Dormio app review: improve the quality of your sleep with this audio-visual aid

Introduction

Dormio is a wonderfully designed app which features a collection of soothing music and ambient sound effects to help you more easily relax at the end of each day and drift off into a deep sleep. It also encourages lucid dreaming in the deepest phase of your REM sleep cycle.

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This has been a difficult app for me to review fairly because my favorite conditions for sleeping are complete silence in a pitch black room. Nevertheless, I’ve had a couple of my friends experiment with Dormio for the past couple of nights and the feedback has been very positive, with one friend in particular mentioning that the first night was the best night’s sleep she’s gotten in several weeks.

This doesn’t exactly constitute an extensive scientific analysis of Dormio so let’s take a closer look and see what it’s all about.

Forty Winks

The basic idea behind this app is that listening to certain combinations of music and sound effects at certain frequencies can help to switch your brain into different modes of operation, Changing your brainwave patterns have been proven to help you to more quickly fall into a deeper and more refreshing sleep.

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The visual element of Dormio is very nicely designed and features a timer in the style of a dial or egg timer which enables you to set how long you’d like each track to be played for, with the option to play a track for up to 90 minutes.

I think this is actually a useful metric for measuring how long it takes you to fall asleep each night, and you can test the efficacy of Dormio by seeing if that time becomes shorter and shorter as you use it.

Daytime Naps

As well as helping you fall asleep at night, I think this app also has great application in helping you catch the occasional power nap in the middle of the day. Personally, I find it almost impossible to switch off mentally enough to catch forty winks in the afternoon, but now I’m thinking about it, I might actually give Dormio a shot and see if it helps with this.

Research has shown that a 15-30 minute nap in the middle of the day is enough to cause the up-regulation of various beneficial hormones in the body which help to increase energy levels and concentration, and improve mood.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Drift off to sleep more easily with a selection of soothing audio tracks
• Set a timer to help track how long it takes you to fall asleep
• Download even more tracks via in-app purchase

Cons

• There is nothing negative to say about this app

Rockabye Baby

Just listening to some of the tracks on this app and thinking about sleeping is starting to make me drowsy so I’d better wrap up this review before I end up in a face-plant on my keyboard!

I think Dormio is well worth trying out; the interface looks great and the audio quality is second to none. If you like the initial free content, you can also download more tracks via in-app purchase.