A cozy night’s rest requires different variables depending on what makes you most comfortable. A mattress that conforms to your body. The soft hum from a fan. Black-out curtains. Everyone has a particular environment or useful sleep device that suits their evening ritual of hitting the hay.
Your sleep quality is an official public health concern and sleep technology has become integral to addressing poor rest. In this article, we will provide you with the best sleep gadgets that can improve your sleep and help you avoid that groggy morning alter-ego that unapologetically resorts to the snooze button.
The Best Sleeping Gadgets
1. Sound Oasis’ Illumy
The Illumy by Sound Oasis is an effective sleep gadget, making its way to first on our list for many reasons. The Illumy works as an eye mask that blocks out ambient light. Some eye masks block out light centrally but still allow light to enter peripherally through the sides of the masks. That’s not the case for the Illumy. Sound Oasis manages to conform around your eye socket, preventing any intrusion of light.
The second reason is equally as important as the first: managing to integrate NASA-grade technology into their smart eye mask. With soft-toned lights installed onto the mask’s interior, red lights can be prompted to help your brain realize it’s time for bed, whereas blue lights can be summoned automatically to help you wake up. The lights can be programmed by an app, all in accord with your sleep schedule. The Illumy is a truly intuitive sleep aid gadget that can be pivotal for those who experience borderline insomnia due to the faintest lights. Amazon reviewers give this mask 4 out of 5 stars.
2. chiliPAD Sleep System
Some people become miserable when the temperature is off, making it difficult to fall asleep. Dangling your foot out from under the covers to radiate heat doesn’t always cut it. For those who have a perfect mattress, yet the thermoregulation is less than ideal, ChiliSleep innovated and made a mattress topper that changed the sleep game entirely. We recommend the chiliPAD Sleep System due to its integration of a cooling unit, a blanket, and a remote control into an easy-to-operate dynamic. By cooling or heating, this sleep gadget is effective at addressing temperature discomfort during bedtime. If you have a significant other experiencing the same affliction as you, ChiliSleep offers options of varying sizes, including larger toppers for full, queen, and king-sized beds.
For those experiencing anxiety and poor sleep due to warm temperatures, ChiliSleep also offers a weighted blanket that is water-cooled. Their units are controlled remotely and, despite not having an automatic shut-off function, are rated for extensive use.
chiliPAD Sleep System, from $499
3. Fitbit Versa 2 Smartwatch
Smartwatches have advanced remarkably over the last two years, incorporating new technological attributes to the wearer’s daily functions. Fitbit’s Versa 2 has deservedly become a sleep gadget to many users for its integrated metrics that support their proprietary sleep score. Every night, the wearable device measures your heart rate, time asleep and restlessness to score your sleep quality. It also offers silent alarms on your wrist and bedtime reminders, among other features targeted to your sleep routine.
Their sleep score might be proprietary, but that doesn’t mean it’s not legit. The app development included logs of over 10.5 billion nights of sleep. The metadata gathered to support your sleep is simply practical and their integrated accelerometer, as well as heart rate monitor, can give you impactful insight on your night’s rest.
4. Sleep Stories by Calm app
For those of you who love a good story before bed, this app may end up being a new favorite. Integrating over 100 stories and counting, on top of its well-known mindfulness content, Calm has a reputation for putting people right to sleep. By using ethereal-like voices, the stories are followed with somnolence almost every time. The idea may sound boring, but it’s remarkably soothing.
Calm’s sleep stories include titles for children and celebrity narrators such as Idris Elba and Kelly Rowland. The downside is you may never make it through to the end of the story; the good news is that means the app did its job!
Calm subscription, $69.99 per year
5. Winix 5500-2 Air Purifier
The quality of your room’s air can also make your sleep uncomfortable, especially for those with sensitive sinuses and eyes. Interestingly, the settling of dust on your eyes or nose can become a constant cause of your already easily disturbed mode of sleep. Effective in addressing rooms with poor air quality, Winix’s 5500-2 Air Purifier is a remarkable beast of a unit for this.
The 5500-2 is verified to clear a 360-square-foot room up to five times a day. The amount of volume cleared is already an impressive feat. Still, the purifier also provides a variety of other functions like real-time sensors to measure air quality and a proprietary air cleaning technology that eliminates viruses and bacteria immediately. Did we mention that the 5500-2 uses a HEPA Filter and Energy Star Certified? For the price, this underrated unit should become a household standard.
Winix 5500-2 Air Purifier Winix Air Purifier, $249.99
6. Philips Hue White & Color Starter Kit
The inability to easily fall asleep can also be caused by blue light, a spectrum of light that conditions our brains to prompt wakefulness. If you figured that red light does the complete opposite, you guessed right. Philips Hue White & Color Starter Kit provides the best of both worlds of illumination.
By enabling tone and color adjustment, you can now decide your home’s light scheme to ease you to bed progressively. Being capable of smart home integration, you can program the bulbs to pulse blue light in the mornings and radiate an unnoticed yellow-to-red transition in the evenings. This pattern could help your brain’s delegation of Delta and Alpha waves at the right time.
Philips Hue White & Color Starter Kit, $179.99
7. Flare Audio’s Calmer Night
We’ve gone over sleep gadgets that involve soothing sounds, but what about those that offer comfortable silence? Flare Audio managed to innovate the idea of ear inserts, increasing their effectiveness and making them less disposable.
Instead of your standard earplug, the Calmer Night operates as an insert that eliminates high tones’ harsh frequencies without causing a muffling effect. The idea behind this is your sleep won’t be sheared away by harsh sounds, and instead letting you access the mid-tone and low-tone frequencies of sound. The Calmer Night insert eliminates the strident sounds that can prompt you to become over-stressed. A suitable solution for those who work on-call yet still want to improve their quality of sleep.
Flare Audio’s Calmer Night, $28
8. Ruggie Alarm Clock
Trouble getting up in the mornings? Can’t stop hitting the snooze button no matter how many alarms you set? Introducing the Ruggie Alarm Clock: An alarm you’ll have to get out of bed for in order to deactivate it. Instead of your traditional morning alarm, the Ruggie Alarm Clock comes in the form of a plush rug. To turn off this alarm, you’ll need to stand on it or apply pressure for at least three seconds. You can even extend the waiting period for a full 30 seconds if you require a longer wake-up call. The best (or maybe the worst) part? You can crank the Ruggie Alarm Clock to 120 decibels. That’s right—you can have the noise equivalence of a chainsaw going off if that’s what it takes to get yourself out of bed.
9. Hatch Baby Rest
If getting your children to bed is a nightmare, then Hatch Baby Rest is every parent’s dream sleep technology device. Rest is a sound machine, a night light and an alarm for infants and small children. You can even control the device from your phone by turning down the lights, changing the relaxing sleep sounds and choosing a wake-up time—all without disturbing your little one! If you want to upgrade, go with the Rest + edition. On top of Rest’s capabilities, this good sleep device also comes with audio monitoring capabilities, the ability to control Rest + with Amazon’s Alex, and a clock.
10. Saje Aroma Om
Essential oils such as lavender can prompt soothing effects that may be enough to tip the scale towards sleepiness. Saje’s Aroma Om diffuser suspends oils in the air, relieving and soothing most into a state of relaxation. Scents effectively promote particular moods, so an oil that punctuates tranquility and peaceful mindedness can work wonders against a worked-up, proto-insomniac.
11. Smart Nora
Maybe the issue isn’t you. Maybe your significant other is loudly snoring next to you and disrupting any chance of a good night’s rest. Smart Nora is a smart pillow set that comes with a pillow insert and an easy-to-use monitoring system. This device can sense snoring the moment it happens and addresses it without waking you or your partner. Once it detects deep breathing or quiet snoring, it will automatically raise the sleeper’s neck by inflating the pillow insert. This adjustment can relieve the obstruction in the snorer’s throat and sinuses and make sleeping a little quieter. With this unit installed, all sleeping parties will experience a more silent night’s rest.
12. SNOO Smart Baby Bassinet
Trying to get your sweet baby to sleep? The distant future holds stinky diapers, lots of crying, and milk thrown-up all over your shirt, but in this instance, we have the solution for helping you and your baby get a full night’s rest. SNOO’s Smart Sleeper Bassinet comes with a noise-sensing motor that rocks your baby away to sleep. When your baby begins to cry and show discomfort, the smart bassinet automatically increases its speed, earning your baby’s calmness by soothing and rocking away.
SNOO Smart Baby Bassinet, $1,495
Why is technology bad for sleep?
If you find yourself staring at a screen right before you hit the hay, you may be in for a rough night of sleep. This is because the blue light that emanates from your phone or TV screen messes with your body’s natural circadian rhythm cycle. Learn more about how to fall asleep quickly.
What do sleep technologists do?
Sleep technologists assist in the education, evaluation and treatment of patients with sleep disorders. They are specially trained to carry out polysomnography tests that help physicians in diagnosing and treating sleep disorders.
What products help with sleep?
Before deciding which sleeping aid gadgets best help with sleep, you’ll need to know why you’re having trouble sleeping. Is light interfering with your sleep? Consider black-out curtains. Are you getting too hot or cold at night? Invest in a temperature-regulating mattress topper. There are numerous factors as to why you might not be sleeping well. Luckily, there are just as many, if not more, solutions.
What is the best sleep app?
The best sleeping apps entirely depend on your individual nighttime needs. If you’re looking for an app to guide you into sleep, consider Relax Melodies: Sleep Sounds which is available for iPhone and Android users. If you’re desiring a smart alarm that will wake you when you’re sleeping at your lightest, try out an app like Sleep Cycle – Sleep Tracker, which is also available to iPhone and Android users.