The Elemind headband didn't exactly look like the cure to my insomnia the first time I strapped it on.
In fact, this just-launched $350 device — "the first neurotech headband clinically shown to help people fall asleep," according to its ad copy — reminded me of two similar EEG headbands from years past. Both promised better sleep but failed to deliver.
A chronic night owl with a chattering mind that keeps me up into the wee hours, I've been reviewing sleep gadgets that could potentially save me since the Zeo headband launched in 2010. The Zeo used electrodes to track your sleep stages, but I soon found the benefits of that knowledge were outweighed by... well, by how uncomfortable it was to go to bed with it strapped tightly to your head.
Same goes for the Muse S headband, which launched 10 years later and promised helpful sleep tracking. The much-loved Muse 1 and 2 were brain-sensing meditation aids with firm electrodes that tucked in behind the ear; the headband, aiming for comfort over electrode connectivity, was far worse at detecting a signal.
That's the kind of frustration I expected during my first test of the Elemind, especially since it took take place in an unfamiliar bed where I was being watched by the company's founder.
What I certainly didn't expect was the sound of dolphins with gentle jackhammers breaking up my waking mind.
What is the Elemind headband?
In functionality, the Elemind is nothing like those prior headbands. It's not simply reading your electrical brain wave activity; it's actively working to sabotage it.
If that sounds alarming, consider which of the five types of brain waves is in Elemind's sights: Alpha waves. This frequency of brain activity, between 8 and 12 Hz, is the last thing you want at night; it's your mind being just active enough to keep you tossing and turning.
If your brain was broadcasting Beta or Gamma waves, you wouldn't even be in bed; you'd be bounding around the house, alert, making decisions. If your brain found it easy to slip into Delta or Theta frequencies... well, you'd be having deep or light sleep, respectively, and you wouldn't need to read this.
But Alpha? For insomniacs, Alpha is the endless gossip who lives in your head. It's the chatty self-help guru who won't stop saying what you should do. And the fearful newscaster and financial analyst you didn't ask for. And the inner toddler who screams "don't wanna" any time you ask your brain, in the immortal words of a Samuel L Jackson-narrated audiobook, to go the fuck to sleep.
How the Elemind works: Elemind over matter
The Elemind uses insights from the science of oscilliotherapeutics (and if that word alone doesn't put you to sleep, you must really be in Alpha).
Basically, our neurons don't just fire together, they oscillate together — and that lets you target them with sound at very specific frequencies. (If white noise machines sometimes work for you, this is why.)
The Elemind uses its EEG readings to map your Alpha waves in real time, then the accompanying app crunches the numbers on what "pink noise" it needs to broadcast, via built-in bone conduction headphones, to reduce that alpha oscillation down to something in the sleepy zone.
Basically, this sleep tech headband is trying to get your neurons to slow their roll. But how effective is it? This is a good place to note Elemind's major caveat: it's not for everyone.
In its ongoing clinical trial, the company says 76 percent of participants saw reduction in the amount of time it took them to fall sleep. Elemind offers multiple possible reasons it didn't work for the 24 percent. One is that Alpha activity is found throughout the brain, and can be beyond the reach of oscillation broadcasts to the scalp. Your insomnia may literally be too deep to break up.
But not mine; I was relieved to discover I was firmly in the 76 percent. The company wisely offers a 30-day return window, so it's worth a shot to see if this expensive device might be worth every penny to you.
Hands-on with the Elemind
What does it sound like, this pink noise? Here's what came to mind after I strapped on the Elemind for the first time: Dolphins are chittering quietly to themselves. Hang on, are they chittering or are they using, like, very quiet machine guns? Or tiny dolphin jackhammers to break up my thoughts?
In a minute or two, I began seeing eyelid movies (you have to keep your eyes closed for an Elemind session to work). Dolphin construction crews wore adorable reflective jackets and winked wickedly.
I realized I was pleasantly woozy — a state I recognize from my dream hacking reportage as hypnogogia, a liminal dream state where you're still slightly awake. But the dolphin machine gun had soon annihilated all my thoughts.
Yet instead of protesting this attack on its thinking rights, as I'd expect, my brain was almost suspiciously happy, as if I'd drugged it.
I did note that I was only clinging to consciousness by the slender thread of a musical earworm that wouldn't go away. (Perhaps earworms appear in the part of the brain Elemind can't reach?)
It was a bad earworm, too: "Don't Mug Yourself" by The Streets. Bouncy, dancey, and very anti-sleep. By randomly selecting it on public transit on the way to this sleep test, I had effectively mugged myself.
But that I'd come that close to napping was extraordinary. This was a hands-on Elemind naptime in a Four Seasons hotel suite bathed in direct California sunlight that even the blackout blinds couldn't contain. Elemind CEO Meredith Perry was next door tracking my progress on the app.
And here's the kicker — I hadn't had a successful nap in years.
None of this was conducive to sleep success. And yet over 30 minutes, I came within a worm's width of knocking myself out. Perry's app said I'd actually had 8 minutes of light sleep. I disagreed — the fuzzy math of sleep trackers at play, something I also notice with the wild differences between the readouts on my Oura ring and my Apple Watch — but I also couldn't deny I felt refreshed.
I also couldn't wait to try it out at home, during a full-on sleep session, but I had to. The first review unit Elemind sent was a dud on the bone conduction speaker front. Its app feels very barebones. And I lost count of the number of times it asked me to charge it up or download new firmware — right when I was ready to crash. This seems like easily avoidable bad timing on the app's part.
The Elemind aims to be a sleep tracker as well as an alpha-wave blaster. To that end, the startup is selling $12.99 a month memberships (the first month's free), which simply gets you a lot of data — incomplete data, if you're anything like me and are likely to wriggle out of the headband in your sleep. (I lasted an average of 45 minutes before tearing it off.)
The Elemind's alpha-wave blocking bone conduction noises last for 30 minutes, with a slow fadeout for the last 10. Seems I was too zonked out to twang it a way, for an average 15 minutes per sleep.
In other words, it worked every damn time.
Elemind in the air
Armed with that information, I wanted to see if the Elemind could send me to sleep in the most difficult circumstances. Could I have at least a light, brief, refreshing nap while buzzing on coffee? I certainly could. After an aggravating phone call? You betcha.
The boss level, I knew, was the long-haul flight. As the luck of travel plans would have it, I had a vacation to Japan via Hawaii coming up that involved four flights of roughly 5 hours each, across several days.
Normally, to sleep on a plane, I'd take melatonin, put on noise-canceling headphones, listen to a sleep playlist or the Sleep With Me podcast, and hope for the best. The Elemind changed that.
No matter where I was on the plane, from Extra Comfort space to squeezed into a window seat next to a manspreader, it knocked me out in under half an hour.
Better yet, it worked alongside my regular noise-cancelling headphones (the AirPods Max); if anything, there was a compounding effect with my sleep playlist: together, they gave me a record 2.5 hours of super-Pacific sleeptime.
Is the Elemind sleep headband worth it?
Again, your mileage with this pink noise machine may vary. My advice: it's worth it for folks with an insomnia problem so bad they'd pay $350 to solve it. Given the roughly 1 in 4 chance that your alpha waves are too deep to be broken up, this is one piece of sleep tech that demands more than one former insomniac's opinion.
So, in short, you'll have to think about the possibility of better sleep, and weigh it against the potential mild inconvenience of returning a $350 device within 30 days.
Then sleep on it.
