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.