New Sense tracker adds voice controls and more ways to improve your sleep

We like the idea of a vocal snooze button
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Company Hello is back with an update to its sleep tracking orb, Sense, which debuted in 2014 following an impressively successful Kickstarter campaign.

The new device is called Sense with Voice, which hints pretty well at what's new here. The added control features allow you to set alarms, hit the snooze button, or find out how well you slept by using voice commands, the idea being to not only make controlling Sense a little easier, but to stop you using your phone so much during sleep hours.

While the original Sense tracks air quality, light, noise pollution, luminosity and humidity, the new device now also keeps an eye on carbon dioxide levels, UV light, volatile organic compounds, barometric pressure and light temperature. With all of this data combined, you should get a pretty good idea of what is affecting your quality of sleep, so as to improve it. Like the first device there's still a small button, separate to the orb, that attaches to your pillow while you sleep.

Read next: Hugh's Sleep Diary: Week 3 - Trying to sleep at 40,000 feet

Hello has also made Sense better at integrating with the smart home, and now works with Nest and Philips Hue so you can set your perfect waking-up temperature or lighting.

We were disappointed in our original Sense review, particularly by the quality of the sleep tracking and coaching, so we're hoping to see some big improvements with the new one.

The new Sense with Voice costs $149 (UK price incoming, hold tight) and can be pre-ordered from Hello's site right now. The site currently says that orders will ship within three to four weeks.

New Sense tracker adds voice controls and more ways to improve your sleep




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Hugh Langley

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Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.

Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.

Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.

He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.


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