Zeo Sleep Coach

Earlier this week I read about an alarm clock I am very keen to try. This new gadget, called Zeo, came out July 6 this year and consists of a patented, wireless sensor attached to an elastic headband, and its bedside display clock. This sensor monitors your brain waves to wake you up at the optimal phase of your sleep.

Touted as a personal sleep coach, Zeo also offers sleep analysis to improve your snoozing habits. Its memory card can hold thousands of nights of sleep and you can upload the data to Zeo's website to see how long it takes for you to fall asleep, your patterns of of light, deep and REM sleep, and how often you woke up during the night, perceived or unperceived. Zeo then gives you a "ZQ" score to summarize the quality and quantity of your sleep. With the $399 price tag, Zeo also comes with a 6 month service of an actual online sleeping coach who will help you analyze your data and advise on ways to improve your ZQ.

The idea of a machine waking you up at a certain phase of sleep is certainly not a very new one, as research on REM began as early as 1953 and by 1968 two sleep researchers, Allan Rechtschaffen and Anthony Kales, developed an "R&K sleep scoring manual" based on the various sleep cycles.

However it was only in this decade that actual consumer products came into fruition. Zeo in particular is the creation of three young Brown graduates, Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua. Based in Newton, MA, Zeo succeeded following five years and $14 million of research and development after its 2005 prototype, SleepSmart, proved to be too clunky to appeal to investors. The three had actually incorporated Axon Labs (now named Zeo, Inc.) in 2003 to create SleepSmart, financing the project themselves with help from several informal investors as well as two grants: $12,500 cash from the Brown Entrepreneurship Program (out of 18 participants) and an $1,800 grant from Brown's National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (twice yearly out of 300 applicants). Today, newly-named Zeo Inc.'s current major investors include Trident Capital ($1.6 billion under management) and iD Ventures ($340 million under management).

For now, Zeo is the first of its kind of brainwave-smart alarm clocks and is only sold on its website, www.myzeo.com. Shashoua also told Fortune last month in August that they plan to expand to Australia, where he says sleep deprivation is almost as much of a problem as it is in the States.

I find this a bit odd, as according to this year's OECD Social Indicators report, the United States is the second-most rested country (averaging 518 minutes of sleep per day) after France (530 minutes). Australia is in fifth place. Perhaps it just seems Americans are more likely to shell out for self-improvement than Koreans, Japanese and Norwegians are, which I can believe.

Coincidentally, one of the few (distant) competitors on the market, aXbo, is actually from Australia and created by a German designer. However, I restate "distant" since aXbo, like another competitor, SleepTracker, is a wristband that monitors only your sleep movements, has only one night of memory space so you must upload your data nightly, and you must also estimate and tell it when you are asleep. aXbo has a display clock whereas SleepTracker is indistinguishable from a chunky digital watch.

aXbo currently sells for $349 and SleepTracker for $102. So really I don't know why anyone would go for aXbo if it's as expensive as Zeo but does what SleepTracker does. But until there's more user feedback on these products, we won't know for sure. There is a lot of curiosity out there though, so I am guessing it won't be too long until we find out.