Hey QS community,
Longtime biohacker here, and I’ve always been fascinated with sleep tracking. Back in the day, I remember people raving about the ZEO headband. I never got to try one before it disappeared, but I’ve always been curious about EEG-based sleep trackers.
For the past few years, I’ve mostly relied on the Oura ring for tracking sleep. I’ve tried a bunch of devices over time, but Oura has been my go-to. It gives solid, reliable insight into recovery, stress load, and sleep quality. I’m a fanboy.
Recently I started experimenting with Elemind—a new EEG headband that tracks your brainwaves while sleeping, and also claims to help you fall asleep faster using acoustic signals (via bone conduction), based on research out of MIT. That caught my attention.
Here’s what I’ve noticed after using Elemind nightly for just over a month:
- Falling asleep faster – I feel like I’m dropping off more quickly and waking up easier, and my data seems to back that up.
- Huge data differences – Especially in sleep latency and REM.
For example, last night:
- Elemind reported: ~20 min to fall asleep, 1h 20m of REM
- Oura reported: 3 min to fall asleep, 30m of REM
And this isn’t a one-off. I’ve been seeing consistent differences like this across multiple nights. REM duration, sleep stages, sleep onset. They’re often in totally different ballparks. I get that Oura uses heart rate and movement, while Elemind is directly reading brainwaves. Based on that, I’m starting to trust Elemind’s sleep architecture data more, especially for onset and REM.
So far, I’m intrigued. Elemind isn’t cheap (~$350), but considering I missed out on the ZEO era, this feels interesting. For now, I’ve committed to using it nightly.
Curious to hear from others:
- Anyone else tried Elemind or other EEG-based sleep trackers?
- How much do you trust finger/wrist-based data (Oura, Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc.)?
- What do you do when two devices disagree?
Appreciate any thoughts or comparisons from your own experiments.
Gabe