Sense is a new monitoring device that aims to tell us more about the activity many of us spend around a third of our lives doing: sleeping. It’s a lovely looking device about the size of a tennis ball. Its job is to monitor the environment to see how it influences the quality of our sleep.

Sense is nicely designed – it looks like a series of elastic bands wrapped around a ball, only better. It also comes with a sleep pill that attaches to the pillow to study movement. That’s certainly more comfortable than the wearables other sleep devices make you wear.

Sense analyses motion, light, temperature, humidity, noise and air quality. It also measures movement through the pill, records all this information and makes it available through an app. You can then access that data to study what goes on while you sleep.

For instance, if you woke up at 3am, you can check Sense to see why. You can see how warm or humid the room was and how much ambient noise there was. If a car alarm went off or a dog barked in the middle of the night, Sense will record that too. It can even recognise and record snoring.

Sense will also glow a different colour depending on how optimum the room ambience is for sleep. If it glows green, you’re good to go. If it glows yellow or orange, you need to find out why and make changes to ensure you get a good night’s sleep.

Sense seems like a very good sleep device. You don’t have to wear anything, it looks good and it takes a more holistic approach to sleep analytics.

Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.