Sleepace Nox Music smart sleep light review
You may have read of my history of being a professional insomniac, which is why the Sleepace Nox Music smart sleep light has been on the radar (well, actually other Sleepace products I saw last year, but in general Sleepace has been on my mind).
To get right down to it the Sleepace Nox Music device is a Bluetooth speaker, multi-colored lamp, and an app-controlled alarm clock/mp3 player in one device that are tied together with a sleep monitoring app on your phone.
The Sleepace app loads some music onto the Nox Music and sets the time and schedules, and then throughout the night if you’re sleeping with a phone in bed with you it tracks your sleep by movement and theoretically knows when the best time to wake you is. It can gently wake you by slowly mimicking the sun rising and music at times you’re most likely to be able to be woken up without throwing a clock through a wall.
Should the app not be in communication with the Nox Music for some reason, it will still wake you at the scheduled time. If it is in communication with the app it’ll figure out when the best time to rouse you is.
All of the smart detection comes from an app on your phone, which you’ll need to have in bed, probably with a charger cable attached to it as it’s going to be checking your phone’s sensors pretty constantly to find out when you’re moving and how much.
There’s also an upside to smart sleep detection that you can have audio playing until you go to sleep and then it’ll shut off. This is potentially useful for the significant other or if you wake up because there’s noise, but can’t go to sleep unless there’s noise.
All that said, the Sleepace Nox Music is a good idea, but sleeping with my phone has not yielded the results I wanted.
I’m going to point out some of the failings here, don’t read this as a total negative, just some things to think about.
Sleepace Nox Music in use
The Sleepace app works if your phone’s next to your pillow. If you sleep with someone else it needs to be far away from them or they’ll screw up the readings. This means the location it best can work in a co-sleeping situation is where it will fall off the bed. Logistically not particularly great.
Sleeping with a potentially hot, radioactive, explosive device that shouldn’t be drooled on is best avoided if possible. Sleeping with your phone is also not a particularly great idea.
You can put the phone under your pillow, but that leads to it being insulated/heating up, you dreaming that the NSA is spying on your dreams.
After multiple nights of fishing my phone out from under the bed after it fell and waking up because I sleep next to someone who dances in her sleep and makes the app think I’m awake, I gave up on using the getting to sleep version.
If this is your scenario, they do have products for you such as the Sleepace Sleep Dot, the Sleepace Reston Sleep Monitor, and a bundle with a different version of the Nox sleep light. Each device works differently, and doesn’t currently work with the Nox Music I’m told.
None of these provide two-person wakeup and sleep monitoring, but a combo could at least get monitoring down.
For waking me up, there’s nothing I’ve ever found that works as well. I moved the Nox Music to another table about five feet from my bed just to see if it needed to be as close to me (I’d found another wakeup device needed to be bedside for the lighting to work,) and the Nox Music is bright and loud enough I’m about to move it even further away.
I’m moving it further mostly just to test how far it can be, not because it’s annoying.
Every day I wake up now because of the gentle light, I think “oh, that happy music is going to start playing soon,” and then it does… slowly pluckily turning the volume up to gently wake you. It’s actually the nicest wakeup device I’ve ever played with.
Nox Music features
- Gesture control
- Simulated Sunrise Mode
- Loud, deep sound
- 16 million colors potentially
- App, which you can use for free before deciding whether you want the light/speaker
- Once programmed, the phone isn’t required for wakeup and audio at set time
- If app is connected it will wake you within 25 minutes of set time figuring out when the best time to do it is
- You can load your own sleep and wakeup sounds onto the Nox Music, throw the phone away, it will play your selected wakeup or sleep audio.
Wrap-up
It’s a nice wakeup, actually the nicest wakeup device I’ve run across even if it’s not timing when the best time to wake me is any more. I’m not sold on the getting to sleep side personally, and I think they need to incorporate the sleep dot or chest reader they have into the app to work with this, but meh. That’s probably coming.
I have a little problem with it currently being a $150 speaker/lamp with a free app that controls it. $150’s great if it solves your sleep problems, but about $70’s where the world’s happiest wakeup needs to be priced, especially when I believe the whole thing could probably be accomplished with most Bluetooth lamps, and speakers on your cell phone. Maybe throw in a Tasker sleeping monitor.
What keeps this from being a must have for me is that the monitoring requires a phone in bed with you, only works for one person, and the app still needs some more work to be amazing.
As negative as that might sound, I love it for wakeups, I sort of like it for sleep-inducing noise although not a huge fan of their preloaded selections, I’m not a fan of my phone in the bed with me. So it runs the gamut and you need to decide if any of that bothers you.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been using this for the past 30 days, I think I’ve woken up grumpy three times, unusually happy 12 or so, and “meh, I’m awake” the rest. The grumpy wakeups were never due to the Nox Music, but someone crashing their car and taking out power to the neighborhood, one major bout of insomnia caused by a noxious veggie chilli recipe, and one small child managing to do the People’s Elbow on my areas the People’s Elbow should not be allowed.
You can get the Nox Music Smart Sleep Light for $149.99 on Amazon
