New Muse S headband uses digital sleeping pills

Muse, the company on a mission to help us meditate and sleep better, is back with a second generation of its sleep-detecting Muse S headband.

What’s more with the Muse S 2nd Gen

The Muse S 2nd Gen still aims to offer an alternative way to track sleep; away from smartwatches and fitness trackers. As well as using voice guides and sleep-focused soundscapes to get you in the mood, it’s designed to monitoring things like sleep stages, resting heart rate, and sleep position.

With the new version of this smart health smart health connected object, you now benefit from what are called digital sleeping pills. They apparently react to brain rhythms to help disengage a busy mind that might be keeping you from falling asleep. On-board EEG sensors are able to detect changes in brain activity the moment you fall asleep; and gently dim your chosen sound to help you fall asleep.

If you are woken up randomly during the night, this smart fade approach is used to integrate the digital sleeping pill to help you fall back asleep.

Other features

In addition to these features, you can expect improved signal quality. This increases the accuracy of sleep tracking. It also has a larger battery with 50% less charging time. You will still be able to benefit from the meditation functions that appeared on the first banner. The design has also been changed to better fit more head sizes.

The Muse S 2nd Gen is available now for $399.99; that’s $50 more than the original first-gen Muse S. The Muse S Gen 1 will have access to digital sleeping pills for free. This support will be implemented in December 2021.

The improvements made are definitely welcome. When we tested the first-gen Muse S, the experience wasn’t great overall. Although it was able to track sleep reliably, it was too large to be carried to bed. Also, it suffered from poor battery life and had some software bugs.

Hopefully the new software functions and the modified design will make it worth spending the money.