The Nokia Sleep Review: A Nearly Perfect Solution to a Restful Night

Nokia Sleep is one of the first products to launch from Nokia Technologies’ new Digital Health unit, which formed following Nokia’s 2016 purchase of Withings. The Nokia Sleep consists of a fabric pad with sensors that goes under your mattress. It’s a successor to Withings’ dearly departed Auru, with one noticeable exception. Nokia Sleep doesn’t include the bulky Auru light pod and alarm speaker.

Through Nokia’s all-in-one Health Mate app, Nokia Sleep offers sleep cycles analysis, heart rate tracking, and snore detection. With integration from IFTTT, you can also have Nokia Health control your lights or change the temperature on your thermostat based entirely on whether you’re in (or out of) bed.

When testing new smart home products, I’m careful to note whether a device offers easy setup. Those that don’t often are also difficult to use day-to-day. That’s not the case with the Nokia Sleep.

This device is one of the most straightforward products to set up and operate. To get started, just place the Wi-Fi-enabled Nokia Sleep pad under your mattress and then plug it into a wall outlet. From there, you add it to Nokia’s Health Mate app; after a few minutes, you’re good to go. After your first night, monitoring begins.

Nokia Health offers lots of consumer health products thanks to its acquisition of Withings. These include smartwatches like the recently reviewed Steel HR, scales, blood pressure monitors, and more. The free Health Mate app controls each of these. Better still, the app integrates with third-party tools and apps, including Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, Nest, and more.

With regards to Nokia Health, the Health Mate app tracks duration, depth, regularity, interruptions, time to sleep, time to get up, average heart rate, and time spent snoring. It uses this information to give you a sleep score based on a 100-point scale.

For added convenience, the app shows you a timeline of your sleep, showing when you were awake, and experiencing REM, light, and deep sleep.

Are you have a hard time getting to sleep? The app uses real-time data to offer you suggestions. Do you have few interruptions each night? Health Mate will tell you what you’re likely doing right.

There are different types of sleep monitoring products on the market. Some are similar to Nokia Health, such as the Beddit. Others feature a nightstand device that listens for movement. Other solutions use iPhone as a listening device, while an increasing number of apps, like the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, work with Apple Watch.

Which type is the best? That’s difficult to say. I’ve tried many of them and believe those that offer feedback based on real-time data are the most useful. Ideally, I’d like to see a future Apple Watch include built-in sleep functionality like other smartwatches on the market. Until then, I happily recommend products like Nokia Health which offers quick setup and lots of useful data.

One caveat. A disadvantage of products like Nokia Health is that they can only monitor one side of the bed. This physical limitation makes sense for couples who would naturally need two Nokia Health devices to track each. If you’re single, you’ll need to make sure you’re sleeping above the monitor on a side and not in the center of your mattress. Otherwise, the Health Mate monitoring might be off.

If you can live with this, Nokia Health could be for you.

Nokia Sleep is available through the Nokia Health website and through retailers like Amazon.com.