In a world where we are becoming increasingly dependent on our smartphones to do everything from pay for our coffee to monitor our sleep, Morphée has entered the growing sleep tool market with a device designed to reduce our dependency on smartphones.
Just because you enable night mode and reduce the blue light spectrum when you lay in bed endlessly swiping through social media doesn’t do you any favours either. Your brain is being stimulated by everything your eyes see, pushing you further and further away from getting to sleep. To complicate matters, a number of studies have shown that placing your mobile phone next to your bed resulted in heightened alpha-wave activity in the brain, reducing the quality of sleep unless it was switched to flight mode.
The team at Morphee say they’re doing their bit to change that with “Morphée” and “My Little Morphée” (which I’ve been testing) specifically designed for kids. So the question begs, have they achieved what they set out to?
Developed in collaboration with sleep and meditation experts, My Little Morphée’s function is twofold; to provide guided meditations to calm your mind and to also create an environment conducive to sleep with calming music and soundscapes.
Mindfully Packaged
Out of the environmentally focussed cardboard packaging, you’ll notice that My Little Morphée experience is a tactile one. The body has an almost soft sensation to the touch and the carry handle is a lovely organic sanded wood with exposed woodgrain. It’s nicely weighted and has a quality feel. My Little Morphée charges via a USB cable and one charge will get you about three hours of use which worked out to be about two weeks for us. Bonus points to the product team for not using any plastic in their packaging!
Simple design, many features.
Once you’ve acquainted yourself with the instructions (which you will need to read) and set your language, you’re ready to choose your own meditative adventure, music or soundscape.
My Little Morphée comes programmed with an impressive 200 different combinations of meditations, music tracks and natural ambient sound recordings.
It relies completely on two dials that can be turned in a number of combinations to play different recordings and features an additional volume control and a switch that allows you to set it to 8 or 16-minute sessions.
Putting My Little Morphée to the test
I’ve been test-driving My Little Morphée with my three-year-old Son, Harrison. The Morphée team recommend their sleep and meditation device for children aged 3-8 but there is a little bit of wiggle room on that number with the Music in my opinion.
The voice used in the guided meditations and stories when set to English echoes the low tonal calming style of other meditation-mindfulness apps I’ve used but it takes some getting used to.
They start by encouraging your child to relax and meditate, before progressing to tell a story about one of eight animals, a solo or group hike.
My wife commented that the voice was a little off-putting to her ears and I could understand why as it’s not a natural conversational tone.
For Harrison, we think he’s a bit too young for the meditations as he struggled to pay attention to the voice but plan to try again when he’s a little older. While the speaker sound itself isn’t amazing, it’s more than adequate for its intended purpose.
The music on the other hand could be used from a younger age in my opinion. The beautifully written songs by French composer Gilles Maugenest are perfect for escorting your little one off to sleep and as the song slowly comes to an end, Morphée ever so gradually reduces the volume until fades away completely. Perfect. The same could be said for the nature soundscapes as they don’t utilise any speaking.
Harrison is a pretty good sleeper but I’ve found that Morphée’s music helps him to relax and doze off to sleep in well under the 16 minutes setting. It’s so good that I’ve even found myself dozing off with him from time to time. You don’t need to worry about turning it off after use either; with My Little Morphée shutting itself off to conserve power when its finished its session.
Conclusion: the sleep device you didn’t know you needed
Has Morphée filled a market niche? Yes, they have and they’ve done a very good job. The designers put a lot of thought into the concept and their efforts show. The option to reduce our dependency on smart devices with something as critical as sleep is something we need more of in this world.
My Little Morphée is the kind of sleep tool every parent should have in their box of tricks to help calm and guide their child to sleep. It’s become a part of Harrison’s nightly sleep routine and my wife and I are also reaping the benefits with more time to get things done in the evening. It also makes for a great gift idea and I plan to gift My Little Morphée to some of my friends soon.
My Little Morphée retails for $149 and is available online at Amazon, Temple and Webster, JB Hi-Fi, Dick Smiths and Kogan.
Many Thanks to the Morphée team for sending us My Little Morphée to review, très bien!
