I’m a sleep editor and these are the only 5 gadgets I rely on for waking up with more energy — starting from $6.99

The image shows a glowing sunrise alarm clock on the left and a woman stretching her arms above her head as she wakes up on the right — (Image credit: Future/Getty)

I used to be someone who could fall asleep at the drop of a hat and wake up with loads of energy. But then I hit my 40s and my sleep quality and energy levels took a beating.

Falling (and staying) asleep became an ongoing battle and I was waking up every day feeling exhausted. Thankfully, as someone who writes about sleep for a living, I’ve slowly curated a toolkit of tech to help me overcome the barriers standing in my way of a good night’s sleep.

The tech I rely on to sleep better

The first step towards waking up with more energy is ensuring that you're getting enough sleep. However, in addition to sleep duration, spending enough time in deep sleep (N3) is the magic ingredient to waking up with a spring in your step.

To make sure that I'm clocking up enough time in deep sleep, I ensure I have created a cool, dark and quiet sleep space. Essentially, I'm looking to remove any of the external factors that pull me out of this particularly restorative sleep stage.

That includes my phone. I'm almost ashamed to admit how much sleep I've probably lost over my lifetime to pointless scrolling (my willpower is apparently no match for Meta).

Here's the tech in my toolkit to getting reliably great sleep night after night...

The tech I rely on to wake with loads of energy

Once I've crafted an environment to help me achieve the sleep I need, the path is clear to waking up with lots of energy. But have you ever wondered why sleeping for eight hours leaves you feeling groggy, for example, but you feel refreshed after a shorter time in bed?

That's probably because sleeping a full eight hours often means your alarm sounds in the middle of a sleep cycle, jerking you out of deep sleep and leaving you groggy (this is known as sleep inertia.)

To prevent this, I rely on one of the best sunrise alarm clocks to slowly draw me out of deep sleep.

A sunrise alarm clock mimics the rising sun, which then kickstarts the production of get-up-and-go hormones like serotonin and cortisol. Because even with your eyes closed, you can detect the light.

The other thing I find helps me wake up with lots of energy is sticking to a regular sleep schedule. When my brain and body know what to expert, it makes it easier to fall asleep fast and wake up feeling refreshed. To ensure I'm sticking to my schedule, it's helpful to track my sleep.

Nicola is the Sleep Editor at Tom’s Guide, where she helps steer the mattress and sleep content published on Tom’s Guide, including our Best Mattress for Back Pain buying guide. With a career in journalism spanning the best part of two decades, Nicola brings experience to the team and the knowledge of what makes a great article, whether that’s a how-to mattress cleaning feature, a deep dive into melatonin gummies, or an in-depth mattress review. As a sleep editor, few better understand how important a decent mattress is to the overall quality of our sleep, and precisely how our sleep impacts our physical and mental health. As well as tackling the vast topic of sleep, Nicola joins the raft of expert mattress specialists at Tom’s Guide, who test and compare a wide range of mattresses in order to guide readers towards the very best options on the market.

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I went from always exhausted to waking up with tons of energy — these are the products I rely on to help me sleep better

The tech I rely on to sleep better

The tech I rely on to wake with loads of energy

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