As someone who often struggles with falling to sleep, or getting enough of it, I am always willing to try out products that offer a solution to this. The Sleep Shepherd aims to help you get to sleep and measures your quality of sleep during the night. Essentially it is a head band you wear at night with built in speakers and an EEG brainwave monitor (don’t worry this isn’t as scary as it sounds). The built-in speakers play binaural beats, one played into each ear, each tone is set to a precise, but different frequency with an adjustable volume. The point of these tones is to lower your brain rate and lull you into a natural sleep. However, it doesn’t stop there, the built in EEG measures your brain waves through the night and subtly changes the frequency to help keep your brain in the optimum brain rate.

There is an alarm option that works by reversing the effect on the brain rate to gently wake you up when you are in the lightest stage of sleep, to try an avoid the horrible groggy feeling first thing when you wake. All your data can be viewed on the free app where you will see results of the duration, depth and quality of your sleep as well as letting you know your head orientation (whether you sleep better on your back, left or right). Starting with the band, I was initially worried it would become too hot to be comfortable at night, but it was actually ok. It attaches with Velcro so you can easily adjust the size but I did find it difficult to find the perfect size that stopped my ears feeling crushed. I was unable to prevent the band slipping off in the night and every morning the band would be off my head. Whether it was falling off, or pulling it off in my sleep, I don’t know.

Personally, I found the frequencies irritating and would have to play them quite quietly before I could relax, the app is very user friendly with clear results. I haven’t been able to test out the alarm at all due to the band never being on my head in the morning, so who knows if it works. I also was getting results every night, that the EEG wasn’t getting a signal, this could be due to the band moving around on my head. I love the idea of the Sleep Shepherd, there is a lot of interesting tech going on, but it just doesn’t stay put which essentially renders it useless for me. RRP £249.99

2.5 out of 5

Buy now

Pros

Breathable, comfortable head band

User-friendly app

Good amount of data recorded

Built in EEG

Alarm

Cons

Kept coming off my head whilst sleeping

EEG constantly lost signal