Review: Somni mask for lucid dreaming
In this post, I review my experience with the Somni mask for the induction of lucid dreams.
Bottom line up front:
I would not recommend this product at this time. While the mask is very comfortable and blocks light well, it did not deliver on its core promise — the induction of lucid dreams. It felt like an unfinished product that lacked intuitive controls and effectiveness.
Now onto the full review…
Device overview
The Somni mask uses motion sensors and infrared LEDs to detect REM sleep. When the device detects your head is still, and after a certain number of eye movements, the device will trigger light and sound stimulation with the intention of inducing a lucid dream.
First impressions
The packaging looks nice. Immediately, you see what looks and feels like a high-quality lucid dreaming mask.
As I browsed the manual, I noticed several typos. This made me wonder whether Somni cared about the details or if the production was rushed.
When I first put the mask on my face, I was impressed. It is the most comfortable sleep mask I have ever worn and it does a great job blocking out light. I was getting hopeful again.
Confusing interface on the face
Then I tinkered with the on/off button. It felt flimsy and poorly constructed. You have to push directly down and not at an angle to activate the device.
The device relies on one button for input and one LED for output. I get the sense that Somni was striving for simplicity but instead created confusion. I read the manual several times to understand how the duration of button pushes translated to different device modes. For instance, a certain button-push duration will show you the battery life via the LED color. Another button-push duration (> 7 seconds) puts you in a test mode, while another button-push duration (~2 seconds) puts you in the actual lucid dreaming induction mode.
For several nights, I accidentally started the test mode instead of the lucid dreaming induction mode. I reached out to Somni’s customer support team (info@somni.org) to troubleshoot this. Fortunately, they were responsive and even evaluated my data logs. They correctly identified the issue—I was triggering the test mode because I was holding down the button too long. While customer support was helpful, I should not have had to interact with customer support to understand how to simply turn on the device. This could lead to poor user experiences whenever people push the button too long, which is easy to do because you don’t receive any visual feedback from the device until the test mode is activated.
Adding to the confusion, to begin charging, you must plug the mask into a power source AND push the button for 1–2 seconds. This is not intuitive. Most devices simply require you to plug into a power source.
Night light shows
Now that I understood how to turn the device on and charge it, let’s talk about the nighttime experience. Again, the mask is comfortable to wear. That is, until you put in the earbuds. During the first night, I had to take out the earbuds because they were applying too much pressure on my ears while I was sleeping on my side. Since I’m primarily a side sleeper, the earbuds were immediately a no-go for me, so I had to rely on the LEDs lights alone for stimulation cues.
After several nights of use, I could not attribute any lucid dreams to the use of the Somni mask. However, I did get the LEDs triggered several times while I was still trying to fall back asleep during the night. This was frustrating and disruptive to my sleep.
Configuring the device
This device wasn’t working for me, so I opened the web app by visiting https://somni.org/program. This is another experience that made the product feel unfinished. Upon visiting the site, you have the plug the device into a computer with a USB cable—assuming your computer has a USB input—and then upload a configuration file.
Assuming your computer recognizes the device once it’s plugged in—a 50/50 proposition in my experience—then you have to select “NO NAME” and then a default.txt file from the file explorer window. This all feels very unfinished.
This brings up a configuration interface on which you’re given plenty of control on how to adapt the sensing and stimulation of the device. You can adjust the number of eye movements before the lights and sounds are triggered. You can adjust the color and intensity of the light. You can even adjust the sensitivity of the sensors. In some ways, it’s nice to have lots of flexibility. In other ways, it’s a bit overwhelming, and I was left wishing that there was just a default mode that worked well, along with a few easy-to-adjust levers. Also, the device configuration interface would benefit from clearer tooltips about what each setting dial actually meant. For some sensing settings, I was not 100% sure if I was making it more or less sensitive.
To save the settings, you have to replace the existing default.txt file. This left me hoping that I was not permanently messing something up with an important file. I’m a child of the MS-DOS prompt days, so I can tolerate some old-school processes that the typical user wouldn’t want to deal with.
Left eye chasing lucid dreams
One night, I woke up with a sore left eye, so I reverted back to my regular sleep mask for the rest of the night. The next day, the data logs confirmed that REM sleep was detected several times right before I stopped using it that night.
After a few failed attempts, I found myself not wanting to try the Somni mask on nights when I was prioritizing sleep. Sleep quality is fundamental to lucid dreaming, and I felt like this device was doing more harm than good.
In Summary
I found the Somni mask to be:
- Comfortable. This is one of the most comfortable sleep masks I’ve ever worn and it blocks out light great.
- Confusing. The one-button interface forces you to memorize push-dependent functions that are not immediately intuitive.
- Ineffective. I’ve not once had a lucid dream that I can attribute to this device
- Annoying. At least five times, the device falsely detected that I was in REM sleep and flashed bright lights on my eyes while I was trying to fall asleep
How I would improve it
Let’s stop complaining and focus on how this device could be improved.
To start, I’d create a simple mobile app that provides:
- Easier configuration of REM detection sensitivity
- Easier configuration of sound stimulation options, including the use of binaural beats and custom audio recordings
- Display of the device mode prior to bed (i.e. help me understand that I am in the correct mode and not in test mode)
- Setting a target time window for lucid dreaming attempts so one can target the later REM cycles where lucid dreams are more likely
- Charts that display the times that REM was detected (i.e. simplified hypnogram) and when the Somni mask’s light or sound was triggered
- Ability to manually tag when lucid dreams occur so that users can better understand if the current device settings are causing lucid dreams or if they should adjust the settings
- Training guides to help a user better recognize and react to the visual and auditory cues during dreams to increase the probability of achieving lucidity (i.e. training for targeted lucidity reactivation (TLR))
- Current battery levels since the on-device battery level indicators aren’t clear
Beyond the desired mobile app, the REM detection should be more specific. It had too many false positives for me to continue using it.
The on-device controls and indicators should be more intuitive. It should be reptilian-brain simple to charge and use the device. You should be able to simply plug it into a power source and expect that it will charge. You should be able to wear a device and assume it will function.
Last but not least, choose a light and sound setting that is more effective. That’s easier said than done and why more work is needed to create lucid dreaming technology that enables on-demand lucid dreaming and makes lucid dreaming more accessible.
Please consider joining Tech for Dreaming to make that future a reality. You can join the discussion in our Discord server now.
