Withings - Sleep Tracking Mat - Gray

Purpose: I typically sleep fine. My wife, on the other hand, does not. She tosses and turns, snores, and usually wakes up fatigued. She also refuses to believe me when I tell her she is snoring. She has a Fitbit to track heart rate. But it does not offer anything other beneficial metrics when it comes to sleep. Then, I caught wind of the Withings Sleep Tracking Mat. It monitors heart rate, sleep cycles, and snoring. Setup: The device is a small mat with an air bladder. The device unfolders and lays flat between the bottom of the mattress and the box spring. We have a temperpedic memory phone mattress. It is heavy and dense. We were afraid the device would not be able to measure anything through the material. I was afraid it would not be able to detect a heartbeat. It turns out that my worries were unjustified. More on that later. The device must be installed with the cable facing out. There is a microphone near the cable stem that allows the device to detect snoring. The cable is long enough to reach my closets wall outlet. I promptly downloaded the Health Mate app from the Apple store, created an account, and connected to the Sleep Mat. The Health Mate app immediately walked me through setup and calibration of the Sleep Mat. Calibration takes approximately ten minutes. At this point I left the cell phone, with the app active, on my bed and left the room. Ten minutes later the Sleep Mat was ready to go. Experience: Does it work? The Health Mate app does allow for the connection of other sources of metrics from other health tracking apps/devices such as a smart watch. Unfortunately, I did not see an option to integrate anything other than other Withings products. I would have liked to have integrated the data from a Fitbit or Apple Watch with the Sleep Mat’s data. My wife has a Fitbit that she uses to track steps and heart rate. We tested the Sleep Mat over the last week while she wore her Fitbit. We compared heart rate metrics from both apps. We found that the heart rate information matched closely between devices. However, the Health Mate graph does not to be a minute by minute chart like the Fitbit tracker is. I found gaps ranging from five to twelve minutes between readings. Is this correct? It may be the interface for the app is incapable of presenting granular information. I cannot believe the device is capture beats per minute using five to twelve minute intervals. I hope Withings fixes this in their app. We were able to match up a few times during her sleeping sessions. We found that the Sleep Mat and Fitbit data did match during their time periods within a beat or two. Data that my wife and I found interesting are the measurements for light sleep, deep sleep, and REM. This information is represented by a chart showing how intense each sleep cycle is and its duration. You How does it know? I wish there was a clearer explanation than the mat monitors heart rate, respiration rate, sleep cycle, and snoring. It also says it monitors sleep cycles but that seems to be a bucket statement for unspecified metrics that most likely include heart rate and respiration. Finally, my wife mentioned that the app did not capture the periods breaks in her sleep such as poddy breaks or letting the cat out at 4am. The app does report an unbroken night of sleep for 6, 7, 8 hours. It also gave her a sleep score of 90 or above for each night of sleep. The app does have some rudimentary information regarding what you need to know about sleep. There is zero information about how to interpret the metrics. I also found this disappointing. It makes the device and the metrics more novel than useful. There is a generic coaching portion to the app. The information is not personalized based on metrics. Final Thoughts: The device is simple to setup, calibrate, and collect metrics with. It will integrate with other Withings metric collection devices such as their watches. However, there is no education or guidance on how to interpret and then use the information. For example, if the pad detects that I am tossing and turning all night, then identify the pattern for and then give me some suggestions to reduce the activity? Is there an article about anxiety and anxiety relief that may reduce my restless sleeping sessions? Am I getting too much deep sleep? What should I know about sleeping too deeply for too long? Is it a problem? How about snoring four hours a night? There just seems to be a lot missing here that a data driven product should do but does not. I have the data. What is next? I do not feel like this product has an answer yet. Maybe the capabilities I would find most useful are not part of the mobile app yet. It would great if I could share more detailed data with my doctor while I am with my doctor. I can do that with a smartphone and a more robust mobile app. I like this product, I like the metrics, but I cannot see past the novelty.

The Withings sleep mat is a great device that will help me monitor my habits a little better. I only have one problem that could be improved but otherwise, no issues and nearly a perfect product! Unboxing: Inside the box you will find simple documentation, the device, a power cable and power plug. Not much to talk about here. Product: The device itself is relatively small. It rolls out enough to fill about half of the bed (under the mattress). The cable is more than long enough to get to the nearest plug, even if it is a little bit away from the bed. The plug itself does not have a huge power adaptor if that is a concern. The product feels durable and high quality even though you are likely never to touch it again after installed. Install: Installation is done through the Withings Health Mate app. The app has a simple interface and provides relevant data from all the products you might own in the Withings ecosystem. To set it up, you go to the “devices” menu and click on “install a device”. You select your sleep mat and follow the prompts to connect it to your app. It is pretty hard to test until you go to sleep unless you have a nap planned. Use: Use is supposed to be seamless requiring no user interaction. You go to bed, then wake up and see your results! Stats that are tracked are duration, depth, regularity, interruptions, time to fall asleep, time to get up and creating disturbances. I was surprised the mat is sensitive enough to track your heart rate though the night (amazed actually as it tracks it though the bed)! It also tells you if you have any issues with snoring. All this data is compiled into a sleep score and allows you to see trends through the week and month. I have only had it for a few days at this point so have limited data history but it looks promising! Extras: I have not had a chance to play with the feature but the app / device is compatible with IFTT so if you have a routine set up with comparable devices, you can have it turn on music, lights, air conditioning, etc when you get out of or get into bed. Pretty cool if you are savvy! Cons: My only complaint on this product is that it can only track one person at a time as it is only large enough to stretch 1/2 the width of the bed. If you want to track your’s and your partners sleep, you will need two mats. In addition to this, if your spouse and you go to sleep at different times and one is prone to rolling around, it might track the wrong person’s sleep results. You can correct this in the app marking “it wasn’t me” but it is something to be mindful of. Summary: I find this device to be great in addition to a fitness device that does sleep tracking. That was my initial concern as it seemed slightly redundant. The advantages you get through this device are more consistent results / tracking, snoring tracking, and arguably better heart rate tracking in your sleep. If you do not like to fall asleep with a watch on this is a great option as well as it solves that issue by having a device you do not have to touch. Last, the integration with IFTT is the last great feature on this device as you can integrate your sleep into home automation.

I was excited to try the Withings Sleep Tracking Mat. I’ve suspected that my quality of sleep wasn’t that great, so I wanted to see if I was right. I was so excited, in fact, that I initially expected to be disappointed. I had a hard time opening the sleeve around the box, so I had to rip it off. This may be a theft-deterrent measure, but I’m not a fan of it. Customers shouldn’t have to fight the box to open it. The unit is quite simple. It comes with a mat, a charging cable (a USB cord attached to the mat), and USB receptacle to plug into the wall. At first, with this cable set up, I thought this was rechargeable and possibly I had to charge it first. I couldn’t find a reference to this, though, so I just plugged it in. The instructions are very simple. Almost too simple, perhaps. The booklet basically covers the installation of the mat and refers you to the app. You are supposed to place the mat under your mattress. I have an adjustable air mattress-style bed so I wasn’t sure if it would work placing it under the air bladder. So, I placed it under the foam topper that I have on my bed, so it was between the foam and the mattress. I got to bed late (this is normal for me). I expected to get about 4-5 hours of sleep. The mat, however, said that I only slept for one hour and 43 minutes. It said I had been interrupted twice (though I don’t remember anything waking me up), and very little deep sleep. It classified me as having a “restless night”. The next day, it did pick up my husband’s sleep as a “nap” (he works 3rd shift). While I could set up an additional profile in the app, I could not assign that sleep data to him. I couldn’t even set it up to a mat device at all. I was disappointed in this lack of feature. I’ve kept the data for now because my only other choice would be to delete it. Fortunately, this only happened once. I’ve been using it for six nights now. I find that I’m fascinated at what it picks up. Some nights, I’ve snored up to an hour per night. It breaks down how long it took me to get to sleep, when I slept lightly, when I’ve had deep sleep, and when I was in REM sleep. It does say that I’ve had several breathing disturbances during most nights. This is not a diagnostic device, so I don’t know what they are caused from; it doesn’t go into that level of detail. My husband has sleep apnea, so I am familiar with the condition. The app has some informational articles about apnea, such as a list of symptoms. It also explains what other conditions might be causing the issues. I find that this would be a good tool to share with my doctor when I see them next. I wish there was a way to export the data to share with my medical providers, but so far, I’ve not found that option. I would recommend that the manufacture consider adding that feature. Overall, I’m very impressed with this unit. I plan on using this every night from now on. I launch the app each morning when I wake up so the data transfers (via Bluetooth) and I can see my results. I would recommend that anyone who is interested in sleep tracking get this product. I can see it would be easy to pack and travel with as well. You can plug in your wrist tracker to charge and use this unit instead.