I Try tracking my Sleep Quality with the Sleep Cycle App (Sleep Cycle App Review) - Sleepy Time Jack
32I Try tracking my Sleep Quality with the Sleep Cycle App (Sleep Cycle App Review) - Sleepy Time Jack
I try out some of the top Sleep tracking apps to see how to improve my sleep!
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Script:
We spend about a third of our day in the slumber world. However, most of us really don't treat it as an essential aspect of our lives. That's why I will try and improve my night-night time with this series of videos titled sleepy time Jack. I will be reviewing everything from sleep products to sleep trackers and more. Today I will get started with the Sleep Cycle App available for both iPhone and Android devices. I will be reviewing this app on an iPhone 12.
[Jack Intro]
From a quick glance, the sleep cycle is like most sleep tracking apps available on the internet. It works by detecting movements through the microphone of your phone or detecting motion through the accelerometer. As I use a white noise machine to keep out the sounds of the day, I will be using the movement detection section. Setting it up is pretty simple, just plug in the charger and lay the phone face down on your bed. As you move around in your sleep, it will keep track of your movements and put you in the categories of Awake, Sleep, or in a deep sleep. After you wake up and open up the phone, it will tell you how long you were in bed, how long it took for you to sleep, and the quality percentage out of a hundred. The interface itself is excellent and very clean. The line graph in the center of the screen details out what happened during the night's rest. Let's see my first impressions with the Day 5 Check-in
[Day 5 Check in]
After that point, my goal was to set up a great's night rest at ninety percent, but I never hit that goal. I should say that this is probably more on me than the app. I usually go to bed at around three-thirty pm and wake up at eleven twenty pm. I work the overnight shift, which is why the hours are a little funky. With that shift, I think it's pretty hard to get a good night's rest, which is why I take melatonin pills. Waking up for me was always a pain, and I found this application is beneficial. There are three wake up modes, the first of which is a weekend mode, which lets you sleep until whenever you wake up—the second option, which triggers the alarm right when you set it. The third one, which is available with the premium, will provide a thirty-minute window where it can wake you up when you get out of deep sleep. I actually found myself being less groggy using this option. It disrupts you before you hit another round of Deep Sleep.
There are quite a few other options within the app. One which I found helpful is tags that you can add before you go to bed to keep track of things such as if you worked out or if you ate out for the day. No surprise, but I found if I took my melatonin pill and ate out during the same day, I had the worst nights. My guess is that when I go to restaurants, I like to get a coke. As my dinner occurs at ordinary people's lunch, I am drinking pop at twelve-thirty and going to bed three hours later. The half time for caffeine is five hours, which means the melatonin pill and the soda are fighting with each other as I have the worst nightmares. Once I noticed this occurring, I made sure to cut out most soda, which improved my sleep quality.
Initially, I did have a few doubts about if the app is a placebo. As you have to choose if you woke up happy, neutral, or angry before you can see your results. I explain this in my halfway video:
[Day 18 Check-in]
More on the results of that video shortly. While most of the app features are free, there is a premium option for forty dollars through the application stores or twenty dollars through their website. By the way, always go to the website of an app since things are cheaper that way. They don't have to give that thirty percent cut to Apple. The premium features include a sleep aid and additional alarm sounds, in addition to adding notes to your sleeping. I didn't find any of that particularly useful as I already have a loud white noise machine. That machine can easily overpower this little iPhone speaker, and I'm writing this video, so I got the notes down. However, after looking through some of the other apps with much price premium subscriptions, I think that Sleep Cycle premium is a steel for a twenty. I am an existing customer, so I have all the features except for Online Backups, which eh… don't really need. Here are my final day impressions:
[Sleep Cycle Finished]