Hello Sense is a high-tech sleep tracker that sits on your nightstand to help you become a more efficient sleeper. Here’s our Sense review.
What is Hello Sense Alarm Clock?
Sense is an orb that sits on your nightstand to track your sleep. The device was created by a company called Hello, found online at Hello.is. Today, Sense is available to order online through Amazon for around $130.
Sense is essentially a high-tech alarm clock. It performs many of the same features as an alarm clock, but integrates smart technology to make it the best possible alarm clock.
With Sense, you can play ambient sleep sounds that help you drift off to sleep. The sounds also mask disruptive noise at night. You also get a sleep monitor that monitors the environment of your bedroom as you sleep.
All Sense purchases also come with a Sleep Pill. No, you don’t eat the Sleep Pill: it’s a device that tracks your movement and activity throughout the night. You don’t need to wear the Sleep Pill – in fact, no part of the Sense system needs to be attached to your body while you sleep. Instead, the Sleep Pill attaches itself to your pillow, then monitors your activity throughout the night based on the motion of your pillow (and your associated head movements).
Together, all of these features ensure you “fall asleep, improve your sleep and wake up feeling great”, explains the official Hello.is website.
Sense Features
Sense comes with all of the following features:
- Sleep Sounds: Play one of several calming ambient sounds that help you drift off to sleep at night, then mask disruptive noises during the night.
- Sleep Monitor: Improve your sleeping habits by learning about the environment of your bedroom and how it affects your quality of sleep.
- Smart Alarm: Smart Alarm wakes you up in the lightest part of your sleep cycle, so you wake up feeling great – not groggy.
- No Wearable Device Required: Unlike other sleep trackers, you don’t need to wear any part of the Sense system. It tracks you without being attached to your body. The Sleep Pill system means “you don’t need to remember anything except to just sleep”.
- Sensors: Sensors on Sense monitor how light, sound, temperature, humidity, air quality, and other metrics affect your rest.
How Does Hello Sense Alarm Clock Work?
There are three crucial parts of the Sense system, including the Sense orb, the Sleep Pill tracker, and the mobile app.
Sense
Sense – the sci-fi-looking orb – sits close to your bed, then uses state-of-the-art monitoring sensors to check the environment in your bedroom before and during your sleep.
Those sensors include a light sensor, particulate sensor, humidity sensor, speaker, and temperature gauge.
The orb isn’t as large as it looks in photographs on the official website: it’s about the size of a tennis ball. So even if you have a smaller nightstand, headstand, or desk in your room, you shouldn’t have problems fitting Sense into your life.
Sleep Pill
The Sleep Pill is a small device that clips onto your pillow. The Sleep Pill recognizes your movement during the night, letting you know when you’re drifting off or sound asleep. You don’t need to wear the Sleep Pill or have any part of it touch your body. It clips right onto your pillow.
The Sleep Pill tracks your movement using a highly-precise accelerometer. The entire device is only slightly larger than a quarter. It also uses a replaceable battery that lasts for one full year. Once your year is over, you buy another Sleep Pill.
Mobile App
Sense’s app is available for iOS and Android. After you wake up in the morning, you can check what happened during the night, set your Smart Alarm, and discover what helps you sleep best by monitoring your sleep habits and environmental changes throughout the night.
Some of the key metrics you can track with the app include your Sleep Timeline, Sleep Score, Insights, and Smart Alarm. Your Sleep Score, for example, is based on the length of time you slept, and the amount of time you “slept soundly”.
You can also check things like what time the light went out in your room, what time you fell asleep, and what time you went to bed. The app also tells you the time you spent moving around.
The mobile app is compatible with most modern Androids and iPhones. You’ll need to use Bluetooth LE.
For those wondering, you can use Sense if you sleep with a partner at night. However, you’ll need one Sleep Pill for each partner (it gets placed on each pillow).
Sense with Voice
The latest version of Sense comes with a “Voice” feature. It works in a similar way to other smart home products on the market – like Amazon’s Alexa. You give voice instructions to Sense by saying things like “Okay Sense, wake me up at 8am.”
You can use Sense with Voice to get audio feedback on how well you slept, or when to play Sleep Sounds. If you want to lie in bed and control your Sense from across the room without getting out from under your warm covers, then Sense with Voice might be the right product for you.
Hello Sense Alarm Clock Pricing
The first generation of Sense is priced at $129 USD, while Sense with Voice is priced at $149.
Both versions of Sense are available in black or white. You can buy Sense from Amazon or the official online store, although Amazon is often cheaper. You can also buy it from Target, Best Buy, and other big name retailers.
You can purchase additional Sleep Pills for your Sense for $49. Your purchase comes with 1 Sound Machine, 1 Sleep Monitor, and 1 Smart Alarm by default.
All purchases come with a 30 day refund policy.
The official Hello.is online store will automatically convert the price of Sense into your local currency (i.e. Canadian dollars or Euros). Currently, Sense is available to ship to Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Who Makes the Hello Sense Alarm Clock?
Sense is made by a company named Hello. The 50 person startup is based in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Key members of the team include James Proud (founder and CEO) and Tim Bart (Chief Technology Officer). 25-year old James Proud was born and raised in London. He recently made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Proud was in the first class of Thiel Fellows, the group of 122 and counting entrepreneurs who agreed to receive $100,000 per year from billionaire Peter Thiel on one condition: they skip college. Forbes described Proud as “the most successful” member of that program.
Over the past 4 years, Hello has raised roughly $40 million, most of that coming based on a $250 million valuation for the company. Thiel himself has invested $2 million into Hello.
Hello describes its goal as “to help people live better through understanding themselves and the world around them.”
Sense Reviews: What Do Customers Say About Sense?
The first generation sense has approximately 500 reviews on Amazon, where it has an average rating of 3.6 stars out of 5. Here are some of the pros and cons we learned from those reviews:
Pros
- Excellent for tracking sleep
- Helped solve serious sleep issues
- Soothing musical alarms
- “I wake up actually in a good mood”
- Accurately tracks sleep at night without a wearable device, even on stiff or firm pillows that don’t give off a lot of movement
- I don’t need to remember a procedure before bed, like wearing a gadget or pressing a button; you just go to sleep normally
- Excellent customer service, including personal emails from the CEO, James, offering free replacements and free Sleep Pill units for customers having issues
Cons
- Some customers reported issues getting their Sense to work, or issues with the battery life on their Sleep Pills
Ultimately, the company claims that most of the cons have been cleared up with updates over the years. Additionally, the newest version of Sense with Voice, which is priced just $20 higher than the original, has been well-reviewed by most tech blogs we could find online, with most sites claiming that it’s much better than the original.
Many negative reviews on Amazon have been turned into positive reviews after a strong response from the company’s customer service department, including immediate offers to replace faulty Sleep Pill units or Sense units.
Should You Buy Hello Sense Alarm Clock?
Sense is one of many sleep tracking systems on the market today. However, Sense works differently than most other products. It uses a tennis ball-shaped tracker combined with a clip-on device for your pillow. You enjoy features like persistent sleep tracking throughout the night as well as environmental tracking, Smart Alarms, and more.
If you’re looking for a good sleep tracker that provides actionable insight into your sleep patterns, and wakes you up at the right time, then Sense is one of the best options available today without the need to attach a wearable device to your body.
