Both the quality and amount of sleep people get are directly correlated with their quality of life. Despite that common knowledge, most Americans report not getting sufficient sleep because they engage in the bad habit of snoozing their alarms, or they suffer from snoring. Snoozing an alarm starts a new sleep cycle that can’t be completed, and snoring shaves two to four hours of restorative sleep each night.
Inventor Warren Bell and Miguel Marrero are approaching the problem of sleep with their Zeeq smart pillow. This smart pillow works with a companion app used to activate the pillow every night. Before going, users set an alarm and answers some optional questions about their day on the app itself. Zeeq’s eight internal speakers can stream music from services like Apple Music and Spotify (that only the person can hear — not their partner) to help guide them to slumberland. While they’re sleeping, Zeeq gently vibrates when its built-in microphone detects snoring to encourage a change in position, all while analyzing sleep patterns throughout the night with its three-axis gyroscope. In the morning, Zeeq intelligently wakes a user up so they feel refreshed and ready to go, something that will be difficult due to it being made from Tencel for maximum comfort. Each Zeeq pillow goes for $199 and comes with a fitness tracking connected bracelet. The product’s Kickstarter campaign is looking for $50,000 by August 25th, 2016.
The Zeeq smart pillow can be most closely compared to the SLiiP, another connected pillow that concentrates on optimally adjusting its size in combination with a delta wave-producing orb for the very best restorative sleep. The orb also doubles as a Bluetooth speaker but probably won’t work well with a couple since both would be able to hear it. The Zeeq personalises the music aspect but lacks the tiny adjustments capable with the SLiiP, something that may contribute more to better quality sleep in the long run.