Philips - SmartSleep Deep Sleep Headband (Medium) - Gray

This is an exciting new innovative product in the emerging category of Sleep Health. Study after study confirm a definite linkage between sleep habits on psychological mood, physical health and longevity. This product works by monitoring your sleep habits, measuring key metrics that go beyond the Apple Watch sleep trackers I use measuring heart rate and body movement. PROS ——— + Sleep Heath benefits are far-reaching + Comfort, like wearing a ball cap to bed + innovative technology with reliable design + SleepMapper app integration into Apple Health app + incredibly promising product with huge potential benefits CONS ——— - Lost sensor data is frustrating, it’s all or nothing, no partial sessions - Sticky sensor attaches only behind the right ear (cable length) - Cost prohibitive for some - Sensor pads 30-pack for $30 unless you carefully re-use - Requires patience and dedication for full benefits Narrow user restrictions - 18 years - 50 years of age - sleep 5 - 7 hours per night - No sleep disorders (insomnia, apnea, etc) - Fall asleep within 30 minutes with few wake-ups - No medication or alcohol dependency to fall asleep Philips advised it might take the full 2-week evaluation period before benefits become obvious, but I can tell you this product did help me my first night using it I actually got less sleep, but of higher-quality, and awoke fresh and energized. Possible placebo effect, perhaps. Subsequent usage provided slightly more sleep than previously, with fluctuating sleep scores in the SleepMapper app. It achieves this by sensing how deeply you are sleeping. When it determines you begin to drift awake before completing a full “sleep cycle”, it pulses subsonic tones through the headband, keeping you under longer. All is not perfect though, I had two disconnects during the trial period where I awoke feeling great, hoping to see a high sleep score, but after plugging the headband into the micro-USB charger (which “ends” the sleep session), and syncing the data, I was sadly informed that the unit lost connection to the sensor data overnight. No sleep score for you. Bummer. Philips manual says to use a drop of water on your forehead under the front sensor, which I did, but believe the problem is bc I typically sleep on my right side, the same side the sensor “ear bone” connector attaches to, and noticed it had slid lower than usual, disrupting contact. This product shows tremendous potential, but I’m having difficulties giving it a whole-hearted recommendation. If sleep is important to you, this product is likely to help, but it’s a little finicky, and slightly uncomfortable at first (though initial discomfort subsided and I continue to use it nightly beyond the review period). All in all I believe this product will continue to get better via Firmware and Software updates.

My fiancé doesn’t get enough sleep. She works long hours and then spends her evenings taking care of our family. She’s the first one up in the morning and the last one to bed at night. So, there is a lot that rests on her shoulders. As a result, she doesn’t get the most amount or the best quality of sleep. When I heard about this device, I thought it might be able to help her with sleeping deeper, longer so that she was more rested throughout the day. There were several observations I made about the headband as we tested it. First of all, it requires that the user wear it overnight. Therefore, you have to be comfortable with having something on your head while you sleep. My fiancé was a bit worried about this requirement at first, but when she tried on the headband she said it was actually quite comfortable. The fabric that is used is really soft and it ended up being a really nice fit for her head. It has some cushioning in a few places which make it feel like an extension of your pillow. The next observation we made was that the headband charges using Micro USB. Even though this option provides a less expensive connection, I sort of feel that it’s an older technology and I would much rather see USB-C used on newer devices. That said, Philips does include a Micro USB to USB-A cable and a power adapter that plugs into a standard outlet along with the headband. The cable is woven and flat to help prevent tangling. The instructions note that even though the headband has some charge out of the box that the user will need to charge it for a few hours in order for it to have enough battery life to make it through the night. This made for a small speed bump in our user experience. At it turns out the headband has just enough battery life for one night’s use. Therefore, you have to charge it every single day in order to use it at night. It would be nice if this device had at least two nights worth of charge available in my opinion. The next thing we noticed was that you have to manually sync the data from the headband to the app on the phone. It’s a quick and easy process, but it’s something you have to remember to do every day in order to get the greatest benefit from the device. When we synced the data from the headband and found that my fiancé had earned a high sleep score of 95 out of 100. This was calculated by the time asleep, any deductions for sleep stages, and any sleep boost she might have received from the headband. We happen to have a smart bed that also helps to track sleep data so we compared her score from the night she used the headband to the night directly following and found that her score was only a couple of points different. She actually experienced more restless sleep on the night she used the headband than the night she didn’t. On a few additional occasions, she reported that a reading wasn’t recorded or the headband slipped off of her head. One unfortunate side effect of using the headband for deeper sleep was oversleeping the next morning. My fiancé ended up sleeping right through her alarm. She did wake up just in time to get ready for work and get my daughter to school on time, but it was a rushed morning. As a result, she has been nervous about using the headband on nights when she has work the next morning. She said she felt a little better rested than normal, but it wasn’t a huge difference. We’ve only had the headband for a couple of weeks so it’s hard for my fiancé to make a full determination of how it’s helping (or not helping) her throughout the day yet. While I like the concept of this device, and so does my fiancé, but the expense is quite high and since some of the steps are ones you have to complete manually, so it’s a little bit of an inconvenient device to work with.

I’d like to start off by saying that I feel the Philips SmartSleep Deep Sleep headband actually did make a difference in my alertness and ability to function normally on days following nights where I slept less than 7 hours. The product is specifically for people who usually get less than 6 hours of sleep or regularly sleep only 5 to 7 hours due to choice or lifestyle. That’s a really important point because if you have a sleep disorder or condition like insomnia or sleep apnea this product isn’t designed to help you. There are a lot of conditions you have to meet in order to use the device as well, for example: be under the age of 50, be able to hear 80 dB, and be able to fall asleep quickly without any aid. Since I met all of the requirements I thought that product might be a good fit for me. As a reference point, I normally need between 8 and 9 hours of sleep to function optimally the next day and feel refreshed. I know from experience that when I sleep less than that, I wake up feeling tired, am exhausted throughout the day, and sometimes get headaches or even migraines when I’m sleep deprived over consecutive days. So in order to faithfully test out this product, I restricted my sleep to 5 to 7 hours per night for two weeks straight to align my habits with the target consumers and determine if the product could actually help me sleep less and feel optimal, or at least normal, the following day. What I found was that, yes, on nights where I slept fewer than 7 or even 6 hours, even though I felt terrible shortly after wakening, that feeling did not persist throughout the day, and after about an hour I actually felt alert enough to get through work, concentrate on tasks, and power through pretty late into the night without needing to take a nap or generally feel too exhausted. Even while following this routine for multiple days back-to-back I never got to the point where I had bad migraines or decided I couldn’t handle the restricted amount of sleep. From a functionality standpoint, the sensors on the headband always picked up their signals immediately, after placing a drop of water on my forehead under the contact point. Syncing the data with the app the next day was simple too. The app logged the data that the headband tracked during the night and gave me an insightful breakdown of my sleep pattern and progress over time. My first night with the device I slept 5 hrs and had a sleep score of 51 with a Sleep Boost measurement of 14. After several more nights, some where I got 6 hours of sleep or more, I regularly received Sleep Boost scores in the mid to high 20s; as a result my total sleep scores were in the 90s, and sometimes hit 100. That said, if you get more than 7 hours of sleep the app will always give you high sleep scores, so it’s unclear how much the device is helping you, if you get adequate sleep. In general, the higher the sleep score form the night before, the better I felt and functioned the next day. Only once during the two-weeks did the headband shift and disconnect in the middle of the night, because I rolled over and the headband slipped off my forehead, resulting in only a partial data set for that night. I generally do not move a lot in my sleep. The headband itself has a pretty nice construction. It’s made from a soft, stretchy, slippery fabric like performance athletic clothing and is lightweight overall. The headband’s design is not unlike a regular sports sweatband but with some electronics embedded inside: earpieces on each side for delivering sound into your ear and a secondary forehead band for one of the sensors. The forehead sensor strip is removable for cleaning, though none of the rest of the headband has removable parts. Since you can’t submerge the headband in water due to the electronics inside, washing it in the washing machine is out of the question and you’re limited to wiping it down with a damp cloth. I would have preferred the parts of it that come in direct contact with your skin and hair to be removable for washing. The second sensor consists of a disposable gel pad that you stick behind your right ear and snap onto a wire just under the right earpiece. I did find that upon removal, this sticky sensor left a tacky residue behind my ear that was difficult to clean off, even with soap, warm water, and scrubbing with a terry cloth. The headband comes in two sizes: medium and large; I got the medium size as this supposedly fits most users. However, for me, it was not a comfortable product to wear nightly. I thought perhaps it was due to the size because I had the band expanded to the max and it was snug, though according to the manual this is appropriate as long as it is not overly tight, which I didn’t think it was. The headband also loosened up over time and by the end of the first week didn’t feel as tight, and I even needed to use the adjusters to make it smaller. Since the headband goes over your ears, your ears are pressed flat against your head for the duration of the night. This actually bothered me a lot because I would wake up with pain and soreness at the back of my ears, akin to the feeling of wearing on-ear headphones or earmuffs for too long. The earpieces also prevented me from side-sleeping because the components inside the earflaps are somewhat hard, and I could feel them quite clearly when I slept against them. However, my discomfort was mainly due to the fact that the headband adjusts via two flat metal brackets (not removable) at the back of the headband. I had the headband at the max circumference and the brackets sat right in the center at the back of my head. I get that they’re thin and lightweight and very durable, but so is Velcro, or silicone, or a whole host of other materials other than solid metal. Since I’m a back sleeper, this resulted in the brackets digging into the back of my head as soon as I put my head down. This was somewhat mitigated by changing from a feather pillow to a memory foam one, though it was still very palpable. I’m not normally aware of waking up at all during the night, and if I do I usually fall back asleep pretty quickly, but I noticed (and the sensors noticed) that I was waking up during the night more often when wearing the headband. This was particularly annoying because when I would wake, I was aware of how uncomfortable the headband felt and this kept me up, making it difficult for me to fall asleep again. In the mornings I would wake up with a sore spot at the back of my head just under the where the brackets sat, due to the friction, pressure and abrasion they applied to my skin. That, coupled with the ear pain made this, albeit effective sleep booster, a poor user experience as a whole. I just didn’t want to use the product despite what it could do for me. I wore the headband nightly over the course of 14 days to see whether or not my opinion on this point would evolve over time, but it did not. I really wanted to like this smart sleep headband, and I felt like it really did improve the quality of sleep I got, when it was limited. But the experience of using it was, on a whole, not pleasant. I think the technology is great, and a few design changes could make this an amazing product as it would potentially put a few hours back into my day when I could really use it.

Summary: The Philips SmartSleep headband is a great tool to help you improve your sleep but will not make you sleep better. It's a great concept but needs some fixes some bugs. I had the chance to try out the Philips SmartSleep Deep Sleep Headband, I had been having issues with sleep and thought this was a good chance for me to improve my sleep. I work in a demanding job that require me to work long hours and then after it's more work at with my personal side business so sleep can be a luxury at times. Out of the box, you're going to get a the headband itself, 3 packets of SmartSleep sensors for behind your ear and the charger with cable.The SmartSleep sensor must be kept dry so make sure you always reseal the provided ziplock bags. I was a bit confused at how or orientate which way the head band going but the quick starter guide was really helpful in explaining everything, so make sure to read the quick starter guide. At first use, the app is really easy to set up and pair with the headband but that's where things end. When you first use the app for the first time, it's somewhat confusing on what you're supposed to do and if you need to push a button for it to start recording but through the couple of weeks that I've had the SmartSleep headband I've encountered some issues as well as some fixes I found on my own. One of the main things is, when the app updates it tends to not be able to connect the headband. There were a few frustrating nights that I couldn't connect but I had to fully exit the program, once I did that the app and head band connected, no further issues. One additional issue I found, was the headband missed a few recording. A couple of day I expected the head band to record the data but failed to. One last thing I found was that if you occasionally sleep for 3 hours wake and do not reconnect to the app it does not record the data. I few times I woke up to use the restroom, the next day I tried to sync the data but did not have data to record. In conclusion this is a great tool to help understand your sleeping habits and help you improve upon them. This system won't improve your sleep if you're not willing to improve on the results. This also need some work to fix the bugs I've experienced.

I have irregular sleep patterns: sometimes, I get a lot of sleep, but most of the time, I get very little. My daily activities and my health are affected when I don’t get good sleep. After two weeks of using the Philips Smart Sleep Deep Sleep Headband, I am impressed by how it has helped me improve my daily sleep. Before the headband, I was getting on average, seven hours of sleep, going to bed around nine pm, and waking up at four am. After using the headband, I now wake up at five, six, and even seven am, getting a daily average of 9 hrs of sleep. The headband has also boosted the quality of sleep. It is simple to use, but before using it, it must charge for about 2 hours. Download the SleepMapper app and follow the instructions. Attach a new sensor behind the right ear, place the headband on the head, and snap the connector to the sensor. Adjust headband if necessary and then turn it on. Once the app establishes a reading, you can go to sleep. I got the Medium size for my head size, and it fits okay, and the sensor was comfortable. It is adjustable but for up to head size of 23.5inch (ca. 60 centimeters) circumference. The large is for people with a head size of 23.5 inches (ca. 60 centimeters) to 26inch (ca. 66 centimeters) in circumference. It is very lightweight and easy to put on. The kit includes plenty of sensors and may be used again (only if the gel is present and it is still sticking well). On the app, you can view and compare how deep your sleep is. It also gives each sleep a Score, which helps you analyze if your sleep quality is getting better or falling off. Overall, I love this product and would highly recommend to anyone who wants to improve their sleep.

I am taking a break currently. This has not really done anything for me yet.

I don't know if this impacts sleep as promised because the device disconnects repeatedly from Bluetooth and therefore stops. Incredibly frustrating to pair as well. A very expensive paperweight. Do not purchase.

I followed the instructions over and over and over again and it doesn’t even do anything. It’s like modern day snake oil for sleep.