Review: The Muse S Athena solved my overnight wake-ups and helps me fall asleep in minutes — why it's the best 'sleep enhancer' I've tested

The Muse S Athena is at the forefront of the next generation of sleep tech. This is a device that not only measures your sleep (and does so with incredible accuracy) but actively intervenes in your rest.

It does so by sensing heart rate, oxygen levels and even brainwaves, and responding with carefully selected sleep-inducing sound profiles.

For data collection, the Muse S Athena ranks among the best sleep trackers. It captures even the briefest late night disruptions (including ones I didn’t realize had happened), alongside data such as movement, sleep position and brainwaves.

This data isn’t always easy to understand (brainwaves in particular creates an interesting but indecipherable graph) but I can’t fault the accuracy.

As for sleep improvement, that’s harder to measure, although Muse’s own metric gives me an excellent average sleep score of 81.

I’ll note on nights I use the Muse S Athena I experience few disruptions and late night wake ups, and I’ve noticed I tend to be up before my alarm.

Not everyone will appreciate the feel of the Muse S Athena headband and it's a sweat magnet on warm nights. The setup could also be improved (it often takes me several minutes to get a connection between the sensors at the back of the headband and my ears).

However, these are small design gripes and the tech is impressively futuristic. More than that, it's actually effective.

Muse S Athena Sleep Tracking Headband: Price

The Muse S Athena headband is $474.99 at the Muse US store | €449.99 for shoppers in the UK (you’ll have to work out the exchange rate for yourself). It comes with a 1-year warranty.

That’s a premium piece of sleep tech — both the Oura Ring 5 ($399/£399) and Apple Watch 11 (from $399/£369) are cheaper and provide more expansive health tracking. If it’s (clinically validated) sleep tracking you want, the Withings Sleep Mat is a cheaper alternative.

However, the Muse S Athena is more than just a tracker and we’ll dive into all the ways it’s designed to improve your sleep below.

A better comparison might be the Elemind sleep headband at $399 (which both tracks your sleep and tries to improve it) or the Spatial Sleep headband at $319 (which uses sounds and vibrations to help you fall asleep faster).

Whichever way you slice it, the Muse S Athena is expensive and that’s without a premium subscription (starting at $55 | €50 per year).

But there’s also not much you can compare the Muse S Athena to, and that’s coming from someone immersed in sleep tech.

Muse S Athena Sleep Tracking Headband: Design and comfort

The Muse S Athena is unusual for a sleep tracking wearable in that it wraps around your head, rather than your wrist or arm. Putting it on feels very science fiction, like I’m preparing to communicate with the home planet.

The S Athena consists of a soft-to-the touch, washable headband and a plastic front piece, both fitted with a series of sensors: EEG channels, Infrared and red PPG sensors, fNIRS sensors, an accelerometer and a gyroscope.

That’s a lot of tech in one relatively small package but it’s not at all heavy and, apart from one over-tightening incident (the strap length can be adjusted), it’s never pinched or rubbed during the night.

However, we’ve had a recent heatwave in the UK and on particularly hot nights, I’ve had to abandon the Muse.

For me, the Muse S Athena is comfortable and I wear it alongside a lightweight eye mask, so there’s a lot going on. Most nights, I forget it’s there.

If you want a sleep tracker that’s more discreet, though, I recommend the Withings Sleep Mat or the Oura Ring 5.

Muse S Athena Headband: Sleep tracking

The Muse S Athena uses lab-grade sensors to monitor brain activity, heart rate, blood flow and movement to put together a comprehensive overview of your sleep. (And to improve your sleep, something I’ll discuss shortly.)

I compared the data from my Muse S Athena sleep headband to sleep tracking from my Withings Sleep Mat and the Muse has highly impressed me.

Both recorded similar wake times and start times, and the sleep stages largely overlapped.

When it comes to minor disruptions, the Muse S Athena comes out on top — it spotted a 5 a.m. wake up I remembered but my Withings tracker overlooked.

In addition, the Muse S Athena records metrics such as sleep position and movement. These details add to your overall sleep data — for example, excess movement often indicates disturbances — and can also help pinpoint problems like ‘why does my shoulder hurt so much this morning?’

For accurate data, the Muse S Athena is excellent if pricey. But the Muse S Athena is designed not just to measure sleep but to actively improve it.

Sleep Assist

The Sleep Assist feature is for when you’re trying to fall asleep. It utilizes a series of sleep-inducing sounds — from guided meditations to white noise — that play as you drift off.

That’s pretty relaxing as-is but Muse boosts the sleep benefits further by adjusting the sound based on the feedback received from your brain.

I’m a fan of the ambient sounds, particularly as warm nights mean I’ve been sleeping with the window open and letting in my noisy neighborhood. As I’m drifting off, the sounds waver in volume, recreating that feeling when you’re just on the cusp of sleep and your senses are starting to shut down.

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I’ve found the meditations less effective, as the quietly dipping voices tend to send my ears perking up while I strain to hear what I’m missing. This is something that happens less the more I use the meditation (and so spend less time anticipating what’s coming next).

Overall, I enjoy the Sleep Assist and I’ll often turn it on before bed but I wouldn’t credit it with helping me fall asleep faster, even if I like the drowsy feeling. However, if you find white noise or sleep meditations helpful, the Muse delivers these sounds with a potential added boost.

Deep Sleep Boost

If sleep assist is for drifting off, Sleep Boost kicks in once you’re snoozing. Again, this uses biometric feedback to push your brain into a sleepier state. In this case, enhancing slow-wave sleep (aka deep sleep).

These ‘whisper-quiet’ sounds start when the S Athena identifies the slow brain waves that indicate you're in the deepest, most restorative sleep stage. The sound kicks in to strengthen these brainwaves (it sounds a bit like a crackle). This isn't intended to keep you asleep but instead to boost the performance of this vital sleep stage and keep you in continuous deep sleep for longer. (And this, in turn, can help you stay asleep for longer.)

The difference won't necessarily be seen in your sleep but in how you feel the next morning — fresher and more alert.

This is a hard metric to qualify as it’s based on personal experience but on nights when I’ve used deep sleep boost I tend to be up before my alarm (a previously rare phenomenon).

I’ve also noticed fewer late night wake ups and when disturbances do occur, they’re brief. In fact, the Muse S Athena headband tracker catches more ‘awake’ moments than I can identify, indicating they were brief and presented minimal disruption.

Muse recommends playing around with the Deep Sleep Boost volume, as you need to hear it but not be disturbed by it. It took a few nights, but I’m comfortable it’s in the right place and volume level now.

Muse also notes the sound should stop once you start wavering out of deep sleep, to prevent disruption.

Overall, this appears to be happening. I’ll note that I recently experienced some fragmented sleep and woke up a few times hearing the deep sleep sound — but only once, and then it stopped. This suggests the Muse is responding to real-time information from my brain.

Smart Wakeup

The Smart Alarm is a premium feature from Muse S Athena, which means I’ve not had a chance to test it. It’s the final part of Muse’s three sleep pillars (falling asleep, staying asleep and waking up).

Again, it uses real-time feedback from your brain, this time to wake you up at the perfect stage in your lightest sleep cycle.

You can pick a period to be woken up in (say, 7 a.m. to 7.30 a.m.) and when your brainwaves indicate you’re ready to go, the Muse will start to gently wake you.

I’m fairly attached to my alarm and I dislike uncertainty around wake times but based on the Muse’s precision in other areas, the Smart Wakeup is tempting me to upgrade to a premium subscription.

Muse S Athena Sleep Tracking Headband: Additional features

The Muse can almost literally read your brain and it doesn’t just use this function to boost sleep. The Muse S Athena is designed as an overall brain enhancement device, with courses to improve focus, memory and reduce stress.

On the free subscription, your access to these courses is limited. There's still things to try but considering the initial investment of the Muse S Athena, I'd appreciate a wider free library.

For those who want to make the most of Muse’s brain-reading tech to improve focus and memory, I recommend upgrading to the premium subscription for full access to the course library.

Having completed a meditation or training session, Muse offers an overview of your brainwaves and physical movement during a session.

With regular usage, you should be able to note improvements in performance, including less time with your brain ‘wandering’. If you want more detailed insight, you'll need to upgrade to premium.

The sessions I’ve used have felt high quality and calming, even in distracting circumstances — sitting outside while my neighbor hits a ball against our shared fence is not relaxing.

Enso AI Sleep Assistant

Upgrade to Muse’s premium tier and you also gain access to Enso, Muse’s AI assistant. Enso helps you understand your data and simplifies what you’re seeing, which can be an advantage for those starting out.

Enso also helps you set a goal and build a plan towards it, although the free tier provides plenty of guidelines in this area.

I’ve not had access to Enso and I’ve been happy with the amount of detail and explanation Muse provides, although for long-term goals I can see the advantage of plainer language.

Enso isn’t enough to convince me to go premium on its own but it’s a nice bonus for those debating an upgrade.

Muse S Athena Sleep Tracking Headband: Performance

Set up

The Muse S Athena requires minimal initial set up and the app talks you through the process. Once you’ve established a Bluetooth connection, all you need to do is strap the headband to your head… that’s where the problems start.

It takes some practice to get the Muse S Athena correctly situated for optimal performance.

The sensors have to make connections in five key areas and while I rarely struggle to get the front three (on the forehead) aligned, the two behind my ears are often tricky. And yes, that’s with my hair tied back.

This is a frustration but not a deal breaker, as it normally takes just a few minutes to sort the issue.

And even when I’ve struggled with the initial set up, I’ve always found the headband maintains connection throughout the night (sleep headphones can be a nightmare for falling out and losing data).

App

On the Muse app you’ll find all the meditation courses as well as your own sleep tracking and performance data. You need to use the app nightly in order to start a sleep session, so get used to the interface.

Overall, the app is well laid out. You can pin your favorite courses and sounds to the main page, for easy access, while the dedicated sleep tab is a blessing when your eyes are drooping and you just want to get the band set up and ready to go.

The Muse tracks a lot of data and that can make reading your metrics overwhelming. There are guides to understanding the information but first thing in the morning, you might not be up to interpreting a chart.

From speaking to the brand, the Muse S Athena collects more data than it even displays and I think there’s an advantage to holding back —there’s already a lot to wade through.

Muse also dedicates app space to your 'trends' (both sleep and calm) — in other words, performance over time.

Again, there’s plenty of info to explore which can be overwhelming but as Muse positions itself as training and improvement tech, I appreciate the focus on collective data.

From my conversations with sleep experts, repetition and consistency are key to good sleep. Muse puts the ethos into data collection.

Battery

Muse claims that the Athena S has a battery life of roughly 10 hours, although it varies depending on usage. In my experience, this is accurate — after a night of continuous sleep monitoring and intervention the battery is low but not completely depleted.

One disadvantage of the shorter life is that to avoid straining the battery, I only strap on the Muse headband directly before going to sleep. No big deal, but it does mean another blast of blue light and a quick scroll while I get the app connected.

Muse estimates a charge time of under three hours but it's been consistently quicker than that in my experience. This morning, the Muse S Athena was at 4%. It was back to full charge in 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Should you buy the Muse S Athena Sleep Tracking Headband?

Buy it if...

✅ You want lab-grade sleep tracking: Reading movement, heart rate and brain activity, the Muse S Athena tracks your sleep stages with impressive accuracy. (Muse describes itself as using 'the World's Leading EEG Technology'.)

✅ You keep waking up groggy: The Deep Sleep Boost massages your brain waves to make the most of this all-important sleep phase so you wake up feeling like you've made the most of your rest.

✅ Stress is ruining your sleep: Both Muse's sleep-targeting features and its mediation aids aim to create calm, helping you navigate the days (and nights) with less stress.

Don't buy it if...

❌ You don't want something on your head while you sleep: The Muse S Athena is lightweight and soft to the touch but it's still strapped to your head while you're trying to drift off. It won't appeal to everyone and it can get warm on a hot night.

❌ You want day-to-day health tracking: Muse's tracking tech is incredible but it's only useful during sleep or meditation sessions. For more well-rounded tracking data, consider the best smartwatches.

❌ You want more meditation options for less money: Yes, Muse does have several free meditations but you need to pay for a premium subscription to access the full library. If all you want is a mediation guide (or sleep noises) without the brain reading tech, the Calm app is a cheaper alternative.

Alternatives