New SmartSleep tracker will mess with your sleep to make you feel less tired

Most sleep tracking tech will just monitor how well your night's slumber went, but this new tech from Philips aims to mess with your sleep in order to help you feel less tired.

The Philips SmartSleep that was announced at CES 2018 doesn't want to just give you a stat on how well you sleep, but instead wants to change your sleeping pattern in order to improve your deep sleep quality.

It's a headset you wear to bed - it's not a particularly good look, so you won't want to wear this in public - and it uses two small sensors to detect your slow wave sleep.

Playing with your sleep

The interesting part is how Philips claims the headset will "intervene with clinically proven technology to boost slow wave sleep in real time". That's all we know right now, so exactly how the headset will "intervene" is a little unclear.

Our current best bet is it'll use vibrations or sound as a way to relax you enough to encourage peaceful slumber. The SmartSleep apparently uses sleep algorithms to work out the best experience for each person, however the intervention manifests.

According to Philips, 70 percent of those who had sleep problems and tried the SmartSleep for two weeks noted feeling less tired. Whether this tech will work so well outside of testing remains to be seen.

A release date or price for the Philips SmartSleep has yet to be announced but we'll be sure to share more details when we hear further from the company on this strange new tool.

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James Peckham

James is Managing Editor for Android Police. Previously, he was Senior Phones Editor for TechRadar, and he has covered smartphones and the mobile space for the best part of a decade bringing you news on all the big announcements from top manufacturers making mobile phones and other portable gadgets. James is often testing out and reviewing the latest and greatest mobile phones, smartwatches, tablets, virtual reality headsets, fitness trackers and more. He once fell over.