And now for some pillow talk

I’ve been known to fall asleep listening to audiobooks and podcasts so I recently acquired an iMusic Bluetooth Pillow out of intrigue to see if it would make it the whole situation a little better. I was a bit skeptical that it would work as described without being too uncomfortable but I’m always up for trying something new.

How it works

You have the option of pairing with a bluetooth phone dongle or plugging the pillow in directly into your phone/audio player. From there it’s fairly straightforward. Put your head on the pillow and listen instead of using a loud speaker or struggling with headphones.

The upside

The bluetooth option made it a lot easier than plugging it in via the headphone socket. This meant that the phone could sit beside my bed and I wouldn’t worry about pulling it off overnight. Relatively deep in the centre of the pillow a small speaker lies, it isn’t too noticeable there, but you don’t forget it’s there. It is kind of nice to be able to find the speaker and move it around a bit so that it is easier to listen without the pillow being up to loud. Having this setup means that I don’t have to worry about keeping my wife awake while I’m listening to my audio content.

The downside

It isn’t exactly as quiet as I was hoping. However, if you get the pillow “just right” you can hear the volume quite loudly without it being noticeable to others in the room. This does mean that it’s only really ideal if you’re fairly still in bed. I normally sleep with a very high quality pillow because of my back problems. After two nights on this I couldn’t get very comfortable. Finally, the bluetooth receiver doesn’t automatically turn off when there’s no signal. This means that it needs to be turned off once you’re finished or charged every day.

The middle ground

It is probably an unnecessary gadget for me to use a lot because of my back problems and seeing as I am normally in bed on my own for at least half an hour (I’m the early riser) and already use a sleep timer on Audible/iTunes. It’s now my spare pillow for the odd occasion that I need to be quiet but still want to sleep and on the big plus side I’ve really taken to using the bluetooth receiver for connecting our phones to the sound system in the living room (it’s independent of the pillow itself).