HBI Dream Keeper 400 Review
Ben: Hi, there and welcome to Neo-Fight.TV, the technology show for the not so geeky. My name is Ben Freedman and two things that I really like steamy hot cup of coffee and a show with my good friend, Jerry. Jerry thanks for being on the show.
Jerry: Hey, thanks for having me back.
Ben: Jerry, I recall about six months or so ago you were telling me you were having some trouble sleeping.
Jerry: Indeed.
Ben: And we had just been approach by a company to review this product which is the HBI Dream Keeper 400 which is a wrist-mounted device that apparently is suppose to help you sleep and so they said. Well I know Jerry is having some trouble sleeping. We’ll give him this device. He can try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes.
First of all, tell me what is supposed to do?
Jerry: Well, according to the directions it supposed to send little pulses of vibration into your bloodstream and help to calm you down so you can go to sleep at night.
Ben: Pulses of vibration into your blood like your pulse, like on your vein. It does not actually inject anything.
Jerry: No, it’s not. We’re talking about days are gone here.
Ben: Probably that would put you to sleep.
Jerry: Definitely.
Ben: Oh better than this so you’ve try it out for a little bit. What was your experience with it?
Jerry: I've tried it out for about four to five weeks.
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: You know that’s a recommended time they say.
Ben: Let me pulled it up to the good people here. It goes on your wrist like so and then you press this button and it sends a little vibration pulses in there. I think if I remembering it, the pulses was like kind of slow down over time and gradually that’s supposed to train your heart rate to slow down and relax.
Jerry: Right.
Ben: Tell me about your experience with it.
Jerry: My experience with it, well, aside from being kind of large and intrusive on your wrist because it is quite large. You have to put on really tight. I mean you really have to put on tight so essentially cuts off the circulation. Your hand goes tingling numb but it’s loud. The vibrations are really loud and so I found rather than putting me to sleep it just kept me awake because the vibrations were loud enough to do so?
Ben: So it’s like having something vibrating on your arm it actually kept you awake. Obviously describes why you were so bitchy for that for a period of time last fall.
Jerry: Oh I did it all for you.
Ben: I appreciate that. So, knowing you didn’t find any benefit out of it?
Jerry: Not really.
Ben: Okay.
Jerry: Nothing an Ambien can’t fix.
Ben: There you go. So let me guess the idea is suppose like a drug freeway right in there.
Jerry: Right.
Ben: But it would be a bit of problem, I’m wonder do you think it would keep someone else up if they were like in bed or anything?
Jerry: It did sometimes at times but you know it is loud and you know as you can increase the intensity of the vibrations so—
Ben: Oh wow! I just turn it on. I wonder if you can hear this, see. I can actually hear it.
Jerry: It is loud and if you have your arm laying on the bed or anything like that then it has the tendency to kind of send some of the vibration through the bed. You know, you have to take off this little cover and then you put it on the bottom of your wrist and you’re just lugging this thing around. I mean you have to put it on tight otherwise because it has to stay on one location.
Ben: So it has to stay in one spot and it has to be close enough to you that it is really taking care of that.
Jerry: Yeah.
Ben: So, I’m guessing you do not then recommend the Dream Keeper 400?
Jerry: No, go get some exercise before you go to sleep that will probably put your sleep all over the better.
Ben: And if not there is always the Ambien.
Jerry: Or that or you could just get drunk.
Ben: That’s always my preferred solutions so okay that’s the HPI Dream Keeper 400. By they way, I know you didn’t notice the time but I think we look the price on this and yeah, $120.00. So for what it is essentially like a beeper.
Jerry: I think you’re spending that on a packaging.
Ben: Really?
Jerry: Yeah. It comes in a nice fancy box with you know?
Ben: Okay.
Jerry: It looks nice.
Ben: Well, so I have a very good rating for the HPI Dream Keeper 400. Probably not the best way to stay awake but Jerry has another review for us so if something else—
Jerry: Stay tuned, so please.
Ben: As he says, stay tuned and we are back and as lot of you know Jerry is also my go-to guy for anything automotive as he is the king of automotive gadgets. He has every automotive gadget and one thing we’re looking at here is this brand new portable GPS by Alpine and this is the Alpine PND-K3. Jerry, you had this. You’ve used it for a couple of weeks. Tell me your thoughts.
Jerry: Well as you know, I spent a lot of times on the road for work.
Ben: You do.
Jerry: You know meeting clients, going to different locations and often times and I don’t know where I’m going. So the navigation purposes, fantastic. You know I’ve used other similar products before and you know a lot of times they can’t really find the others you’re looking for especially if it’s the boondocks. So, it being portable navigation system it works incredible well.
Ben: I know it’s here. You got it a on section cap mounts so this can just suction cap right to your windshield and you know I’ve heard a lot of people actually prefer this portable ones to the ones built-in to the car because a year down the road the portable one you can buy new one. It’s called the new bells and whistles whereas if you got one built in to the car a couple years down the road it starts to look pre-dated.
Jerry: Well, you know sometimes you can buy new disk, kind of update those things but you know nowadays it’s kind of being absolutely easy. You can go online and update them so that you can plug them into your computer updated.
Ben: That’s cool.
Jerry: But this thing has lot really cool features. It does have Bluetooth connectivity to it so you know you can get into your phone or get into your car automatically.
Ben: You get into your phone?
Jerry: You get into your phone.
Ben: You can value you car.
Jerry: Pretty soon Apple has cars.
Ben: Yeah there you go.
Jerry: But you get into your car pairs with your phone so you know can—
Ben: So it becomes like a hands-free, speaker phone for your phone, very cool.
Jerry: Similar to the product I’ve reviewed before.
Ben: Yeah.
Jerry: Quality, you know the audio quality for that it’s kind of or—it does sound like you’re talking in a wind tunnel.
Ben: It’s like you are talking to a GPS?
Jerry: Similar here.
Ben: Your conversation, you’re like “hey how is it going?” and there like, make a legal u-turn.
Jerry: Yeah, pretty much.
Ben: Turn right in 100 miles. Yeah, but how is that propose that I send out to you? Turn left at the next intersection.
Jerry: Yeah, that parts kind bad but you know if you add a little mini ST with MP3s, you can plug that in and also has some music playing on it again.
Ben: Now just playing through it’s almost bright?
Jerry: Yeah, the sound goes to your audio, it’s a crap.
Ben: But if you drive a crappy car that has no stereo you know.
Jerry: I drove once there was once no stereo.
Ben: Could you take it off and just use it like not on its stand like just a walkman?
Jerry: Yeah.
Ben: Oh look at that, just pops off right easily. It’s battery powered. Now, I’d notice here that you know I’ve got this, I don’t know if you can see this here, a little car icon here. It kind of looks a Honda Accord I think maybe. I don’t know.
Jerry: It looks like a white car.
Ben: It looks like a little white car and look, if I zoom in. You know I’m zooming in and out. I’m not able to get an actual map to view up on here.
Jerry: That is because you zoomed it a little bit too far, that’s a map of my house. You press the home button.
Ben: I press the home button so anyone who wants to know where Jerry lives you can now rewind.
Jerry: It’s right there.
Ben: And let me zoom out a little bit more here so if you can see a little bit about that. Now this is like a 2D map. Is there a 3D version of that as well?
Jerry: There is a 3D version. You just press this little icon in the corner and there you go.
Ben: Wow
Jerry: It shows the horizon.
Ben: And look there’s a big knife and a fork in the road over here so you just turn right at the fork in the road.
Jerry: Exactly, perfect. For all women out there that navigate by destinations, there you go.
Ben: All you women, okay we got email about that. Bad things, anything you don’t like about it. Can I put this back on here?
Jerry: You know I’m sort of a wirephobe
Ben: A wire-o-phobe
Jerry: I hate wires. I hate things hanging out on in my car. You know very meticulous about that. The wire is pretty short you know.
Ben: This is to plug it in?
Jerry: This is to plug it in. It just goes into your cigarette lighter and you know this is the cigarette lighter in itself is pretty interested. It’s pretty big.
Ben: Right.
Jerry: And the wire is kind of short so—
Ben: Short and thick it’s like—
Jerry: It’s pretty big.
Ben: It’s hard to sharp that behind your—in their cracks in your dashboard.
Jerry: Right. I tried my best to hide it. We see it. I mean it’s out there. You know I guess you could hardwire this into your electrical system on your car that one B2 top to do and then it’s out of the way. To me that’s really the only negative. Like I’ve said I’ve played with these things in other units. One thing that’s unique about this one, you know cars these days have also are to different ambient lighting inside. The gauges are blue, green, amber you know whatever it maybe and this one can actually change to match your gauges that you’ve got.
Ben: Since you’ve got a green light, you could change this to green right now I think we are in blue. Then you change it to green and do that.
Jerry: Well that’s very cool worth 300 bucks, it’s $300.00 unit?
Ben: I think so, yeah.
Jerry: You know point of interest navigation on it is really cool. I had to go to a meeting with the client way far out in the sticks and I didn’t have the address but I did have the name of the place where I was going. I punch that in it.
Ben: And you found it?
Jerry: Gave me turn by turn directions. Also, you know if there’s a detour on the road obviously these things are not going to know but if there’s a road construction you can turn around and it’s not going to be annoying and sit there and tell you for 10 miles and make U-turn. It will just remap and find a new way to get there.
Ben: Excellent. So that is the Alpine PNDK3. A very positive review, it’s only better than the Sleep Dream Keeper thing?
Jerry: Much better.
Ben: And that’s great. Well, thanks very much for coming down.
Jerry: Thanks again, Ben.
Ben: If do you have any comments on this or your favorite GPS, drop us a comment at www.neo-fight.TV and if you have an extra 30 seconds, take a look at this.
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