Sometimes we hear about Smart Tech that sound too good to be true! When we received an email about glasses that improve sleep we thought we had found one…

Swannies Blue Light Blocking glasses – glasses the manufacture claim help you sleep. They have over 35,000 happy customers so we were very eager to see what they could do for us!? As you can imagine we are always glued to our screen, if its not a computer or TV its an iPhone.

What do Swannies glasses do?

They blocked out artificial blue light from tech, for example TV’s, computer or phones. This light is scientifically proven to disrupt your sleep. The clever part is they do not prevent you form watching TV or using your computer, unless of course you’re a designer and need to see exact colours.

How easy are they to setup?

These are normal glasses; no setup required no batteries just wear them. The ‘magic’ is all done via the lens. The great part about that is it’s a onetime purchase.

How much do they cost?

£69 direct from Amazon for their classic model or for their new stylish range £73 from Indiegogo. This is not the cheapest on the market but the frames are nicer and these do have a premium feel.

Swanwick Sleep Swannies

What’s it like living with Swannies?

They do take some time to get used to, firstly the habit of putting them on. We set an Alexa reminder every evening at 21:00 to put them on. Once you have them on you need to get used to the colour difference. It’s a slight sepia tone, nothing too dramatic and after a while you do adjust to it.

The best part is they do work and do seem to make a difference to sleep. We tested them for over two weeks and after 4 days use we noticed getting to sleep does seem easier.

As always with sleep tech you can’t help but wonder if the effect is psychosomatic, so we looked into their science claims. Harvard university fully support their claims as do top UK universities. Furthermore SleepScore Labs did an product validation study and found:

“On the user experience side, participants’ responses were very favorable: 90% of users said it was easy to make wearing the glasses part of their nightly routine, and 90% of users felt the glasses were comfortable. Many users commented that wearing Swannies reduced eye strain and helped them relax. In addition, 73% of users said they would recommend Swannies to their close friends and family, and 80% planned to continue to use Swannies after completion of the study”

What are our final thoughts?

If you are an avid tech user, as odd as it sounds, wearing a pair of Swannies before you go to sleep does help you get to sleep!

This is a strong 4 from us and we will keep wearing them to see if the effect continues. If it does they could score higher.

For more information visit their website: https://www.swanwicksleep.com

Sleep tech is a fast growing space with a wide range of gadgets promising to give you that deep restful sleep.

Dodow is such a gadget, the French inventors claim it helps you fall asleep in as little as 8 minutes! All you need to do is breathe.

This review is slightly different for us as it’s a stand-alone bit of tech with no app or connectivity.

What does Dodow do?

Dodow is a small disc that projects a blue light onto the ceiling. The light expands and then contracts, the aim is to sync your breathing with the contractions.

The Idea is this slows down your breathing from 11 to 6 breathes per minute the cardiac coherence rhythm. This puts your into a natural sleep by basically relaxing you and helping to remove stress.
There is a lot of scientific research to back this up, its not just pseudoscience like a lot of things in this space.

(If you fancy a geeky read you can see the science behind it here)

To turn it on you tap the disc once for 8 minutes of light contractions or twice for 20 minutes.

How easy is it to setup?

There is no setup, just insert the supplied batteries. Tap it once for 8 minutes and twice for 20.

How much does Dodow Cost?

£44 from Amazon

Dodow – Sleep Aid Device

What’s it like living with Dodow?

It sounds easy breathing in time to a contracting light but it’s strangely difficult.

It took a good few attempts to manage to fully sync with Dodow. However once achieved you do feel it start to work!

To start with just watching the light and getting used to it and then slowly adapting your breathing.

The 8 minutes is not long enough for me and always found the 20 much better but too long. However this isn’t an issue as it turns off automatically.

One small point is the light only shines directly up. As our bedroom has a pitched ceiling to clearly see it in bed I had to place it on my pillow. Also because of this you need to lie on your back.

It would be good if a future model allowed you to tilt the light so it could shine on a side wall.

Another interesting point is the brightness of the light. The light brightness can be adjusted but its still not that bright. Your room needs to be dark to clearly see it.

However after looking into this funnily enough other users commented it was too bright, it’s obviously a contentious issue!

What are our final thoughts?

It’s a simple yet strangely effective sleep gadget. A big part of the beauty of Dodow is the simplicity, no configuration or faff before sleep.

Future versions could tweak the design slightly to allow wall projection however that aside for us it’s a permanent fixture on our bedside!

For more information on How to fall asleep with Dodow visit their website.

To buy it visit  Amazon