Zeo Review and First Impressions

Posted in Technology on Aug 8th, 2009 | View Comments

About three weeks ago, I was on vacation in the Outer Banks, NC when I heard about this crazy new sleep gadget called the Zeo.  How did I hear about it?

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach

I was browsing David Pogue’s website of course! He posted one of his normal goofy video reviews of the product.  After seeing the review, I immediately thought, “This is the most nifty product I’ve ever seen!”  Then, right after that, I thought, “Whoa, wait a second,  4 HUNDRED dollars?” (Edit: It’s now 249 for the entry model. See the bottom of this post, or click here, to get free shipping as well.) Despite the rather large price tag though, immediately when I returned home from the Outer Banks, I logged onto their website, http://myzeo.com, and purchased the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach.

The ordering process was painless (minus the continuous “Is it really worth this?” going through my mind).  I entered my credit card number in, and within 3 days, the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach was waiting for me on my doorstep.

What IS it?

The Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, as described on their site:

Introducing Zeo™, the Personal Sleep Coach. Developed with leading sleep scientists, Zeo is a new kind of educational tool and motivational program that helps you understand how you are sleeping, reveals habits and behaviors that may be helping or hindering your sleep, and teaches new ways that may help you get a better night’s rest. Zeo is a three-part personal sleep coach product, combined with a highly personalized sleep coaching program.

Packaging

Similar to an Apple product, the Zeo’s packaging is simply beautiful.  It’s a rather compact box that is a soft white color covered with all of the marketing photos and information one could ever desire about the Zeo.

Unboxing the Zeo

Unboxing the Zeo

The box also had this nifty little “Lift to find out more” tab which I’m always a big fan of on products.  During the unboxing process, I continued to be impressed.  Again, similar to how Apple has “Designed by Apple in California” written on the inside of its boxes so you see it first, Zeo had “The more you know, the better you sleep.” written on the inside (that’s their slogan for the product).  The packing on the inside sort of unfolded to reveal the device.  Inside is everything you need – the Zeo Bedside Display, the Zeo Headband, the plug, a spare set of connectors for the headband, a Zeo branded USB SD card reader, and a users guide along with a sleep wheel for data comparison purposes.  There was also a letter inside the box from the President & CEO of Zeo welcoming you to the product, along with a paper journal and instructions on how to sign up for the MySleep portion of the MyZeo website.

The Zeo Bedside Display

The Bedside Display looks like a really fancy alarm clock, and essentially, that’s what it is.  Along the top of the device is a set of buttons that allows you to easily change the settings of the device including setting the alarm type, the type of alarm (regular vs SmartWake – more on that in a minute), the alarm music, see the life of the pads on the headband, and much more.  The buttons along the top also give you quick access to your sleep data from the night before or any night for the past month, and allows you to set the screen brightness.  And, of course, there’s a snooze button which also functions as a home button to bring you back to the main screen at any time.  The five different alarm tones to choose from are softer than most alarm clocks on the market.  There are a few songs, and one is a classic “beep beep” alarm, although, the tone is softer and less harsh than most alarms.  Some might be worried that the soft alarms won’t be loud enough to wake them; there’s nothing to worry about there though as the alarm gets progressively louder until you finally wake up.  That was a concern of mine before it arrived, and I was delighted to find out that it did in fact get progressively louder until I woke up.

The Zeo Headband

The Zeo Headband is the most important part of the system because it is what actually gathers the data from your brain waves.  Surprisingly, it is incredibly comfortable!

The Zeo Headband

The Zeo Headband

Whenever I took it out of the box, I was a little worried about what it’d feel like, but once I put it on my head the first night, I immediately realized it was going to be a non-issue.  It took me a few minutes to get the correct tightness set, but once I did, I almost forgot the headband was there.  That having been said, just the fact of wearing something to sleep, even being as comfortable as it is, kept me awake for a few nights.  It did take me a few nights to get fully used to the headband.  All night long though, the headband actively monitors brain waves and sends the data back to the bedside display for collection and viewing purposes.  Let me just say this: It really does work!  This part of the system is what most intrigued me to begin with – a wireless headband that essentially does the same thing as an expensive sleep study can now be in my hands, every single night?  That is incredible.  This technology is incredible.  The headband sits on a magnetic inductive charging dock on the back of the bedside display and it takes about two hours to charge.  How a two hour charge lasts through a long sleep like my weekend sleep is beyond me, but however it does it, it DOES do it, which is what counts.  In all honesty, I couldn’t be more impressed with the headband.  It’s comfortable and it functions exactly how it should.  Zeo even includes an extra set of soft pads in the box that can easily be snapped onto the headband after the first set wears out (about every 3 months the pads need replaced).

SmartWake

My absolute favorite feature of the Zeo is called SmartWake.  If you turn it on, it finds a natural waking point for your body and rings the alarm then.  This avoids what is called Sleep Inertia which happens from waking from deep sleep.  Many people with traditional alarms are actually woken during this period which is what causes grogginess in the morning which can last all day.  With SmartWake, you set an alarm time and an alarm window.  For example, if I set my alarm for 7:05 with an alarm window of 20 minutes, if at any time between 6:45 and 7:05, the Zeo detects a REM to NREM transition, it will ring the alarm, thus waking me at a natural waking point.  It will never ring the alarm past the set alarm time, either, which is fantastic.  Ever since I’ve bought the Zeo, I’ve used SmartWake.  There have been mornings where there was no natural waking point, but on the days that there were, let me say this: it worked incredibly well!  The mornings in which I was woken via SmartWake, I was not at ALL groggy.  In fact, I felt refreshed and ready to go for the day.  The feeling really is priceless, and if you’re even considering buying a Zeo, this feature should be one of your main drawing points.

The MySleep Portion of the MyZeo Website

A Night of My Sleep

A Night of My Sleep

As often as you’d like (I do it every morning), you can take the SD card out of the side of the bedside display, put it in the USB SD card reader, connect it to your computer, and upload your sleep data to a special portion of the MyZeo website.  This special portion of the MyZeo website takes the sleep data that’s available for viewing on the bedside display and makes it ten times more easy to read, and ten times more functional.  In addition to being able to view the sleep graphs for each night, you can see trends, track cause and effect, and even track your own custom sleep factors in the journal that you fill out for each night.  The journal responses and data tie into the coaching service that Zeo provides free for six months with the product.  I’ll be writing a separate blog post later this week digging deeper into the MySleep portion of the site, but for now, take my word for it: it’s FANTASTIC and beautiful looking.

The Coaching

As I mentioned above, Zeo provides six months of sleep coaching for free with the device.  This is really what Zeo is about; Otherwise, there really wouldn’t be any point to collecting all of the sleep data besides the fact that it’s cool.  This coaching service is essentially why you’d want to collect the data in the first place.  Zeo takes 6 nights of your data and creates a baseline for you and from there helps you work on three goals that you set for yourself.  For example, you can tell Zeo you’d like help falling asleep faster, among other things.  From your baseline, they send you a series of e-mails that contains tips personalized to your sleep habits and how to achieve/make progress towards your goals.  It’s important to note that these aren’t just cheesy fortune cookie like tips, these really are personalized e-mails with information provided to Zeo from scientists and such.  For example, one of the e-mails I got this week was about relaxation tips when lying down in bed.  Zeo offered me two MP3 downloads to listen to before bed where a sleep scientist helps talk you to sleep through relaxation techniques before bed.  This stuff could really be beneficial for some people!

Overall, my thoughts?

Here’s what I think about the Zeo: It’s a fantastic product overall.  Once the word gets out, I could really see a lot of people buying this.  We all know how important sleep is for our bodies, yet so many of us disregard it, stay up late, wake up early, nap at odd times for odd intervals, etc.  None of that is good for us.  Sleep is one of the most important things for us, so why do we all treat it so poorly and neglect it so much?  The Zeo really brings one’s bad sleep habits to light and really encourages one to correct the issues.  It’s also a modern company founded by a few college grads from Brown university which makes it even more cool and hip.  They’re trying to bring sleep study technology to the bedroom for each one of us to experience each night.  It is however, as I said, very expensive.  I think the ideal price for this device is about 200 dollars.  I think if the guys at Zeo reduced the price down by 50 percent, they’d see a lot more sales which would basically negate any losses they would incur by knocking the price down.  I’m not at all sure how much the device costs to produce, though, so I’m just saying that without any factual information to back it up.  I also understand that this device took a lot of work to bring to the market, and with a very small round of VC funding, they do have to recoup their costs somehow, and I respect that fact.  Again though, 200 dollars = ideal price point.

For anyone who’s curious as to how they sleep and why they sleep that way, the Zeo is definitely something to consider.  It’s not a medical device and it’s not intended to diagnose or treat any real sleep disorder like sleep apnea, but it could still be very useful.  The coaching, for anyone who has trouble falling asleep, waking up, or anything in between, is perfect and will most likely improve those issues.  In general, by putting such a large focus on one’s sleep, anyone who buys a Zeo is most likely to see an improvement in how they sleep.

In closing, once you get used to the headband, the Zeo is a really cool product that has the potential to be very, very useful for a lot of people!

Update: Oct 6, 2009 – Lower Prices & Free Shipping

Zeo has now lowered their prices to below $400 with the entry model starting at $249. They’ve made coaching an optional thing to buy as well.  Link for free shipping: http://bit.ly/ShipZeo4Free

*Note: This review post remains unediting since the day it was published (August 8, 2009), minus the bottom “UPDATE” and the single Edit at the top about the price change.  I was not paid to write the review, nor is it endorsed by or encouraged by Zeo.  I think it’s unethical to receive payment or any other form of compensation for the sole purpose of writing a good review, and none of the content you see on this site will ever be sponsored in that regard.

  • http://purezone.com Josh Waldman

    Mike
    Enjoyed your Zeo review. I just purchased one to try out with a new product we are launching next month- check out purezone.com to learn more about our pillowcase device that delivers HEPA filtered air around your head all night long. It was tested with folks that have allergies but works great for anyone that’s sensitive to airborne pollutants, molds, and dust. Let me know if you know someone with allergies that might want to try it out.

    Best regards
    Josh Waldman
    CEO

  • http://www.twitter.com/guiambros Gui Ambros

    Awesome review, thanks a lot! It helped me to decide.

    Was already eager to try; just hesitant because the steep price. If it was around $200-250 I’m sure they’d have tons of more customers buying it..

  • satya

    hi,
    I read your review about zeo and it’s great. I guess it will be useful to me in making my decision with high confidence. I will go for the trail first.

  • http://www.twitter.com/guiambros Gui Ambros

    Awesome review, thanks a lot! It helped me to decide.

    Was already eager to try; just hesitant because the steep price. If it was around $200-250 I'm sure they'd have tons of more customers buying it..

  • Bob Jones

    I bought the ZEO and I felt it was an overpriced piece of junk.

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Hi Bob,

    Sorry you felt this way. Not everyone will like it. Good thing they offer the 30-day money back guarantee for those folks.

    - Mike

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Hi Bob,

    Sorry you felt this way. Not everyone will like it. Good thing they offer the 30-day money back guarantee for those folks.

    - Mike

  • Joan Young

    I purchased the Zeo and received it on 12/28…it is now 1/10/2010 and my zeo has only recorded 7 nights, the constant “incomplete data” and wireless not working is unacceptable. When it works it is great, but I have done everything as per instructed and have spoken 3 times to customer service and now I have to send them my incomplete data files so they can investigate as to why their are so many issues with their product not working as it should. If it worked consistently that would be great but since it doesn't it isn't worth the money!

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Joan,

    I'm sorry to hear that. I've heard pretty positive things from most
    people. My Zeo is still working as well as the day I got it. I got a
    ZQ of 79 last night in fact. It is if course possible that you got a
    dud – these things happen sometimes unfortunately. I hope everything
    gets resolved. Feel free to post your story here, regardless of it
    turns out positively or negatively.

    Mike

  • http://www.whatcausessnoring.net/ Derek A. Pascualy

    That is a very detailed and good review. Although I think it is a very expensive product. I read somewhere that there is an app product in your iphone that can monitor your sleep so that might be less expensive than this product.

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Indeed there is an iPhone App that does this. There's also something called the FitBit as well as the SleepTracker watch. Zeo, being the only device that monitors your actual brain waves and not just motion using an accelerometer is probably the most accurate. I'm not sure though as I haven't used the other products.

  • Julie

    This was a beautifully written review! Thank you!

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Glad you found it useful! :)

  • http://www.ebsiwebsites.com/ 344kellogg

    I guess it's hard to justify $400. I suppose if it actually works, it would be worth it. But $400 is a lot of money to gamble on.

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    It's less now. Did you see that? Originally it was a lot to gamble, yeah. I'm glad I did though!

  • JK

    Tried it for 30 days. When I woke up in the night, I wrote it down then went back to sleep. Zeo never registered these events. Sometime it would say “REM” other times “light sleep”. Well, I think I'd have to be “awake” to sit up, look at the clock, locate the pen and pad on my bedside table, and write down the time. Returning this today. Very unreliable and inconsistent.

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    I'm sorry to hear that man. Zeo only registers wake events as times when you're awake for periods longer than two minutes. How long were you fully awake? Longer than two minutes? If so, your unit may be having some problems, your headband may not have been tight enough, a snap may not be snapped on the headband, etc. There's a few things to try and check first. If you had used a real e-mail when commenting, I could have put you in touch with someone at the company to try and work through what may be causing your problem as Zeo has been shown to be pretty accurate.

    Regardless, hope you get it worked out. Try talking to support before returning it maybe? It could be one of the simple issues I mentioned above, and if not, they'll get you taken care of I'm sure.

  • olivier

    Please be honest, do you get commission on every zeo sold via the link you provided on your review?

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Hi Oliver,

    Short answer: Yes.

    Longer Answer: I wrote this review after I received the product last summer. The review was not sponsored nor endorsed in any way by the company. It still isn’t. Several months after writing the review, Zeo started a “Refer a friend” campaign that was, and still is, open to all of its customers who have purchased their product. I’m simply a participant in that program. This review gets a lot of traffic, so I figured if I could save you all the cost of shipping, why not? The very small reward I get for the referrals is just a plus.

    Hope that answers your question. The content of the review has not been changed, minus the bottom “UPDATE” and the single edit at the top about the price change.

  • Jeff

    I have had my Zeo for the entire trial period now and am in the process of putting it back in its box to return it. I don’t believe the data that it gives me. I agree with others that the data is unreliable. In particular, times when I have been awake watching the clock, or knowing that I need to pee and am too lazy to get up. When I finally get up and go to the bathroom, I see that Zeo either recorded me as in light or REM sleep when I know of a fact that I have been awake and just didn’t want to get up and pee. The only secret to getting a high ZQ is to stay in bed a long time.

    I have emailed in questions and posted questions on their forum to either go unanswered or to get what are obviously generic answers that have probably been copied from a catalogue of questions and answers they have saved. And of course, the answers are always qualified with the statement that we are all different, and your numbers will be different than my numbers, and Zeo is not a medical device. OK, OK, I get that by now. I called several times to speak to someone. After being on hold for a while you get placed into voice mail. I sent an email saying that I need someone to call. I actually had a lady call and she let me ask my questions. She seemed interested and said that she would email answers to my questions. When I got an email several days later it was obvious that all she did was copy and paste a couple of questions and answers that were remotely related to what we had talked about, and didn’t even mention the more critical questions that I had for her. Probably because it wasn’t in her catalogue of questions and answers. This would be a really neat product if I trusted the numbers and if their “Ask the Experts” forum allowed you to ask questions and get real answers from real experts. Oh, well.

  • http://mikeboylan.com Mike Boylan

    Jeff, sorry you’ve got the run around by customer support. I sent your comment along to some of the guys at Zeo that I’ve had the pleasure of talking to over the past year or so. Hopefully they’ll be able to get you the information you need. There’s good feedback in your comment, especially about the Ask the Experts forum, which is a relatively new initiative for them, so I’m sure they’ll appreciate the feedback.

  • http://twitter.com/Zeo Zeo

    Hi Jeff –

    First and foremost, I’m sorry for the email and phone mishaps that you mentioned above. We value customer support a great deal and don’t take this feedback lightly. Thank you for sharing it.

    I want to tackle the accuracy question you mention above. I’ll caveat this by saying that you may have seen some of this before, but others reading this thread may have not. As you already know, Zeo is measuring your brainwaves to determine your sleep phase (there’s a blog post about that here: http://blog.myzeo.com/5-steps-to-phasing-sleep/ ). Using these tiny electrical signals to phase your sleep isn’t easy, but accuracy and scientific integrity are highly important to us. Studies have been done looking at the precision of our SoftWave technology compared to other sleep tracking technologies (including the current gold standard used in sleep labs). The technology has been shown to perform very accurately and the data have been reviewed by our scientific advisory board. You can review the results of these studies here: http://www.myzeo.com/pages/52_for_health_professionals.cfm#Validations

    Like any method of measuring sleep, Zeo may occasionally indicate you were asleep when you were awake (or visa versa). There are a few things that could be causing this, but the most probable culprits in your instance are the following:
    1. Zeo only records moments of wakefulness that last 2 minutes or longer. The reason is to align with memory (there are studies that suggest that people forget most awakenings that last less than 3 minutes). One unfortunate consequence of that rule is that when you leave the bedroom to go to the bathroom, Zeo loses signal (due to distance) for most of the time you are awake and never crosses the threshold to report an awakening. A pesky bug that we’ll fix in a future hardware release.
    2. Other studies have been done to show that, in a sleep lab setting, moments of quiet wakefulness are difficult to distinguish from sleep. Zeo is not as accurate as a sleep lab and will sometimes make a mistake.

    Though not perfect, Zeo is the most accurate way to track and improve your sleep at home. I know you’re tired of hearing it, but it’s important that I mention that it’s not a medical device – i.e. not intended to diagnose or treat sleep disorders (that’s for doctors)… which is a nice segway into the discussion about Expert Answers.

    As Mike mentioned, Expert Answers is a new initiative that we’re testing and learning much from. We do take the questions that people ask us and bring them to experts; if someone submits a new question that can be answered in part by an old expert answer, we will use it. We’re working on being more transparent through that process.

    The biggest challenge *by far* has been walking the fine line between helpful consumer oriented information (that’s us) and medical advice (which we can not provide). When folks submit questions that a doctor should answer, often just saying, “You should consult your doctor” is not enough – we try to answer what we can in a responsible fashion, which sometimes causes extended delays in our response to you, the user. Definitely not ideal, but something we will continue to refine and that (I expect) will become quicker and easier with time.

    Again, I apologize for the the trouble and genuinely appreciate your feedback and am open to continuing the conversation in the open (here) or in private (via email).

    Kind regards,
    Derek@Zeo
    [derek@myzeo.com]

    PS ~ Mike, thank you.

  • http://twitter.com/spookiewon Pjay (Patti) Pender

    The sleeptracker watch doesn’t work as advertised.  Though it seemed like it was tracking and finding that “almost-awake moment” in the wake-up window, it consistently woke me when I was in deepest sleep at the earliest point in the wake-up window.  That is, if it was supposed to wake me between 5:30 and 6:00 it always woke me at 5:30, and more often than not the watch itself showed me in the deepest stage of sleep when it did.  It also refused to upload the data from the watch to my computer, so it was impossible to save the data.  FitBit is a great device for monitoring activity, though I keep running them through the wash machine an killing them.  It seems accurate about sleep tracking (as well as activity and calorie burn tracking) but it’s not fine or detailed enough for my needs.  That and the fact that I’ve destroyed 4 of them in the washer!  LOL  The iPhone and Android apps you place on the bed to record movement flat-out don’t work.  I’ve been using the Zeo classic for almost a year and a half and it’s great.  I just got the mobile version today and hope it’s even better!

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