We all know it: sleeping reduces stress, sleeping promotes concentration and sleeping is healthy! But not every sleep is equally relaxing and promotes concentration. There are nights when you feel like you’re lying awake forever and can’t fall asleep. Or in the morning you feel like you’re on the wheel, but you have the impression that you’ve slept enough. But why is that? In order to get to the bottom of the matter, I subjected the Beddit sleep sensor to a long-term test of three weeks.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time sleeping. On average, Germans sleep around a third of their lives. That’s around 24 years, or 8,760 days, or 210,240 hours. Once you are really aware of these numbers, then it is only logical that you should make this time as comfortable as possible, for example with the right mattress. But if everything really fits and you still don’t feel rested after nine hours of sleep, then you should test your sleep behavior, for example with the Beddit sleep sensor
The Beddit sleep sensor consists of a long, thin film sensor and a Bluetooth transmitter, which is powered by a USB cable. The instructions supplied describe in several languages how to place the sensor in bed so that an optimal measuring environment is guaranteed. The absolutely required power supply unit is also included in the scope of delivery.
The great thing about the sensor is that it measures your sleep without you having to wear it yourself. Instead, the film sensor is attached directly to the mattress, below the bed sheet, at chest height. As a result, you will not even notice the sensor while you are sleeping and you will sleep in your usual sleeping environment. If you pull off the sleep sensor and reattach it more often, the effectiveness of the adhesive decreases a little. In this case, you can simply peel off the adhesive strip and replace it with double-sided adhesive tape.
After you have placed the sleep sensor in bed and connected it to the power supply (220V), download the app from the Google Play Store (or Apple’s Appstore), register with your email address and pair your smartphone via the app via Bluetooth with the sensor. The first pairing takes a moment, but reconnecting when you go to sleep is lightning-fast.
The app is very simple and intuitive to use.
Next, click on the icon at the top right of the screen to go to the settings. Here you specify the desired length of sleep and the topics on which you would like to receive tips from the sleeper. You can also reconfigure your app here. If you want to start your sleep tracking now, click on the button “Go to sleep” at the bottom of the screen, select a wake-up alarm and place the smartphone on any cupboard or table in your bedroom. It is absolutely not necessary that the smartphone is right next to the bed. The sleep measurement takes place exclusively via the sensor in your bed.
If you want to be woken up via the app, enter a time at which you would like to be woken up at the latest. The app wakes you up when you are in a light sleep phase. This can sometimes be 20 minutes before the set wake-up time, but this way you counteract your morning tiredness.
You still have the option to be woken up “smart”. This function even eliminates the need to interact with the app before bed, as the measurement begins automatically as soon as the sensor detects that someone is in bed and that a device is in the vicinity of Bluetooth. So far, however, this function is only available for iOS and is therefore not part of this review.
After waking up, click on “End sleep” and the app will analyze the previous night. The statistics are also transferred directly to the Beddit server (more on this later) (if there is an internet connection). The evaluation of the previous night is now displayed in the app. The first thing you see is your total sleep score. You will then be shown a suggestion for improvement. This is followed by the sleep statistics: You can see how long you slept exactly, how high your resting heart rate was during the night, how many breaths you had per minute and a graphical representation of your sleep phases.
I found it very interesting that the sensor registers how long it actually took me to fall asleep. So far this has always seemed longer to me than it actually is. A certain snoring time was also recognized by the sensor, which unfortunately now robs me of the opportunity to continue denying this 😉
The diagram clearly shows the phases of deep sleep, as well as times when you are restlessly sleeping, snoring, or rolling back and forth or you are not lying properly on the sensor. The latter is represented by gray gaps in the graph, the time of which is then subtracted from your total sleep time. Even if you should get up at night, the sensor will notice and display it here.
If you would like to receive more detailed information about your sleep, the best thing to do is to visit the Beddit website and log in using the family login. In addition to your own sleep statistics, you can also invite other family members who can then also use the sleep sensor. You can now find all statistics about you and your family in your Beddit Family account. Here you can also enter your age, height and weight in your profile settings.
If you select a day here you will see the same information as in the app at first glance. However, in contrast to the app, the website is only available in English. The sleep statistics are enriched here with further details and explanations, such as:
- Total sleep time (“Amount of sleep”): Sleep is divided into two main types, the REM and non-REM phases. First you are in the non-REM phase, which in turn is divided into 3 stages. The first stands for the transition between waking and sleeping, the second for stable sleep and the third for deep sleep. Only then do you switch to the REM phase. You switch between these two types every 90 minutes. In the REM phase, your muscles are paralyzed and you dream.
- Time to fall asleep: Sleep latency is the time when the lights are out and you are in bed. It usually takes 15 minutes to fall asleep.
- Snoring times (“Total amount of snoring”) Snoring can be caused by a cold or allergies, for example. If you snore very often, this can also indicate obstructive sleep apnea or breathing pauses.
- Resting heart rate: The resting heart rate is measured as the number of heartbeats per minute. Large fluctuations in heart rate during the night can also indicate sleep apnea.
Below you will find statistics that show the depth of sleep in connection with the resting heart rate and (if you have already recorded a few nights with the sleep sensor) a trend display in which you see average values of all previous statistics, followed by a sleep history.
At the end you will see a recommendation on how much sleep you need at your age.
Conclusion: Christmas present or hype?
The Beddit sleep sensor is a very cool gadget. At first I was a little skeptical whether the sensor could also record all the promised body data. But for the fact that there is only a narrow band under the bed sheet, it records the data surprisingly well. Even if you sleep on your side rather than on your back, it works perfectly. The sensor really surprised me in a positive way.
I was able to determine how long it takes to fall asleep and that I sometimes snore at night can no longer be dismissed. The tips that are displayed after each night are tailored to the previous night and quite useful.
For my part, I have a relatively wide bed and the sensor tape could maybe be a few centimeters longer. Because there were a few nights when I tossed and turned and on these I probably didn’t always lie correctly on the sensor, which ultimately resulted in gaps in the sleep statistics of that night. Of course, if you don’t have your bed to yourself, you won’t be able to collect accurate data.
Was the sensor able to improve my sleep? Probably not directly. But I became aware of a few things. In order to improve sleep, one would need to gather more user information, such as when the last meal was before bed, whether one drank alcohol or did exercise in the hours before bed. Information such as what time you usually go to bed and much more would make the data much more accurate. Because then the app could remind the user hours before going to bed what they should do NOW to improve their sleep. That would then amount to an interaction with the user and would probably make the app a bit more complex. But who knows what the developers have planned for the future!
The Beddit sleep sensor was developed in collaboration with the Helsinki Sleep Clinic. It is available for € 149.99 in the Beddit shop or on Amazon. The sensor has also been available from selected retail partners since October 2015. We were unable to reproduce the teething problems that occurred at the start of the Indiegogo campaign (poor measurement, problems with the Bluetooth connection) in our tests within 18 days.
