Opinions/Experience re the ZEO?

Having been on xpap for about 3 months now, I have been getting curious about the quality of sleep I am achieving, how much is REM sleep, etc. which I understand cannot be deduced from the information I import daily into ResScan and SleepyHead.

So I put "ZEO" into the Search panel in cpaptalk to find and read prior discussions about it, and was very surprised to get no hits. Then I went to Amazon, which seems to have a low price on the Zeo(s) and was surprised to find a number of well-written customers' reviews which vigorously criticized the output and had a lot of negative things to say about the accuracy and reliability of the Zeo's reports.

So I would very much appreciate any and all opinions and comments on the Zeo or any similar products either by satisfied or dissatisfied purchasers, would-be purchasers, those who chose not to purchase it and why, etc.

Thank you!

Regards, Nate

I think the search thingy here has some holes in it. I too have searched for things and it came back with no results when I know a topic has been extensively discussed. Sigh.

I find the Zeo to be useful, but I get more info out of it than most people. I got the Bedside unit which has a serial port and it sends out not only sleep stages but also Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta 1, Beta 2, Beta 3 and Gamma decomposition of the frontal lobe brain signals it gets. With such detail it tells me a LOT about my sleep. The 30 second and 5 minute sleep stages it creates are "OK", approximate, but more information than what you have with out it.

The lower half of this chart are the Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta 1, Beta 2, Beta 3 and Gamma waves plus the sleep stages (very bottom) from last night. You can see various formations in the data which, to me, are very informative. The top 2 series are my spO2 and heart rate from the CMS 50E.

I put Zeo sleep manager and I came up with this viewtopic.php?f=1&t=75223&p=688791&hili ... er#p688791

Here is another night late last month. The big "open mouth" things are when I go into deeper sleep. How many and when those "open mouths" occur seem to tell me what is going on when I sleep, how restorative it is, if I have one big deep at the beginning of the night, or many through the night, etc.

I had to get the Zeo Bedside, I had to myself make a serial cable and I had to have our company's software to get this. So, your mileage will certainly vary. If you get the Bedside and make a serial cable, there is a freeware "ZeoScope" software that can get the brainwaves and chart them and I think save them for next morning viewing, though I have not used it, really.

I would say the Zeo Sleep Score (ZQ) does somewhat correlate with how I feel the next day. So, for me, it tells me useful information also.

I think the problem with the search function is only searching for a 3 character string. I would try "zeo mobile" or "myzeo" which is the website, or "zeo" + "headband" or "transmitter".
There are a couple of threads with images comparing different data so you can get an idea.
I have the bedside unit and find it to be pretty accurate. I don't use it all the time, just random checks.

squid13 wrote:I put Zeo sleep manager and I came up with this viewtopic.php?f=1&t=75223&p=688791&hili ... er#p688791

Thanks Squid and Max for the url to the detailed discussion on Zeo and the link to Max' site that Search couldn't find.

Looks like it's over my head.

I was hoping for something that would just give me an interpretive readout - the numbers - of things like
Total Sleep Time,
Sleep Efficiency,
REM periods,
Latency to REM,
Sleep Stage Distribution between N1, N2, N3 & REM.

so I could compare it to my Polysomnography.

Nate

It will Nate. That information is available on the website when you upload your data.
Don't feel bad, Max is over all of our heads!

Nate,

Max is super into collecting any and all data he can get his hands on concerning his sleep.

For the rest of us: The zeo's website gives the basic information you want. And if you use SleepyHead, you can import the data downloaded from the zeo website and get a much more detailed hypnogram of the sleep stage data. If you want to (roughly) correlate it to your PAP's data, you need to make sure the two clocks are set at the same time, which is not so easy for us PR System One users.

As for my own opinion on the zeo.

I think it's useful, but it does have its limitations. And the manufacturer is quite honest about them if you read the web page carefully. The main limitation is that the zeo can have trouble distinguishing between WAKE, Light Sleep, and REM. They claim the accuracy is something like 75-80%, which is actually not at all bad given the cost of the thing and its small footprint on your head.

For my own use, I find the zeo consistently says I get less sleep than my sleep log calculations do. Sometimes it's only by a little bit; sometimes it says I slept almost an hour less than I say I slept. (Then again, on the worst of my sleep studies----the first bipap titration---I said I got about 3.5--4 hours of sleep when in reality I got just under 2 hours of sleep.) Sometimes it's easy to believe the zeo---if I remember some restlessness, it's easy to believe that the restlessness lasted longer than I thought. Sometimes it's easier to believe the zeo simply misscored REM as Wake when I look at a long zeo-WAKE period in SH and there's nice obvious sleep-breathing going on.

I haven't voted in the poll because no option really reflects my views, which are between the first two choices in the poll:

• I purchased a Zeo and believe it is a great product with useful data output.
• I purchased a Zeo and think it is just so-so.

Given a choice, I'd say the Zeo is a GOOD product (not a GREAT product) and it can produce useful data MUCH OF THE TIME, but not ALL of the time. But it's definitely better than "just so-so"---particularly given its price.

I just started with my CPAP a month ago and bought the bedside Zeo about two weeks ago. I have found it very helpful, mostly for my peace of mind that my sleep quality is improving. I was convinced that I never get to the deeper levels of sleep (REM & deep) and thought that was a life-long problem that would never be fixed and that even my CPAP wouldn't be able to help with.

But that isn't the truth. And learning the truth can actually help me sleep better! Since I've been watching my Zeo data and seeing that I am getting a decent amount of REM & deep sleep at least half the time, I realize I am capable of it - so that helps we quit obsessing over how bad I think my sleep is going to be each night. Because I've quit obsessing, I had one of my best night's sleep ever last night - a full hour of deep sleep and 2 hours of REM!! For me, that was worth the whole cost of the device!

Nate, as a couple others have metioned, our search function on this forum doesn't work for 3 characters. So, a search for thinngs like Zeo, AHI, REM and a lot of others which would be really useful are not completed.

However, you can work around this by doing a Google search limited to the site by typing zeo site:cpaptalk.com in the search box and Google will search the forum for Zeo (or whatever you enter before "site") and you will get lots of hits.

The accuracy of Zeo can be debated, but I have found it very useful in establishing trends, like is my deep sleep increasing or decreasing? Or, is this medication reducing or increasing the number of awakenings per night?

I have the bedside unit and all together, I think the Zeo (with the website) is a great tool at a very reasonable price. .

Jay

edited to correct google search terminology

Ya, I'm clearly over the top, an uber GEEK. LOL ! I'm with RobySue, the product is between the first two choices in the poll. If you use the product's basic capabilities you will have more information, albeit approximate, about your sleep stages and quality of sleep, so I give it out of the box a thumbs up.

I have Zeo bedside unit and consider it to be a toy at this point.
I have not been able to correlate any kind of Zeo score with good sleep hygiene habits.
If my sleep hygiene is good i can get scores as low at 50-60.
Often when its bad, due to alcohol etc i get scores over 110.
So its telling me i sleep better after a six pack

~UB

Jay Aitchsee wrote:Nate, as a couple others have metioned, our search function on this forum doesn't work for 3 characters. So, a search for thinngs like Zeo, AHI, REM and a lot of others which would be really useful are not completed.

However, you can work around this by doing a Google search limited to the site by typing CPAPTALK.Com: Zeo in the search box and Google will search the forum for Zeo (or whatever you enter after the colon) and you will get lots of hits.

The accuracy of Zeo can be debated, but I have found it very useful in establishing trends, like is my deep sleep increasing or decreasing? Or, is this medication reducing or increasing the number of awakenings per night?

I have the bedside unit and all together, I think the Zeo (with the website) is a great tool at a very reasonable price. .

Jay

Thank you very much, Jay. That's a great tip for this and future searches!

Thanks also for your input on the Zeo.

Regards, Nate

Thanks to all of you for your more detailed replies today.

Yesterday, I had just about decided not to get it. Between ResScan and SleepyHead, I feel like I'm up to my eyeballs in charts and graphs already and don't want to have to study any more graphics. The waveforms are making me seasick, especially when I try to look at them sideways and when I'm standing on my head.

But I would very much like to see numbers on the topics I listed above, and it now sounds like Zeo will produce them, if I have understood all/most of your newly added comments correctly.

So it is again sounding like something worth trying. Even if, like Uncle Bob's Zeo, it pushes me to have a drop of Jack Daniels now and then.

Regards, Nate

Uncle_Bob wrote:So its telling me i sleep better after a six pack

Not me. If I drank a six pack I'd be up pee'ing waaay too often . A few oz of cognac, perhaps? Zeo mixes quantity with quality in their score, heavily biased towards quantity.