I got one from Amazon and tried it out. After using it for a week, I had a pretty good handle on my sleep patterns. Actually, the thing that surprised me was that I was getting more sleep than I thought I was. The times when I was sure I wasn't sleeping, according the the monitor I was in light sleep. The gizmo classifies your sleep by light, deep, REM, and wake. The machine then correlates that information into a sleep score that gives you an idea how good or bad your sleep is.

I did however sent it back within the 30 day trial period, which Amazon makes it simple and easy. Order from Zeo and they make a lot of hoops to jump through to return it. After a week of using it, I did not see the utility of continuing it on the long term. I found having the thing attached around my head to be annoying. So my take: valuable for the short-term, not needed on a long-term basis.

http://www.myzeo.com/pages/1_home_page.cfm

The value of this device (which is now $99 if you get the mobile version, which ties into your smartphone) is not just in observing your sleep patterns, but in enabling you to perform n=1 sleep experiments.

For instance, I got mine last week, and I plan on doing the following experiments:

• What does __ supplementation do for my sleep quality? (Magnesium vs Zinc vs Holy Basil vs GABA)
• What does exercise do for my sleep quality? (No exercise vs Running vs HIIT vs Lifting)
• How does alcohol affect my sleep patterns?
• How does caffeine affect my sleep patterns?
• How does gluten affect my sleep patterns?

These are all very individual things. You might be taking a supplement for YEARS and not know what it's really doing for you. Eliminating a supplement alone makes this device pay for itself. Similarly, if you become aware of another behavior that totally screws up your deep sleep (like drinking after 6), think of how many cumulative hours of deep sleep you'll gain over your lifetime by being aware of that. Easily worth $99.

If you gain ANY insights into your sleep at all in using this thing, it will be worth it, because of how much of our lives we spend sleeping.

There are some people this device does not work on though, as you've seen in a few select amazon reviews. But the device is overwhelmingly accurate for most people, at least compared to the technology we have today. If this is 80% accurate, full-on sleep-lab technology is about 90% accurate. I recommend reading up on the research/validation they have on their site. One caveat to this is that it is very difficult (even for sleep labs) to distinguish between awake and REM, so some people might register as being asleep when they are actually lying awake in bed. I have not had this experience yet.

Small sample anecdote: I've used this thing for just 3 nights -- and I ended up having to do a gluten cheat (pretty rare for me) for one of them. That night the chart showed I got pretty close to ZERO deep sleep, and woke up feeling mildly hungover. The other two nights I had a ton of deep sleep. Small sample, but interesting.

I just started using this a week ago. It's a nice way to get a basic idea of your sleep patterns. It is showing me how big a difference a few drinks make when it comes to quality of sleep. Also the light and "more natural" sounds are nice to wake up to vs the blaring alarm I'm used to. It doesn't seem to do much as far as finding a light sleep phase though, its always goingg off at the latest allowable time that I set.

I think it's a nice idea, but there's some reviews on Amazon that make me question whether or not I'd want to shell out $200 for it. I don't want it telling me I'm in deep sleep when I'm walking around doing stuff before bed.

Also, don't know about anyone else, but I'm not able to keep a headband on overnight. Whenever I wake up, it's lying on the bed or ground. I don't this one being any different.

Unless you're having sleep issues that you want to diagnose, I don't know I would spend the money.