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The latest wearable from Muse is the company's smartest and most advanced headband yet. But if you want to get the most out of it, prepare for a long haul. Improving your mental stamina is a marathon, not a sprint.
I've had the Muse S Athena for a month, and I feel like I'm only now through the learning phase and ready to actually get down to work with this new smart headband.
Muse S Athena One Paragraph Review
The Muse S Athena is designed to help improve your sleep quality, meditation focus, and mental stamina. Think of it like a fitness tracker, but for your mind instead of your body. But, unlike a normal fitness tracker, you don't just slap this on and get instant results. This is something you have to commit to and practice with every single day if you want to unlock the benefits. If you do that, you will see improvements. Visit Muse to learn more.
Pros
- Incredibly sophisticated but easy to use
- Excellent programs and coaching
- Comfortable to wear
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Delayed gratification
- Pricey investment
What does the Muse S Athena do?
The newest smart headband from Muse builds on the existing tool box but adds another dimension to help you gain further insights into your own mind and help you train it to enhance your focus and cognitive performance.
Once you're up to speed with this device, it can help you rally your mental faculties in times of stress or when focus is really needed and then help you recover more completely after these moments of intensity.
For years, Muse has helped people gain more valuable insights into their sleep through their EEG sensors that measure your brain activity (which is arguably more accurate than the insights you can get with a wrist-based measurement). This same technology had been previously refined to help guide users through meditation to gain deeper benefits from these relaxation sessions.
The big difference with the Athena is the introduction of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology. The old system, using EEG, provided great insights into focus and relaxation. But this new sensor uses light to measure changes in oxygenation levels in your brain, helping you determine how hard your mind is working on any given task.
If the old version provided two-dimensional data, the Athena provides 3D coverage, to gather a new data point that, when combined with the EEG info, fundamentally shifts how the app tracks and guides you through sessions to help you train your mind to improve focus.
Muse S Athena: How does it work?
By pairing information from the EEG and fNIRS sensors, the Muse app can get extremely complex and comprehensive information about blood flow to your brain, oxygenation level, your heart rate, and more. It then graphs the data and helps you interpret the results, so you have a better idea of what to focus on in future sessions.
These are a few ways the Athena is different from previous devices:
A Focus Fitness Tracker: Earlier generations of Muse helped you find focus. The new version helps you improve focus because now it can measure your mental effort, including increases in Beta (alertness) and Theta (relaxed) brainwave activity, as well as brain oxygenation.
Cognitive Endurance: This is some new lingo to basically determine how hard your brain is working during an activity and how long can it sustain this.
Flap, Bird, Flap: To measure cognitive endurance, Muse has introduced a new "game," in which your mental focus causes an owl to fly. The more you're focused and working your brain, the further the owl goes. This requires your eyes to be opened and focused on your phone's screen, something that is not required for any other muse exercises and training.
Deeper Dives into Recovery: While the relaxation and meditation experiences are similar to previous Muse models, because of the extra dimension achieved through the fNIRS, you'll get even better insights into how your brain recovers and relaxes.
Muse S Athena The app experience
The key to training with the muse headband is through the app. For everything from making sure the headband is fitting correctly, to finding a program based on your goals (improving cognitive performance vs. enhancing sleep quality), you'll need the Muse App.
There's a premium subscription, which is basically essential to really get the value out of your newly purchased hardware.
Yes, there's some basic stuff included in the free tier, but, ultimately, you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't get the subscription. Chances are, if you're deep enough into your sleep, meditation, or mental stamina journey that you're aware that this device exists, you're also probably quite committed to your personal wellness and growth and have experienced that investing in these kinds of things, while costly, is ultimately worth it.
Or, I could be totally wrong and you're gonna go, "WHAT!? I just spent $600 on this thing and now I have to spend $125 a year to use it?!"
My honest advice: If you're not prepared to get the annual subscription, at least for the first year of learning how to use this thing, don't even bother buying it.
Once you have the paid subscription, these are the kinds of things you'll be using the app for:
Today: This is the To-Do list for the day based on the sessions and goals you're trying to achieve. In the beginning, this is where you'll find all the onboarding classes to get you familiar with the device and the different types of sessions available.
Programs: Comprehensive groupings of different sessions with a specific goal in mind (learning about biofeedback, personal wellbeing assessment, managing stress, etc.).
Biofeedback Soundscapes: These are a little different than your sessions/lessons, in that they are standalone activities with real-time feedback based on the area you're trying to train (mind, strength, body, heart, or breath).
Digital Sleeping Pills;: These are guided stories and audio experiences that help you fall asleep faster. You wear the headband and it intelligently reacts to your brain activity to use audio to lull you to sleep.
Brain FM: This is super cool and seems very advanced. While wearing the headband, your brain activity is measured. The experience then uses music to respond to your brainwaves to change the patterns of your brain and help you get in whatever zone you're aiming for (relaxation, focus, sleep, etc.).
Session History: Under the Me tab in the app, you can look back on session history and see how you're improving with your various sessions, view your sleep scores, and access more info about your progress.
Muse S Athena How to get the MOST of the device
This is now my third Muse device I've had over the past five years. So, I feel experienced enough to share some info about my personal progress and use that might be helpful.
1. Be Patient. This is not like a normal wearable gadget. Think of it like a violin. If you bought a musical instrument and took it out of the case, you would need a LOT of practice before you got good at it. Expect to do daily sessions for at least a month to get your bearings.
2. Subscribe. This is not me up-selling you. This is me speaking from experience. I've used Muse both with and without the subscription, and I can tell you that when the subscription lapses, so does my usage of Muse. Maybe if you're naturally good at meditation, you could eventually get by without the variety of classes and coaching, but I absolutely need access to the full suite of programs and courses. Otherwise, I get frustrated, fall out of my routine, and stop using the device for months.
3. Don't Skip Onboarding. When I first got a Muse headband, I saw that there was a recommended tutorial and started it. But after a few sections, I decided to go at it on my own. This was a mistake. There are so many nuances to using this (particularly now with the Athena and its cognitive training), you will miss out on vital info that will help you get more from the device. Follow all the onboarding sessions, in order. Then venture out on your own.
4. Keep It Handy. You need to have this thing in a place where you're going to remember to use it. I keep mine at my desk, and once I started testing the Athena, I committed that before I did any work for the day, I would need to do at least a 10-minute session. By having it at my desk, I also had it handy if I wanted a mid-day break or an end-of-day relaxation.
5. Earbuds are Essential. Your experience may be different, but Muse requires a lot of focus. I found it much more helpful to become immersed in the sessions if I had my earbuds in rather than relying on the speaker on my phone.
Muse S Athena: Is it worth it?
The Muse S Athena is an excellent tool for improving cognitive wellness, and it's sophisticated to the point that it's kinda shocking that this type of tech is available to average people like you and I.
Having said that, I want to emphasize this is NOT a gadget for everyone.
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Muse S Athena
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The Muse S Athena introduces a new type of sensor allowing you to use the Muse app to train your focus and mental stamina for the first time. Aside from that, this is a great tool to help with meditation and improving sleep quality. While a subscription isn't required, it's a very, very good idea to have one in order to get the most out of the app.
You know how with laptops, there are the regular ones and then there are the pro ones? For the most part, most people buy the regular ones because it is enough, or more than enough, for their needs. They're kind of a one-size-fits-most model.
To continue this laptop analogy, the Muse S Athena is the MacBook Pro of the sleep tracking (and now) cognitive wellness world.
This is for people who are strongly motivated to gain insights into their own specific body rhythms and needs. It's for people who understand that this is a deep journey and requires commitment.
You need to be willing to put in the work, particularly in the early days, to ge the results.
If you've done a bit of homework to see what a big step up the Athena is vs. other devices for tracking mood, stress, or sleep, are okay with the price tag of the device and the subscription, and can commit to being patient enough to recognize that the whole first month is just going to be about learning and listening to your body and reviewing the data, then you can achieve some extraordinary results with the latest Muse wearable.
I've had mine for about a month, and I just feel like now I'm getting in the zone enough where I'm through the analysis phase of using the device and now ready to start working on the improvement capabilities of the headband.
I basically only have good things to say about the Muse S Athena:
- It's very comfortable to wear, even while sleeping (back sleeper, side sleeper, you'll be A-OK).
- The way the app is laid out and how programs are organized is extremely thoughtful.
- The Music section is sometimes just great to have on during the workday to keep you calm and chill.
- The historic data analysis is very good and very rewarding to see improvements over time.
As far as negatives go, it's not so much on the device as the person, but it does take awhile to get "good" at things, like the guided meditations and the cognitive training (I still don't know if I'm good, but I'm definitely improving).
It would be nice if the app had the ability to get permissions for notifications and would automatically put your phone on Do Not Disturb when you're in a session (I often forget to do this). But beyond that, the user experience with Muse hardware and software is top-notch.
If you are ready to invest in your personal wellness, improving your sleep and enhancing your capacity to deal with mental stressors could be among the most important skills to develop, and the Muse S Athena helps you improve both of these.
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