Today we take a hands-on look at the Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid Device—an insomnia battling gadget that helps you fall asleep. If you sometimes (or often) have trouble falling asleep and don’t want to rely on pills or other medications to try and solve the problem, the Dodow Sleep Aid might just be the answer to your problems. I’ve recently been testing this device in my own home and have developed a few thoughts and opinions on it. If you’d like to know what I think about how this sleep aid device works, just keep on reading!
What is the Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid Device?
The Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid is a simple, battery-operated device that aims to help insomniacs (and anyone else that has difficulty falling asleep) to fall asleep faster by reteaching them “to fall asleep naturally.”
It does this by projecting a soft, blue, pulsating light on the ceiling of your bedroom for you to concentrate on when you first turn in. Watching the soothing light is meant to help you relax and slow your breathing rate from 11 breaths per minute down to just 6, thereby creating the perfect set of conditions for you to fall asleep.
The pulsing light lasts for either 8 or 20 minutes (depending on how much time you think you might need), and then the device automatically shuts itself off. This natural sleeping aid can be used for sleeping difficulty resulting not only from insomnia, but also from issues like anxiety, jet lag, and other sleeping disorders.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of a metronome, it’s basically a device for keeping regular time through a consistently paced action, much like the second hand ticking on a clock. Musicians use metronomes to help train them to keep time when playing music.
In the case of the Dodow, it’s the pulsing blue light that performs the regular ticking action of the metronome, and this regular pulsing action helps users to (unconsciously) slow their breathing and become more relaxed and sleepy.
The Dodow device itself is very small and unobtrusive (not much bigger in circumference than a hockey puck, and a good bit thinner than that), so it can easily be packed and taken with you on vacation. It also comes with 3 x AAA batteries included, which just happens to be the exact quantity it needs to operate.
My Experience with the Dodow Sleep Aid
The Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid Device could not be easier to use. Once you’ve loaded in the 3 x AAA batteries, all that’s required to turn the unit on is a simple touch of its upper surface—literally, that’s it! Switching between its 8 and 20 minute settings is no more difficult, and if you want to turn it off early, simply give it a slightly longer touch (about 2-3 seconds).
As for my own use of the Dodow, the biggest problem I had while testing it was that I didn’t get any visits from my frequent foe, insomnia. For this reason, it is somewhat difficult to assess whether or not the device itself was actually helping me to fall asleep, or whether I was falling asleep naturally simply because I was tired.
Though this was a bit of an issue, I did find that there was something very soothing about having the device on and watching it. Whether it was actually helping me to sleep or not, there was definitely something about it that I liked.
The slowly pulsing blue light is fun to watch, and it did help to keep me from the typical distracting thoughts that often keep me awake. For instance, I often have trouble turning off my brain from all sorts of ridiculous noise, and focusing on the Dodow’s light did help me with that.
One thing to note about this device, however, is that getting used to using it may require a few tries. I found that on the first occasion or two that I used it, I was trying too hard to allow it to help me. In a sense, the Dodow couldn’t get the distractions out of my head because it became the distraction.
But at that point, I wasn’t yet using it properly. I was hyper-focused on whether or not it would help me to sleep, so I wasn’t concentrating on sleep itself, but rather on the device.
Similarly, my wife reported consciously trying to match her breathing to the pulsing light at first. This too is a mistake, as you need to allow the light to relax you naturally. If you’re trying to match your breathing to the pulsing light, you’re not trying to fall asleep! Falling asleep should be your only goal when using the Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid Device.
There’s actually a bit of a warning about this in the Dodow’s instruction booklet, where it says that many people need to try it 3 or 4 times before they get used to it. In the first couple of nights they tend to think too much about what it’s going to do and whether or not it’s going to help them, so they don’t actually focus on falling asleep.
The bottom line here is, just understand that this sort of thing can happen and don’t give up too quickly. If you take the proper approach, I think that the Dodow could potentially work wonders for you (despite my own failure to put it up against a proper case of insomnia during testing).
Examining the Video Evidence
I put together a brief video overview of the Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid Device to give you a better understanding of what it is and how it works. Please take a quick look:
Final Thoughts
Although I never experienced a bout of insomnia while testing the Dodow Metronome Sleep Aid Device, which unfortunately leads to inconclusive test results, I actually rather like this product as a natural sleeping aid. It’s small, meaning it’s easy to take with you during travel, and the blue light it gives off is very pleasant and soothing, if nothing else.
In fact, I rather think that the Dodow probably was helping me, even though I wasn’t having any sleeping difficulties at the time. I also think that it’s certainly worth a try for anyone that sometimes has trouble sleeping. After all, trying something out that could potentially change your life is a whole lot better than laying awake and being a zombie the next day.
If you could use a better night’s sleep than you’ve been getting lately, Best Buy has tons of additional smart home Sleep Tech products that may help you out. Visit their site and see if there’s other sleep aid devices there that you might like to try. Goodnight, and sleep tight!
That’s a great review, I was pondering about this unit, and the one concern i have has to do with that “soothing blue light”. From various sources I’ve inquired with, be it on-line or, from medical staff, the common consensus is that Blue light keeps you up and even more so at night.
So I’m somewhat perplexed as to why they decided on this particular colour?
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