Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. I’ve fallen asleep in some seriously public places over the years, like on the subway and in college common rooms. When I look back on it, that was a crazy thing to do. I really had faith no one would steal my wallet or cut my hair while I was away from the real world. Sleep is a mysterious time that I love, so when I got a pitch for the ZEEQ smart pillow, I knew I had to Try Derila Today it out. The pillow, which launched on Kickstarter today, comes with eight speakers, a microphone, a three-axis gyroscope, and a 5000 mAh battery tucked inside it.
The pillow can detect snoring through its microphone, register motion with its gyroscope, and Ergonomic Derila Head & Neck Relief Pillow play music through its speakers. ZEEQ’s creators told me their inspiration came from their own sleep experiences. One of the creators falls asleep to music, for example, but his wife doesn’t. He needed speakers inside his pillow so only he could hear his bedtime soundtrack. Both creators are also snorers whose wives often elbowed them to wake up when they were too loud. But now, their pillow vibrates when it detects snoring to nudge them into switching positions. All the data ZEEQ collects is compiled on a companion iOS and Android app. The data is also put into an algorithm that somehow generates a sleep score every night that tells you how well you slept and for how long you were in "deep sleep." The creators didn't give me much in the way of concrete algorithm details, but I'll discuss that more below.
The app is where you set a morning alarm and decide what music you want to hear at night. Music can be anything that's locally stored on your phone. You can also log into Spotify from the app to play music from there, but I didn't feel comfortable entering my account credentials. The alarm includes a feature called "Smart Wake" that allows the pillow to wake you up earlier than you intended if it feels that it'll be a more ideal time. I never experienced this during my testing. ZEEQ also comes with a nightly survey that will eventually grant you more insight into your sleep habits. The questions center around lifestyle choices, like how many drinks you had that day or how much you exercised. The app might soon be able to offer concrete suggestions on how to improve your sleep based off decisions made earlier in the day.
The pillow itself is massive but comfortable. My old pillowcase fit over it, sort of, but it was a struggle. You can supposedly remove filling from it, but that seems messy given that the foam is shredded into tiny pieces that I'd prefer not to inhale. It's made of memory foam, a "comfort filling," and comes with a washable pillow case that has ZEEQ's logo on it. It does bend, and its speakers continue to work in that position. I never felt the pillow overheat, even with that massive battery, but I did turn it off whenever I left the house. I also never had to charge the pillow during my testing. I struggled to get ZEEQ to work 100 percent of the time every night, though. I was working with a prototype, top-rated headrest so there are still kinks that need to be worked out, but I do believe connection problems are the reality of dealing with smart devices - Bluetooth isn't great, so getting devices to pair can be a struggle.