[Product Review] Dreem 2 Headband

[selfcoacher]

Any other DREEM 2 users here? It is a shame only hypnogram is being exported right now. Would love to see sleep position export to OSCAR. Also, they state that there is SP02 sensor, but no heart rate or O2 data are provided.

[davidcmoors]

I bought a Dreem 2 on the recommendation of a sleep clinic. Reasons as explained below. Pretty happy with it, though not entirely without issues. Timing of my purchase was lucky, as shortly afterwards there was a big price increase, and now they have stopped marketing direct to the public entirely.

I'd previously tried a Fitbit device with sleep tracking. The hypnogram results it produced were reasonably credible, when it actually produced any results. On many nights it produced no sleep data at all, although other data was there for the same days, other times it would completely fail to sync. Support were not much help, and I came to the conclusion that possibly their server capacity was not keeping pace with the number of devices in use. Sometimes re-trying the sync later in the day would work. So I exchanged it at the retailer for a Garmin Vivosmart 4 which was nearest match in features and price.

The Garmin has always synced every time with no issues whatsoever, I prefer the Garmin and it's app as an activity tracker. However I've found the sleep data to be not at all credible, apparently random, and the overnight oxygen saturation to be greatly understated. For example the sleep data would often show long periods of deep sleep late in the night and no REM sleep at all. It was also completely incapable of detecting wakefulness in the absence of movement, even in the absence of any heart rate data. To be precise, on waking up each morning, I would take the device off and leave it off until I synced it, sometimes several hours later. It always continues to record sleep, even though not on my wrist, so effectively completely useless as far as sleep is concerned. The only way to obtain accurate total sleep time is to manually start a walk for a few seconds, immediately after waking up. Sleep stage data is not at all useful. I bought a Contec recording pulse oximeter, checked against my doctors device for accuracy, and that proves that the Garmin oximetry data is not accurate.

So Dreem seemed to be a much better solution for sleep analysis, and largely it has been. Getting hold of one was not easy. Following its FDA approval in the US, it was effectively unavailable in other countries for long periods, so I provided my email address and registered my interest. Eventually I had an email inviting me to order, and then waited a while longer until it was dispatched. It worked fine for a couple of weeks, although it refused to pair using Bluetooth LE with my compatible phone. Then wi-fi and bluetooth stopped working altogether and the app displayed "internal error" messages.


After a few support emails, we came to the conclusion there was a device hardware fault and Dreem offered a replacement, which took a few more weeks to arrive.

The replacement has worked fine in most respects, now pairing with the same phone via Bluetooth LE, and connecting reliably to the 5GHz wi-fi band.

The sleep data is mostly fine, easy to understand, and I like the way you can swipe along the hypnogram to see the timing of sleep stage changes and compare them with downloaded data from my CPAP, to see if awakenings or sleep stage changes are related to respiratory events.

After a couple of weeks use the deep sleep stimulations kicked in, and that did seem to improve deep sleep. The hypnograms showed a sleep pattern that corresponds to what I would expect, with longer periods of deep sleep early in the night, and longer periods of REM sleep later in the night, so perfectly credible most of the time. It also seems to confirm that the Garmin sleep stage data is completely inaccurate, having now compared them for a couple of months.

Sleep onset delay time is the only Dreem measurement I would question, it's usually rather longer than my subjective impression, and on occasions has been up to 2 hours on nights when I'm fairly certain I fell asleep quite quickly. On a couple of occasions it has shown much earlier awakening than I perceived, but it usually corresponds. I'm experimenting to see if cutting hair shorter makes a difference. Not easy as hairdressers closed at present due to lockdown 

The app is very good. The app-based tailored CBT and sleep hygiene advice is exactly what was provided by my sleep clinic therapist some years ago, and better in the sense that it provides objective nightly measurements of sleep stages, rather than being reliant on a manually maintained sleep diary with no sleep stage data.

I received an email from Dreem a few days ago indicating that they will no longer sell devices directly to the public, but will concentrate on supplying sleep clinics and research facilities. That is a pity, but I guess they can't meet the demand since obtaining FDA approval. It might produce better outcomes for patients, in the sense that sleep clinics will have access to a cost-effective way of collecting detailed nightly data over a period of time, and Dreem provides clinicians with tools for more detailed analysis than is available via the phone app. Having said that, approval as a medical device for that purpose only applies in the US at present, so clinics elsewhere can't yet provide that service. My clinic tells me that technically they could, but without approval, legally they can't.

It will be interesting to see how that develops.

[DaveL]

David thanks for your post. It's very interesting.

I've had several devices that give me a sleep report. Most recent is my Garmin watch.  It's the original Vivoactive HR.  It's old and I would like a new watch. Or band.
I check my watch daily.  It's main use is encouraging me to get more sleep. More hours.  It shows me if I got up during the night (usual reason.  trip to the white throne).

Point is that this band is really interesting to me. Thanks for posting.

I would really like a better sleep report, and blood oxygen levels recorded during the night.  I shudder at the cost of the iWatch 6.

[davidcmoors]

This is the recording pulse oximeter I have. It was checked against my doctors device and the reading was 1% low.
[Commercial Link Removed] Search Amazon for, "Contec CMS50F Wrist-worn Pulse Oximeter with Software and Download Cable "
It connects next day via USB to a computer, and is supplied with fairly simple software which displays reports and graphs. Each day's report is saved in a separate file.

Resmed sell an oximeter interface adaptor that connects to the Airsense 10 CPAP, but it seems to be compatible only with a hugely expensive finger sensor, which makes the total price more than the cost of the CPAP itself. I guess only health facilities buy them. The advantage is that the Rescan software shows the oximetry data on the same graphs and reports as the other CPAP data.

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[selfcoacher]

I use dreem 2 along with contec rs01 for nasal flow, ppg and oximetry. Unfortunately, data from RS01 is not importable into OSCAR, otherwise that is very good data combo for low price. Ideally, you want to have access to research dreem 2 version in order to have access to raw data signal and be able to cross check their auto scoring algorithm for issues as well as be able to spot micro arousals that do not get reported in mobile app.

[DaveL]

@davidcmoores thanks for your posts!

good reading.