are simple and the display is straightforward and uncluttered.
• Third: about the display.  When I plugged the base station alarm clock in, the screen lit up nicely with much more info than I expected.  The sturdy, robust base stations displays current time; alarm time; my last Z score; battery level in the headband; and, most impressively, 5 minute intervals of sleep data.  It’s tempting to simply stay up to watch the intervals tick by…but that defeats the purpose doesn’t it?  And then you’d only see the “wake” score.  Better to drift off into dreamland to gain bars of  light, REM and deep sleep…
• A final note about the hardware: The Zeo does not travel well as you’d have to bring along the base station with the headband.  Perhaps that is an improvement to come with data storage in the headband?

MySleep.MyZeo.com - the Zeo dashboard

The Software

http://mysleep.myzeo.com (my, my) hosts all of the sleep data that gets uploaded (manually, for now) from the base station’s memory card/USB.  The interface speeds along.  Data is presented in many forms, all of which require only a few seconds of tutorial to understand.  The best visualizations in my opinion are the actual sleep graphs which repeat the information from the nightly base station charts.  The charts show total sleep time, times to bed and rise (Ben Franklin would not be impressed with me), and detail on the type of sleep in 5 minute intervals and also summarized.  All in all, its about as much knowledge about my own sleep patterns that I could imagine viewing.  Oh, and by the way, Zeo allows users to download a detailed csv of all of this.  Yay freedom of data!

Zeo offers coaching, which I declined, but could be valuable for individuals with real sleeping issues.  My sleep issues largely center around going to bed way too late, eating too close to bedtime, and other bad decisions made.  The site includes a blog where new features and guides and general sleep stuff gets highlighted.  And the company has listed a ton of great sleep resources in their sleep information center.

How does Zeo know what the heck my eyes and brain are doing at night?  I dig both their transparency and ability to layman-ize the science here, not only in explanation, but also in comments and q&a with engaged users.  This demonstrates why the Zeo better tracks sleep than any iPhone app or bed-motion-sensor equipment.  It’s why I abandoned the iPhone SleepCycle app (which isn’t bad, by the way…just heats up the phone and battery too much for me).

So…can the Zeo help me sleep through a crying newborn?  Not quite.  But it does let me know that I woke up 3 times (largely due to my newborn son) and missed an average of 20 minutes each night.  Over time, it will tell me the effects of that afternoon cup of coffee (I track my food using DailyBurn – review for another day), my run along the Charles River, and the stresses of each day.  Tracking these instances and comparing Zeo MySleep data allows me to make better decisions about my life and, specifically for the Zeo, my sleep.