Emfit QS HRV Sleep Monitor - White

This device is fantastic. As a bioengineer and personal trainer, I love how much information it provides and that it also gives the option to provide the raw data. I'm not an elite athlete or anything, but it allows me to identify problems with my sleep and identify when stress or training is taking its toll. If only more people were aware of the importance of sleep, and how duration does not necessarily equate to quality, I bet we'd live in a much more productive society.Issues:It's a pain to set up (will probably vary based on network provider/ router firmware) but got there in the end and now it connects within a minute every time I turn it on.

This is shipped from Germany so post-Brexit will be impounded by customs on pain of an extra 20% VAT+admin fee.This should be reflected in the price (assume you are currently expected to pay VAT in Germany as well as the UK ) and potential customers buying on Amazon's UK site should be informed of customs fees.Amazon will also not help you out if you parcel is stuck in customs as this is a marketplace item.For this reason do not buy this product unless you are willing to add another £70 to the listed cost (currently £256.24 + £13.40 delivery as of 19/11/21).

I should start this review by stating that I am a long time sufferer of maintenance insomnia (able to get to sleep easily but cannot stay asleep for more than an hour at a time) I have used many, MANY devices and gadgets over the years to get a better picture and understanding of my sleep habits. I've used wrist based devices, finger mounted trackers, bedside trackers, Sleep As Android etc etc. In fact, I've spent a hilarious amount of money over the years it's not even funny.The comedy of most of these systems is they offer very little understanding of proper sleep requirements, usually relating to deep sleep. You actually require a lot less 'deep' sleep than you might be led to think and people can sometimes get a bit panicky when a device says they'e only had an hour of deep sleep. Your sleep is made up of various 'phases' including deep, REM and light sleep and the actigraphy based devices will simply estimate what phase you were in based on how little or how much you were moving. This is quite unreliable and does not offer meaningful feedback.The Emfit QS is very easy to set up, the app is only used once on your phone to connect it to your wifi and after that it's a fire-and-forget system. Physically the device sits under your mattress and is slim enough not to cause any worries about it damaging the underside of your mattress or you being able to feel it. I have not had any trouble with the thickess or construction of my mattress which is quite bulky and has a latex topper. The Emfit QS connects to its base transmitter by a long cable, which you are supposed to leave near the edge of your bed so it can guarantee a good wifi signal. Obviously being mains powered it needs a socket nearby to operate.The beauty of this device is that you literally do not have to do anything at bed time to 'use' it. Nothing. You go to bed, you get up and it does its thing transparently. The Emfit QS automatically transmits your sleep data once it has detected you've left the bed for a preset length of time in the morning. You then go to the website to look at your data. There is no phone app to go with this at all, it is all done through the website. I haven't found this to be any detriment to be honest as the website is very well laid out and offers much greater clarity for reviewing detailed graphing than a phone would. The data is processed around 5 minutes after you leave bed so by the time I've scraped myself together and gone for morning ablutions I can look at my sleep data.The data itself is quite thorough indeed, a range of graphs and charts are shown to you indicating various things such as heart rate, breathing rate, movements and some more complicated data to do with recovery and ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) The data is well set out and relatively easy to understand and gives your night's sleep an overall score. Trends are easy to analyse on the website where you can look at a whole year's worth of data. I have correlated the heart rate data against other devices and found it to be reasonably accurate for a device that is not actually in contact with your body. I have found that data can get a bit misleading if you are prone to tossing and turning a lot, the heart rate and breathing can sometimes go astray or could lead you to believe you have signs of apnea as the breathing reading often drops quite low in conjunction with a rise in heart rate which is in fact usually just a wonky reading as you move around the device's detection range.The majority of sleep 'gadgets' simply use actigraphy and maybe heart rate to analyse your sleep, which is in fact a very poor method that produces very misleading results. Seriously, don't even bother looking at your fancy Fitbit sleep data (had three of them; junk), it's not worth a toss I promise you. The Emfit QS uses ballistocardiography which is a more accurate system for estimating your sleep habits and as such does tend to be more useful than most available devices.However, and this is where it falls down, I also use an EEG based device by a French company called Dreem which naturally gives FAR more accurate readings since it is monitoring brainwave patterns. My form of insomnia can mean that my awakenings are in fact quite short and I quite often forget I even woke up and the Dreem unit pretty much nails these every time. The Emfit QS....does not. In fact, it very rarely EVER knows that I woke up at all and will score me highly for a night's sleep where I woke several times and the Dreem unit scores me much lower since it can see what my brain was doing. The Emfit QS seems to score you very highly for simply being in bed for 8 hours and not moving much while controlling your breathing, all the while you could be staring at the ceiling.All said and done, I can say that the Emfit QS is a good, if VERY expensive, device for those that want a generally more accurate idea of their sleep health than most wrist based devices offer. If you are looking for something that will track down and monitor specific sleep events/problems, this isn't reliable enough to do that unless like me you're using it alongside other more accurate equipment.I should state I did not receive the Emfit QS for review so this is an entirely unbiased review.

VERY clever piece of kit, WAY BEYOND anything in the sleep tracker market. I also have the ResMed S+, which is very good and compares favourably to the Emfit re REM, Deep and Light sleep. However, the Emfit also analyses HRV on retiring, then on rising, to determine your recovery from the day's events, illustrating just how restorative your sleep is each night, as well as giving the times spent in the various sleep modes. For those exercise nuts out there, this gives invaluable information re how heavy/light to train that day, in order to maximise performance and/or avoid injuryI've got the WiFi model, which was very easy to set up and can store the data onboard if you, like me, turn WiFi off at night. So, on rising, the information automatically uploads, to then be viewed on your device(s) of choice. Sleeping with a partner does not distort readings either - the tech and installation guidelines deal very effectively with that potential issue.If you don't know about HRV, then you should. It's probably one, if not the most important metric we should all be taking notice of in this instant gratification mindset (modern life) we all get sucked into.I am so impressed, I've bought another, for my partner.Haven't yet tried using another WiFi network or my phone hotspot, but I've only had it a week.The tech support is second to none - 3 cheers to Heikki!

Great device. Slightly fiddly set up but once set up you neve really need to do anything. I have a slatted bed and every six months or so the pad slips off the slat which causes failed readings but other than that' no issues. Still seems to be undergoing active development (they launched a new beta site the other week) and as far as i'm aware, tracks pretty well.The only thing missing is any way to overlay this with sports data from another provider (personally would like to see google fit) Without this integration it's difficult to action the data provided

Seems a nice device, but beware it does not work when placed under the mattress, as instructed, if you have a nice quality pocket sprung mattress.I tried this and initially thought it was working, but then realized the heart rate detection was erratic and the breathing rate monitoring wasn't even there.I then tried laying directly on the sensor and the HR data was accurate and the breathing rate appeared on my phone screen.I am still deciding whether to return it for refund or purchase a mattress topper to place it under. It may well work properly if you have a foam mattress or just a really thin sprung mattress.

Great device, brilliant data.