Morphée review

30-second review

The quirky little Morphée is a sleep aid built to transform your bedtime routine and offer relaxation sessions. The best thing about it is that, unlike a typical white noise machine, it can be used whenever and wherever you get some spare time. It’s a compact box of tricks that employs meditation and sophrology to deliver eight or 20-minute sessions, selected using a trio of analog keys.

Compact and great to look at, the Morphée gets you away from your screen activities and offers a range of relaxing modes all designed to help melt away stress and anxiety. Ultimately, the pint-sized gizmo might also help you nod off too, delivering a better night’s sleep into the bargain.

Price and availability

Morphée is to be a European creation, developed in Provence, France judging by the website. It’s available for $99.99 (about £70 / AU$120) direct from Morphée, with worldwide shipping. Alternatively, you can buy it from Amazon in the US. There's also a My Little Morphée variant for children available for the same price.

That's considerably more than a typical plug-in white noise machine, but it's tricky to compare the two directly, as the Morphée is quite unusual.

Design

At first glance, the Morphée looks like a small wooden storage container. The lid is fashioned from what seems to be real wood (possibly pine), which covers a plastic bottom section where all of the technical components reside. Lift that lid off, and you'll discover a compact box of tricks that delivers a nod to those old wind up music boxes of yesteryear.

The Morphée packs a lot of features and functionality underneath its wooden hood. The design is wonderfully tactile, and anyone who picks it up will soon be drawn to the curious collection of controls.

Looking at it from the top down, there are three gold-coloured handles that can be turned in dial fashion to select the various modes and functions. The feel is reminiscent of a clockwork toy.

The smallest handle lets you choose the length of your session (either eight or 20 minutes), and the two larger ones allow you to choose a mode (on the left) and variations on the theme (on the right). Morphée has done a neat job adding small gold icons that give you a hint of what to expect, such as a leaf, music note, heart icon, a person breathing and so on. To the right, the numbers allow you to tweak those core settings.

At the bottom of the circle you'll find a power button and a stop/start control. To the right are + and – buttons for controlling volume, while a man/woman icon next to that allows you to fine-tune the output depending on gender, if applicable.

The speaker site behind a small grille on the leading edge, while on the other side is the charging port. There’s a headphone port too, which can be used for private sessions if you’re travelling, for example.

The Morphée comes with a cable for powering up the unit. When it’s fully charged and/or in use a small golden LED in the middle of the user interface delivers a soothing glow.

Performance

The Morphée offers plenty of different meditation and sophrology sessions, with over 200 different combinations available by dialling in the options using those neat controls. There’s the option of selecting a female or male guide, and the diversity of the sessions on offers includes eight nature sounds in 3D, eight cardiac coherence sessions, and a further eight relaxing songs. Which one you choose depends on your personal preference and mood, and we found there was always at least one option that fitted the bill.

However, central to getting the best from the Morphée Sleep Aid is buying into the way it ticks. You really do need to try and get ‘in the zone’ and avoid fighting its soothing charms. This was more of a challenge with the voice-driven sessions. We rather liked the ‘Parachute Jump’ eight-minute session, especially delivered by Jessica, whose voice has something of an American tinge to it, as does the male voice of Tim.

If you find it hard to take things seriously, getting into the zone might prove a little harder. You have to give the Morphée a chance, even if it’s just eight minutes instead of the beefier 20-minute sessions

We enjoyed the music settings too, which can be altered by selecting a number from the right-hand side of the controls. In fact, the numbers let you do this with any of the core menu options, which is why there’s such a large range of listening options at your disposal.

We worked our way through all of the available themes, which includes Body Scan, Breathing, Movement, Visualizations, Cardiac Coherence, Napping, Relaxing music and Nature sounds. According to Morphée, a team of sleep professionals created these sessions, with guidance coming from sophrology expert Florence Binay.

There’s certainly something for everyone hidden inside the Morphée, and we got some good mileage out of the Napping selection, which is well worth exploring if you’re frequently short on time. However, you’ll get the best from the unit by treating yourself to some me time and heading for the 20-minute button.

Another advantage is that if you wake up in the night, the Morphée's tactile design means you don't have to switch the light on to start it again. Everything can be felt in the dark, with those key handles allowing you to easily click through the settings and restart any of your favourite sessions.

Morphée also has a ‘My Notebook’ page in the manual, which lets you scribble down your favourite sessions, which is worth doing if you find yourself a little bamboozled by the many and varied options on offer.

First reviewed October 2021

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