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

Sometimes we are even surprised what can be voice controlled. Today we are looking at an Voice controlled and internet connected…Oil diffuser! Yes you read that correctly you can now talk to your oil diffuser, thanks to Oitmm.

What does the Oitmm oil diffuser do?

It is a 200ml oil diffuser, with two misting modes – continuous mist and intermittent mist. It uses ultra sonic technology to diffuse the oil into the air. This is much safer than traditional candles or heat sources. To use it you add 200ml water and a few drops of your chosen essential oil into the reservoir.
If the diffuser runs out of water it turns off and no heat or flame remains.  It also has seven different colour modes to add a relaxing glow, these can be controlled in the app or on the diffuser itself.
Where this diffuser is different is it connects to Alexa, Google Home and your smart home via IFTTT.

How easy is it to setup?

Easy, the unit itself comes pre-assembled, you just need to add water, oil and plug it in. Adding it to the app was easy, just install the app, give the app your WiFi password and discover the device.
To connect to Alexa you need to install the Smart Life skill in the Alexa app.

You then ask Alexa to discover devices and the diffuser is found.

The discovered name is a bit of a mouthful ‘essential oil diffuser’. We renamed it ‘diffuser’ in the Alexa app as its easier to remember and quicker to say. Once setup and renamed the command is ‘Alexa turn on diffuser’.

What’s the connectivity?

Oitmm has a lot of Smart home tech, it all connects to their Oitmm Smart App. The app is intuitive to use and has added benefit of scenes for controlling multiple devices or if an event occurs.

The diffuser only supports 2.4 GHz WiFi but that’s pretty standard. It supports Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. However where the diffuser gets very smart is it connects to IFTTT allowing you to connect it to your smart home and automate. For example after a few clicks we created a schedule to make it come on and off automatically daily. We also created a an Applet that turns on the diffuser if Footbot (our smart air quality monitor – read the review here)  detects the bedroom humidity level is below optimal. Although as this is not a humidifier the impact is not huge but it helps.

How much does the smart diffuser Cost?

£34.99 on Amazon.co.uk – a very good price considering everything it connects too!

Oittm Smart Oil Diffuser

What’s it like living with it?

Great! The diffuser is very effective yet quiet enough to sleep through. We used lavender oil, great for bedroom relaxation.  The Alexa integration is seamless and works perfectly, as does the IFTTT integration.

What are our final thoughts?

This is the future of oil diffuser – safe simple yet smart, also very effective at spreading amazing smells.

For more information have a look at there website: oittm.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