Moona Cooling Pillow Pad Review And Unboxing

Hi, I’m Ethan Green from Nosleeplesnights.com, and 
in this video I’m going to be doing an unboxing  
and review of the Moona cooling pillow. The Moona 
works by pumping cooled water into a pad that you  
can use with your existing pillow. There’s a pod 
that sits on your nightstand, where the cooling  
is done. And an accompanying smartphone app that 
controls it. The Moona also has some basic sleep  
tracking built in. So if you’re a naturally hot 
sleeper and an insomniac like me, or you suffer  
from night sweats or hot flashes, the Moona might 
be a device that interests you. However, like  
a lot of sleep tech these days it’s not cheap, 
costing just under $400 at the moment. And unlike  
some other bed cooling systems it only cools the 
head and the neck area. However, the company says  
that targeted cooling to just the head is enough 
to improve people’s sleep. So that’s what I’ll be  
looking out for in this review, along with the 
answer to one very simple question, which is:  
is it any better than just flipping your 
pillow over to the cool side when you’re  
feeling a bit hot at night. So without further 
ado, let’s unbox it, set it up and give it a go.  
Okay, so here’s the

Moona box. It was actually 
shrink-wrapped, but I’ve cut that out the video  
because when I undid it, and I was trying to film 
it earlier I accidentally slid the box half off  
the table and made a massive amount of noise with 
the shrinkwrap! So I’ve cut straight to this bit  
instead. I don’t think the shrink wrap missing is 
going to upset too many people. So, inside we’ve  
got the different components. We’ve got the user 
manual here, which I’m guessing is going to be  
quite large considering how many different things 
it does. Um, yeah, so I’m going to go through that  
user manual after this unboxing and read it in 
my own time and then do the setup afterward. So  
let’s see what we’ve got here. This, I’m assuming 
– I’m just going to move that out of the way for  
now – is going to be the actual cooling pad. Let’s 
have a look. It comes in a nice bag. What have we  
got here? A funnel – presumably that’s to put 
the water into the pod unit. And here inside  
we have the pad. Okay so there’s the plug, 
a standard U.S. plug. And here we’ve got the  
pas itself. I can feel the material is quite soft, 
quite nice, I quite like that material just to  
touch. Although I suspect it’s going to be inside 
my pillow. So that’s the bit that presumably is  
going to go into the pod. And here – oh, tube. 
that’s interesting, let’s see how long this  
tube is. That’s quite long, it looks like it’s 
about a meter, meter and a half, which is good  
depending on how far away your nightstand 
is and where you’re going to put the pod.  
And here is the pad. Okay, so I think I 
needed to film this a bit further away,  
but it looks like it’s going to be a 
standard kind of small pillow size.  
I don’t believe these come in different pillow 
sizes either, it’s just one size fits all. So  
presumably that’s going to be something that 
you put in the middle of your pillow no matter  
what the size. Um, it does feel quite nice 
though. I like the material. I’m wondering  
whether I’m going to put that straight on top 
of my pillow or have it underneath my pillow,  
or rather inside my pillow inside the pillowcase, 
which I imagine I’ll probably do. And I can feel  
it’s got this kind of plasticky stuff inside as 
well, which is going to be the bladder to hold the  
water, so I’ll be looking at that later as 
well. So let’s put that to one side and get the,  
where are we, the pod which is quite heavy. 
Okay, is that the final piece? No, there’s some  
more in there. So here we’ve got the pod and it 
looks really nice. I like this wood effect here.  
I think, I don’t think it’s actual wood, I’ll 
have to check. It looks like it’s faux wood,  
feels like faux wood or some kind of faux wood. 
Is that a thing? Veneer! But it looks nice. And  
on top we’ve got, you know, we’ve got some buttons 
which I’m going to have to look at later to see  
what they do. Some feet, which is good – stop it 
sliding off the nightstand. And these bits in the  
back, which is going to be to plug in the power 
presumably, turn it on and off, and then the tube  
will go in there. Oh, and we’ve got like a maximum 
so you know how much water you’ve got in. So all  
together that looks like a very neat piece of kit 
at first inspection. It’s going to be interesting  
to see what that’s actually like when I get it 
going. Let’s see what this last piece was in here.
If I can stretch over and get it! So this is 
heavy, what is this? There you go, it’s the  
power adapter. So yeah, not much to 
say about that – it’s a power adapter,  
which will be put to use in the bedroom 
when I get it all set up. And I think,  
yep, that looks like it’s done. So what I’m going 
to do now then is read the instructions in my own  
time and then I’ll do the next bit of the video 
which will be a little bit of a setup. And then  
actually test it and tell you what it feels like. 
Okay, so I’ve had a good look through the manual,  
and the first thing to say is that it gives you 
instructions for setting up the Moona manually,  
but also suggests installing the app. And that’s 
what I decided to do because it has a walkthrough.  
The first step was to sign up, which I chose to 
do via email. And after confirming your email  
and signing back into the app you’re then 
asked lots of personalized questions about  
your sleep and temperature preferences. When 
you finish all those questions, the app gives  
you very clear step-by-step instructions to set 
up the Moona in your bedroom. The first step is  
to place the main device, or the pod as I call 
it, on your bedside table. But you can also put  
it on the floor if you prefer. Then place the 
pillow pad inside the pillow case, though I do  
think that ‘stuff it in any way you can’ is a 
more realistic description of that step. Then  
you connect the pillow pad tubing to the back of 
the Moona device, along with the micro-USB cable.  
Connect the power supply to the power outlet cord. 
Plug one end into a wall outlet and the other into  
the device. Then you can turn it on using the 
switch on the back. The next step is to use  
the funnel to pour distilled water into the Moona 
until it reaches around two-thirds of the window,  
making sure you don’t exceed the max line. You 
can see some bubbles here, which shows that  
there’s water inside the pad. But I have to say 
I was quite surprised by how little water seems  
to go into the pad. Anyway, when you’ve done 
all of that, the final step is to connect the  
app to your Moona so you can get it fully up and 
running and access all the settings and features.  
Okay, I’ve got some good news and some bad 
news, and unfortunately the bad news is,  
um, probably outweighing the good news at the 
moment. What’s happened is that even though the  
app looked like it was great, getting it all set 
up with personalized questions, and setting up the  
actual device was really easy as well – there’s 
just a few steps – I’ve hit a major problem,  
which is that I needed to update the software to 
get into the rest of the app. And then I needed to  
restart the device. Updated the software, said 
it was successful, needed to unpair and repair  
the device, and then it asked me to update the 
software again, and again, and I got stuck in an  
infinite loop. So then I went on the website to do 
the troubleshooting, see if it’s a known problem,  
which it is, but I couldn’t fix it. Got in touch 
with their support, their live chat, who are very  
friendly, very helpful and obviously keen to try 
and fix this problem. Now, what they’ve told me is  
that it is a known issue with some Samsung Galaxy 
phones. And I actually pointed out to them that  
I saw on the Play store the reviews that people 
had an issue a year ago – so why wasn’t it fixed?  
And they told me that there was a different issue 
with Samsung phones. So now I’m kind of thinking,  
oh there’s a big problem with connectivity. 
And I can’t use the app, like I literally can’t  
get in to use the features. However, the good 
news is that I managed to set it up manually,  
which I’ll talk about in a minute. But going back 
to the connectivity, they told me that they’ll try  
and find a workaround in the next seven days, 
which I suspect they wouldn’t do for everyone.  
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to test it 
for a week now just using the manual settings  
unless they happen to get back to me and find a 
workaround, which they said they’ll try and do.  
But yeah, in the meantime I’m just going to go 
with what I’ve got, which is an app that I can’t  
open, and a device that I have to use manually, 
and a limited number of features. It’s now a week  
later, and I’m happy to report that the company 
did actually manage to fix the connectivity  
problem I was having and made an update on 
the Play store available within 48 hours,  
so I was very impressed by that. Whether they’d 
actually manage to fix a problem like that for  
any normal customer rather than a known reviewer 
is hard to say, but the fact that they did fix it  
does deserve some acknowledgement I think. So it 
means I was able to get into the app and use all  
of the different features rather than just relying 
on the manual settings, which by the way if you  
don’t have a smartphone you can use to operate 
the cooling and the warming features just fine. So  
that’s an option out there for you if you’re not a 
smartphone user. So rather than going through all  
the features of the app, because there’s quite a 
lot – I was quite surprised by how many features  
it has – I’m just going to show you the ones 
that I found the most useful and interesting.  
Most importantly, we have the temperature setting 
screen. This lets you set the temperature for the  
three sleep phases that the Moona has. There’s 
the fall asleep phase, the long night phase,  
and the wake up phase. The white line shows the 
recommended settings, which is useful to see.  
You can also drop it down to 18 degrees celsius, 
which is 64.4 Fahrenheit. Or as high as 35 degrees  
celsius, or 95 Fahrenheit. I really like how easy 
the app is to use for the temperature controls,  
and I also like how they split the night into 
three phases. Here you can see the sleep data  
page, which shows the sleep tracking data. I’m 
always interested in sleep tracking, but since  
it relies on your movement it suffers from the 
same problem that many sleep trackers do in that  
can overestimate your total sleep time if you’re 
lying on the pillow awake, but just not moving.  
So in my view, you can’t really rely on the 
Moona for sleep tracking data. Incidentally,  
it doesn’t attempt to measure your sleep stages, 
which is probably a good thing. It also measures  
the average room humidity, temperature and light. 
The humidity matched my other measuring device,  
but it seemed to overestimate my bedroom 
temperature. There’s a sleep coaching  
section with tips and articles about sleep, and a 
setting screen to explore the device and get help.  
But I’m not going to go through all of those as 
there’s just too many. Overall, there’s a lot on  
the app and it’s interesting to see the data. It’s 
just a shame some of it was clearly inaccurate  
because that lowers my confidence in the app and 
any features that rely on that data. So really,  
I can imagine selecting the temperatures myself 
in the future and just ignoring the app, if I’m  
honest. So that’s the app. Now let’s finally 
talk about how effective the Moona was, because  
at the end of the day despite all the bells and 
whistles on the app it has one core function,  
and that’s to help me sleep better by keeping 
me cooler in bed at night. For me personally,  
I think, even though it was cooler than just 
flipping my pillow over to the cooler side, as  
I was joking about in the introduction, it still 
just didn’t quite do enough cooling for me to stop  
me from having to do the other things that I would 
normally do to remain cool in bed. For example,  
I still needed to use lighter bedding, still felt 
like I needed to stick my feet out the end of the  
covers, and I still needed fresh air in the 
bedroom. So even though it did some cooling,  
it wasn’t quite as powerful as I was hoping for. 
I tried using it on top of the pillow instead  
of inside the pillowcase, but that didn’t make 
any difference. So really, I just think it has  
its limitations. Somewhat ironically, I actually 
really liked having a warmer waking up phase in  
the morning. It felt really nice to wake up with 
a warm pillow, which I hadn’t really thought of  
as a key use for the Moona. One more important 
point to mention is about the noise. For me,  
I found that the Moona generally operates very 
quietly. The hum and the constant noise is very,  
very quiet. And when I was using earplugs, which 
I normally do, I couldn’t hear anything. However,  
from time to time, especially on the heating 
phase, it does seem to make what I would  
probably describe as a mechanical gurgling noise. 
It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen,  
so yeah, something to be aware of. So overall, 
for me I think the fact that the cooling of the  
Moona was perhaps a little bit less than I 
was hoping for – a little bit more subtle,  
the connectivity issues that I had at the 
beginning, and the inaccuracy of the sleep  
tracking data mean that there are some real 
issues with this device for me. And that’s a  
real shame because I had high hopes for the Moona. 
And you know, I still really like the look of it,  
I think it’s a great design and a great concept. 
But for just under $400, I think this is a device  
that’s only really going to suit people for whom 
money is no object. If you’re on a tight budget,  
I’m not sure I’d recommend saving up for it. So 
there you go, that’s it for the Moona. I hope  
that you found this video useful and interesting. 
If you did, and you’d like to buy it, please use  
the link in the description below. And please 
also subscribe to my YouTube channel to keep  
in touch with me and see future reviews. Thanks 
again, this is Ethan from No Sleepless Nights.

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