Homedics Deep Sleep Mini review

One-minute review

For people struggling with insomnia, the easier a sleep product is to use, the better. The Homedics Deep Sleep Mini white noise machine ticks all the right boxes, using gentle sounds to help you drift off to sleep, with no complicated instructions required.

Although the Deep Sleep Mini doesn’t look very complex (in fact, it looks very much like a compact smart speaker), it's well designed and very effective. 

There are three noise tones to choose from (white, pink and brown), plus rain and storm nature sounds. There's also a guided meditation program created by an expert, which is paired with relaxation sounds to help you clear your mind.

All are very pleasant, and genuinely helped us achieve a more restful night's sleep. We also found the white noise loud enough to block out the sound of a snoring partner, and the rain option had a very calming effect if we were disturbed in the night. There's also no need to get up and turn the machine off, as there's an adjustable auto-timer built in.

Price and release date

• Costs $54.99 / £49.99 (about AU$75)
• Available from various stores

The HoMedics Deep Sleep Mini was released in November 2018. It costs $54.99 / £49.99 (about AU$75) and is available direct from HoMedics, or from third-party stores including Amazon.

Design

The Homedics Deep Sleep Mini is small and slim, and closely resembles a Google Home Mini smart speaker. The base is made from white plastic, with a gray fabric speaker on top and a charging port on the side. There's also a power adapter for running it from a mains outlet.

It weighs 0.8lb (363g) and measures 11 x 11 x 5.5 centimetres, making it a perfect travel size to take away with you if you find it difficult to switch off you're on the move. Just slip it into your suitcase or overnight bag.

It's not the most attractive device to look at, and there's no choice of colors to match your bedroom, but it's so effective at helping you drift off at night, we're able to overlook that.

Performance

The HoMedics Deep Sleep Mini is simplicity at its best. As any person with insomnia will tell you, there is nothing more frustrating than fighting with technology when you're tired, and HoMedics has created a hassle-free noise machine that aids relaxation, and hopefully helps you get a good night’s sleep.

Unlike many other sleep gadgets, the HoMedics Deep Sleep Mini doesn’t require you to connect yourself to a machine or app to improve your sleeping habits – and the fact it offers a variety of different settings means you can find out what works best for you with just a little trial and effort.

For example, it has a setting that enables you to switch between white noise (which you're probably familiar with), plus brown and pink noise (which you may not be). Pink noise is similar to white noise, but with reduced higher frequencies, and resembles the sounds of steady rainfall or wind.

Brown noise is even lower frequency, and sounds more like a swiftly flowing river. As we discovered when testing the machine, the benefits of all three forms of noise are relaxation, improved focus, and of course, sleep improvement.

If you sometimes gets up to go to the bathroom in the night and finds it difficult to get back to sleep, these certainly help, and even on the lowest setting, we found that the white noise loud enough to down out a snoring partner.

Our favourite program, however, was the nature setting, and we found the rain particularly relaxing when trying to drift off.

If you are concerned about leaving the HoMedics Deep Sleep Mini on all night, it has a 30, 60 or 90-minute timer, which will switch it off automatically. If you want to keep it on all night, its 12-hour battery life means it'll keep running until the morning on a single charge.

The fact it has dials on the side to adjust volume and tone is a bonus too. However, we found it worked best when placed in the middle of the room rather than directly next to us on the bedside table, as the lowest setting is still quite loud. Although our reviewer doesn't have a baby, we imagine it would work well for soothing an infant as well.

Final verdict

The HoMedics Deep Sleep Mini is one of the best sleep aids we've tested. Fundamentally this is because it offers some pretty simple yet effective sleep support with a variety of different noises and programmes to put you in a relaxed state of mind. Its price is extremely reasonable too, particularly considering its superb sound quality.

It not only helped us fall asleep far more easily than normal, but waking at night and struggling to fall back to sleep was no longer a problem. The white noise also blocked out any additional noises such as a snoring partner, barking dog or traffic – sounds that would usually make it impossible for us to drift off again.

Our reviewer even road-tested the Deep Sleep Mini on her teenage son, who was stressed about back to school exams and being unable to fall asleep ahead of a busy day – and it worked brilliantly.

In a market where sleeping gadgets are on the rise, the fact this works and is so cheap makes it a no-brainer. A good night’s sleep is priceless, and we can’t recommend the HoMedics Deep Sleep Mini highly enough.

First reviewed September 2021

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