I am going to introduce you to some innovative sleep technology with my MOONA Cooling Pillow Pad review. Sleep makes up nearly a third of our lives, and it has a huge impact on the other two thirds of our lives. Good sleep is the foundational pillar of good health and optimal functioning, but during this unprecedented time of a global pandemic, stress levels are at an all-time high, and many people are struggling to wind down sufficiently to get the restorative rest so vital to ongoing health, optimal immunity, and general wellbeing. Like so many people, I have wanted a safe, non-habit-forming way to improve my sleep, so I was delighted to discover and get to review MOONA, the Precision Cooling Pillow Pad. MOONA uses a bedside device, pillow pad, and sophisticated app to help regulate temperature around the head and neck area to help the user fall asleep faster, sleep more deeply, and wake up naturally and gently.
Cooler temperatures, especially around the head and neck (where much thermic exchange occurs), facilitate falling asleep and getting deeper sleep, whereas a warmer temperature will help wake a person up in the morning. To see some of the cutting-edge scientific literature supporting this, click here. MOONA helps improve sleep by providing personalized temperature regulation customized to the user, delivering cool temperatures to the pillow pad throughout the night to facilitate and deepen sleep, and then gradually increasing the temperature to help the user wake up at a scheduled time in the morning. The result is both better rest and a less groggy awakening in the morning.
The setup for MOONA is easy and intuitive, and the app and device work flawlessly together. On the app, your Temperature Profile is divided into three phases: Fall Asleep, Night, and Wake Up. The app will recommend an ideal Temperature Profile based on a few questions you answer during setup, but you can easily adjust any of the recommended settings yourself as well if you have a different preference. After each night, the MOONA app asks you to answer a few basic questions about how you slept and how well MOONA worked for you (e.g., was it too cold, too hot). MOONA uses your input over time to further personalize your temperature profile through a machine learning algorithm, which means that your temperature profile gets automatically optimized with your feedback. The cooling and heating of the pillow pad is done through water circulating in thin silicone tubing inside the pillow pad; the bedside device is what cools or warms up the water, which then diffuses into the pillow before cycling back to the beside device to be cooled or warmed again, providing gentle temperature regulation. This design is nice because there is minimal activity going on beneath your head (e.g., just a quiet flow of liquid in through the tubing—which you cannot even feel) as you rest on the pillow pad.
In addition to having a very sleek design and aesthetic that looks nice on a bedside table, MOONA is also well-engineered to be a great sleep device. For example, it is extremely quiet. If you are worried that the noise MOONA makes might disturb fragile sleep, you can rest easy, as MOONA runs at around 25-35dB, which is quieter than a whisper! In fact, MOONA is so quiet that I initially had trouble detecting any sound at all when I turned it on, such that I wondered if it was working. Happily, it turns out it was working perfectly, albeit very quietly; MOONA is just near silent, and this remains true even when it is set to heat or cool to the maximum settings. I had expected it to be much louder than it is, and I am impressed by how minimally disruptive its barely-audible purr really is. Additionally, the pillow pad itself manages to control temperature while still being very thin and lightweight, such that it will neatly and easily fit into the pillowcase when placed on top of your favorite pillow, all without substantially changing the feel of the favorite pillow itself. Altogether, the pillow pad is only 19mm (0.8in) thick. The soft, thin pillow pad—along with the quiet operation of the device when it is working–make MOONA very unobtrusive and quite comfortable in combination with the pillow of your choice.
I found MOONA wonderfully comfortable, and it worked well with every pillow I tried. I have already raved about how quiet it is, but it is also easy to get accustomed to using. MOONA does its cooling sleep magic in a way that is almost subtle, which is important for a sleep device. Although you might expect that a chilly pillow would initially be uncomfortable and/or require a long adjustment period, I did not find this to be the case. Perhaps because MOONA strategically targets just the head and neck (rather than a cooling mattress pad, for instance), the cooling it provides is—for lack of a better word–unobtrusive. I never once woke up or had trouble falling asleep because I felt “too cold” with MOONA. Even on its coldest settings, MOONA was comfortable. Having tried cooling mattress pads, I can tell you that those did wake me up feeling cold, and I much prefer MOONA’s strategic, targeted cooling.
Before I started using MOONA, my sleep tended to be light and broken up by many awakenings through the night. Since incorporating MOONA into my bedtime routine, I am sleeping much more soundly. Since receiving the device, I have been tracking my sleep with an Oura ring to measure any changes. Most of all, I was interested in changes in my Sleep Score. Oura’s Sleep Score is calculated according to multiple factors, including your total sleep time, sleep efficiency (the percentage of time you spend asleep during the night), latency (the time it takes you to fall asleep), among other metrics, so it is a good overall indicator of sleep quality. Objectively, I have seen a significant and fairly steady improvement in my overall Sleep Score as measured nightly by my Oura ring, demonstrating without a doubt that MOONA has benefitted the overall quality of my sleep. When I received MOONA in mid-February of this year, my monthly average Sleep Score was 66; with MOONA, my Sleep Score improved to an average of 77 in March and 73 in April, both showing significant improvement over my average sleep quality before MOONA. I am sleeping much better, and that in and of itself is a great benefit, but the best reward of using MOONA these last two months is that I feel better rested and more energized during the day. MOONA has made a difference in the overall quality of my days and nights. If you struggle with insomnia, poor sleep quality, or daytime fatigue, I highly recommend MOONA as a sleek, well-designed way to comfortably improve your sleep quality—all with none of the side effects or daytime grogginess of so many sleep aids.
In closing, I highly recommend MOONA for more restful nights and better days. If you are curious to try it for yourself, you can do so at no risk. MOONA comes with a generous 60-day trial period during which you can request a return at any point. Try MOONA and treat yourself to better sleep here.