I was excited to try out the new Beddit Sleep Tracker, a sensor system that can track your sleep without requiring you to wear any sensors. Wearing a Fitbit, Jawbone, watch, or other tracking device to bed to track your sleep can negate the results by making you uncomfortable. With Beddit, nothing touches your body. The tracking device is a piezoelectric strip about 1 inch x 25 inches about the thickness of a piece of duct tape. This is placed on the bed under the sheet. One side has a double-sided tape that fastens it to the mattress. Attached to it is a white plastic dongle about 1 1/4 inch x 3 1/2 inches that hangs off the side of the bed. This attaches to the power cable which is then plugged into the wall.
The Smart Measurement, in which sleep sessions are automatically triggered by lying on the sensor, is available only on iOS devices with the newer Beddit Smart. The Beddit Classic doesn’t have this function.
Once you have installed the Beddit and figured out the details, the Beddit will track your sleep, giving you an overall score from 1 to 100. In addition, it also displays a “green zone.” You reach the green zone by getting a sleep score of over 75, which indicates a good night’s sleep.
The Beddit will also give you scores for:
- Sleep quality
- Total sleep time
- Time to fall asleep
- Sleep efficiency
- Heart rate
- Respiration
- Sleep Cycles (awake, light, deep sleep)
- Snoring
- Bed exits
Each of these can be expanded in the app to show more detailed information.
In some cases, there are supporting graphs. You can easily see a week’s worth of results from one screen. These screen shots were taken on an iPhone running Beddit 2.2. The first shows a perfect score. The second, a not-so-good sleep session.
The Beddit gives sleep tips along with the results. I found these tips to be superfluous and in some cases, downright inaccurate. For instance, one tip said, “If your hands or feet feel numb or tingling during the night, it’s probably time to change your mattress.” While I have no medical or sleep training, I can tell you that when I had that problem it was time to go to the doctor rather than to get a new mattress. The tips are too generic. Several times I was given tips about snoring, even though I had not been snoring.
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