By Tanya Slavin
According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about one-third of adults don’t get the recommended 7 or more hours of sleep every night. Staying connected 24/7 to everything from work email to Twitter and Instagram makes falling asleep about as easy as napping in the middle of a mosh pit.
Luckily, the right kind of technology can be helpful when it comes to getting quality sleep. Sleep gadgets are on the rise, and 2019 will be the third year that Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will have a special section dedicated to sleep technology. Last year saw a rise in products that not only tracked sleep habits, but also aimed to improve them. And the trend is likely to continue. Here, five sleep gadgets we’re watching for in 2019.
Contactless Sleep Trackers
If you want to track your sleep but don’t like having your phone with you or wearing something on your wrist while you sleep, you’re in luck. Max is a contactless sleep tracker developed by SleepScore Labs that sits on your nightstand and looks like a grey speaker. It tracks your sleep by sending radio waves that monitor your breathing pattern. It also gives you a personal sleep score every morning, and offers helpful suggestions on how to improve your sleep habits.
Research has shown that exposure to artificial light can disrupt circadian rhythms and make sleep more difficult. Smart lights may be able to help. One of the best on the market is Philips Hue Smart lights. Using the Hue app from a connected device, you’re able to program light to fade in gradually in the morning (to mimic the sunrise effect), set the light to warmer tones for a relaxing vibe in the evening, and schedule a timer to turn the lights off. It also pairs with smart home devices, like Google Home and Amazon Echo.
Sleep Masks can now do more than help block out light. Dreamlight smart sleep mask tracks sleep patterns, and using an accompanying app, gives you important stats, like the number of hours you spent in light and deep sleep and your average heart rate throughout the night. Based on your sleep data, it also gives you suggestions to improve your sleep using light and sound features incorporated into the mask. Choose from nature or white noise sounds that activate during certain sleep stages, and select specific colors, such as orange and green, which have been shown to help you fall asleep and wake up respectively.
Smart headbands function like sleep masks, except you don’t wear them over your eyes. The new Philips SmartSleep headband promises to improve the quality of your sleep using sensors in the headband that monitor your sleeping patterns and emit special sounds that boost the slow waves your brain produces during deep sleep.
Robots are taking over…your bedroom. Introduced at 2018 CES, the world’s first sleep robot made by the Dutch start-up Somnox looks like a large, ergonomically-shaped grey bean you’ll want to hug and spoon with. But this high-tech cuddle buddy uses comforting sounds and rhythmic breathing (yep, it breathes) to help you fall asleep. Teddy bears better step up.
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