When it comes to wellness, one aspect that is often overlooked is the quality and quantity of sleep that a person gets. There are a number of activity trackers that aim to quantify how well you’re sleeping by figuring out how many times you toss and turn during the night, but they’re only looking at external factors. The Beddit Sleep Tracker Smart (US$149) goes much further than those activity trackers by actually monitoring cardiac contraction forces through ballistocardiography. This detects individual heartbeats of one or two sleepers, as well as breathing rhythm and any respiratory issues a sleeper might be having. The results are displayed on an iPhone app, and now the device has a companion Apple Watch app.
The Beddit sensor is actually a thin band that is placed under the sheets on a bed, so there is no need to wear a device to bed. The Sleep Monitor Smart uses Bluetooth Smart to communicate your nightly readings to the iPhone and Watch apps, and each morning users are greeted with a SleepScore. That’s a number between 0 and 100 that shows just how good your sleep was the night before. If your score — which is visualized as a red circular arc — gets into what the inventors of the device call the Green Zone, you’ve had a good night’s sleep.
With iOS 9 and watchOS 2, the new Beddit Apple Watch app provides even more information during the day. Any sleep deficiency can be remedied with a short nap: the Watch app is set with the duration of the nap and how you want to be awakened, and the nap’s benefit is added to the SleepScore. Your sleep info can also be shared with Apple’s Health app.
The revised Beddit iPhone app — incorporating the Apple Watch app — can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free.
