Muse, the company that's made it its mission to help us meditate and sleep better, is back with a second generation of its sleep-sensing Muse S headband.
The Muse S 2nd Gen is still all about offering an alternative way to track sleep away from the smartwatches and fitness trackers. Along with using sleep-focused voice guides and soundscapes to get you in the sleeping mood, it's designed to monitor aspects like sleep stages, resting heart rate and sleep position.
Wareable verdict: Muse S review
With the new version you're now getting something called Digital Sleeping Pills, which apparently respond to the brain's rhythms to help disengage a busy mind that might be stopping you from drifting off. The onboard EEG sensors are able to help detect changes in brain activity as you fall asleep to gently fade out the audio you've chosen to help get you to a sleepier state.
If you've been woken up randomly during the night, that smart fade approach is used to blend in the digital sleeping pill to help get you back to sleep again.
In addition to those features, you can expect improved signal quality to increase sleep tracking accuracy and bigger battery with charging time reduced by 50%. You'll still also be able to benefit from the meditation features that featured on the first headband. The design has also been tweaked to better fit a wider range of head sizes.
The Muse S 2nd Gen is available now priced at $399.99, which is $50 pricier than the original first gen Muse S. The Muse S Gen 1 will get access to the digital sleep pills for free and that support will roll out in December 2021.
The improvements made are definitely welcomed. When we tested the first generation Muse S, it wasn't a fantastic experience overall. While it did manage to track sleep reliably, it still felt too big to wear to bed, suffered from poor battery life and had some other software bugs.
Hopefully the new software features and tweaked design will make it worth spending on. If it really can help you fall back to sleep with digital sleep pills, then it might be worth that big money. It's a big if though.
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.