Zeo Personal Sleep Coach: It's a Dream (and Then You Wake Up)

 

Like sex and salsa, sleep is one of those things that you never have quite enough of. You wish you’d turned in earlier, snoozed a little later, suffered fewer midnight interruptions from the baby and your partner’s freezing feet. Even if you do get enough sleep, it can always be better sleep. Doctors say we’re not only supposed to get seven to nine hours a night, but the same seven to nine hours in order to log the proper amounts of light, deep, and REM sleep. Who in the age of TiVo and Twitter has a schedule that’s peaceful and predictable enough for that? With inadequate sleep a risk factor for chronic disease, it’s enough to keep you up at night.

Into this restlessness steps the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, a $250 gadget that claims you’ll sleep better if you let it spy on your brain at night with a magic headband. As you wear it, the sensor chatters wirelessly with a special Zeo alarm clock, which logs data about REM cycles, interruptions, and overall sleep quality; this information can be uploaded to myZeo.com, where colorful charts and graphs await. The idea is that instead of visiting an expensive sleep clinic, you can have your rest quantified right from your own bed.

How does the Zeo fit into the sleep-optimization industry? Those who want to spend their way to better z’s already have no shortage of options. There are pills, both over-the-counter and prescription. There are accessories like eye masks and earplugs. There are bedroom-fortifying components like blackout curtains and 1,500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. There are electronic allies like white-noise machines and alarm clocks that simulate sunrise. In our pursuit of the perfect night’s rest, it seems like we’ve thought of everything.

Yet against this arsenal of tools, the Zeo is something new. It doesn’t alter the chemicals in your bloodstream. It doesn’t add comfort, and it doesn’t remove distraction. It just offers information. I’ve been testing the Zeo system for a week, wearing the magic headband at night and uploading my sleep data to myZeo.com—and the routine has become strangely addictive.

First, the device itself is compelling to use. The entire package has only one wire (a power cord for the alarm clock), and the brain-wave-sensing headset snaps smartly into its charging slot. Data are stored on a standard SD card, which is easily uploaded to myZeo.com. It all adds up to a certain gadget lust factor, so you reach for it at bedtime with purpose. Later, going over your data is—at first—fascinating. Here’s my sleep chart for Sunday, Nov. 22:

 

According to the Zeo, I slept for just more than five and a half hours—of which 56 percent (or three hours and six minutes) was light sleep, 10 percent was deep sleep, and 34 percent was REM sleep. It took me 14 minutes to doze off, and at 8:30 I slept through the Zeo’s alarm.

Sleep has become so exalted—the foundation of every productive day, the culprit behind every bad morning—that having a minute-by-minute accounting of it feels like actionable intelligence. “I was woken at 3 a.m. last night? Now I remember—the neighbor’s dog! Tonight I’ll shut the window to the side yard.”

The Zeo’s tagline is “The more you know, the better you sleep.” But I don’t think that’s true. When I consider what the Zeo has told me—that I get an average of one hour and 45 minutes of REM sleep per night, and not enough on weeknights—it’s merely a very specific measurement of things I already knew in general. When my roommate suggests, at 11 p.m., that we start a Friday Night Lights marathon, my answer (yes!) isn’t going to change based on whether, last time, I was able to measure the cost in exact minutes or just a general grogginess.

Then there's the cost: $250 is quite an investment for a novelty whose appeal dwindles quickly. Wearing the headband is fine while you gather data on your sleep paterns and habits for a few nights. But wearing it indefinitely, as the company suggests—for $350, you get the Zeo and a lifetime subscription to a “guided coaching” service—probably isn’t a good idea. A week was enough for me. While unobtrusive, it’s not exactly sexy. And after all, there are times when not getting enough sleep is just fine.