I love to sleep, and I never skimp on my shuteye. Once I'm out, staying asleep has never been a problem. But falling asleep has never come easily to me. Sleep aids like melatonin haven't made a big difference. I won't go near Ambien after the horror stories I've heard. Sleepy-time cannabis has helped, but that's not a regular habit I want to form.

So when offered the chance to try the Somnee Smart Sleep Headband -- a headband you wear to get better rest -- I was interested, if a bit skeptical. Better yet, you don't wear it all night -- just for 15 minutes before bed "to nudge the brain into its natural, ideal sleep state," the company says -- which felt doable, at least for as long as it would take to write a balanced review.

Luckily it was as easy to use and as effective as I'd hoped, and even now that my review's published, I'm still using it most nights.

The Somnee device is designed by Berkeley, California startup StimScience. The goal of Somnee is to prime the brain for deep, restful, uninterrupted sleep by using a combination of electroencephalogram sensors and low-intensity, transcranial electrical stimulation. Published research by StimScience's founding team of neuroscientists has shown that this combo has noticeable, positive effects on sleep duration and quality.

From that research, the smart sleep headband Somnee was born, and the benefits of regular use, makers say, include falling asleep in half the time, reducing nightly wake-ups by 30 percent, and gaining as much as a half hour of extra sleep a night. All from wearing the device for 15 minutes before bed.

The Somnee itself consists of a small electronic device similar in shape to a snack-sized candy bar. It's tucked inside a headband of silky nylon, and rests at the front of your forehead just above your eyebrows. A flexible, butterfly-shaped clip attaches magnetically to the top of the headband, and to it snaps two hydrogel electrodes you'll press against your skin when you use the Somnee device. The Somnee is a step up in comfort from that headlamp in your disaster kit, thanks to its satiny nylon and soft, felted Velcro. It comes in two colors, Moonlight Gray and Sage Green. I went with the gray option.

When not in use, it rests on a handy charging dock slightly larger than a deck of playing cards. The dock itself plugs into an outlet, and the headband clicks to the base magnetically and charges wirelessly. Everything arrives in a slick, cubelike box -- all recyclable cardboard, with minimal extraneous padding -- with all the components nested together inside like a bento box.

Each session begins with a one-minute baseline scan, followed by a 15-minute stim session. Once a session starts, you might feel a warm tingling on your forehead or see faint flickers of light in your peripheral vision, but I experienced nothing more obtrusive than that. Definitely no pain or burning. During sessions, I was able to comfortably read, watch TV, listen to podcasts, meditate, even jot notes for this article -- and nearly half the time, I'd fall asleep before the session was over.

At the end of the 15 minutes, you just pop off the headband and return it to its base to charge.

The next morning, you'll wake to a report in the Somnee app with a Sleep Readiness Score -- a number between zero and 100 indicating how primed your post-session brain was for restful sleep. You'll also find progress bar meters with predictions on how prepared you were to fall asleep quickly and sleep straight on through the night.

As you get started, your first seven sessions comprise the learning phase, during which Somnee maps the brain's unique rhythms little by little with each session you log.

With that digital map of your brain, over the next 14 sessions, Somnee explores various neurostimulation techniques to tailor each session to your individual needs. This personalization stage is when Somnee says 80 percent of users begin to feel the benefits of using the device.

Then, from your 22nd session onward, Somnee says it continues fine-tuning its neurostimulation for continued, optimal results.

Somnee warns that some facial moisturizers might not mesh well with the sleep device. But I've used it after applying hyaluronic acid serums, snail mucin and prescription retinol with no issues at all. Both barefaced and serumed up, the Somnee felt the same and worked equally well. I just made sure my skin was completely dry to the touch before slipping on the headband.

As someone with acne-prone skin, I'm always hesitant to put anything directly on my face for fear of my skin rebelling. But I'm pleased to report I had no forehead breakouts during my testing. After a session, your skin may be flush where the electrodes were, but never once did I break out.

Electrodes need to be replaced often -- every four days, whether you've used Somnee or not, as they dry out quickly. But so long as you're a Somnee member, the company furnishes fresh electrodes as needed for free. I simply clicked the "Request electrodes" button in my app profile, and I had them in hand two days later.

The fabric headband itself is washable -- by hand, as machine laundering is not recommended -- so long as you remove the electronic device inside.

I did encounter a few issues getting the Somnee app to log data consistently. On nights in which my phone locked itself during the stim session, or I didn't return the headband to its dock immediately after use, no data was logged. At the end of a long day, my phone's often in low-power mode, which Somnee says can also interfere with reporting.

But predictably, I slept most soundly on the nights I nodded off watching "Bluey" during my stim session, versus rewatching the "Alien" movies ahead of "Alien: Romulus." The night I achieved a Sleep Readiness Score of 86 out of 100 -- my all-time high -- I'd been meditating while wearing Somnee.

Another con for me is that sleep reports aren't immediately available. It would be a great help to see those metrics at the end of each session, rather than the morning after. Say, for instance, if I knew my Sleep Readiness number was something dismal like 11, I could get up and do something else rather than wasting time on sleep that won't come. But with reports appearing sometime during the night, those insights aren't actionable. Improvement here would be a big user service, and perhaps future updates will address this.

Does Somnee work? While I'm no clinician, I believe the Somnee headband helped me achieve deeper, more restful sleep. I can say with certainty that using Somnee helped me wind down and nod off faster. I assume it was the neural stimulation (though I concede it's likely a combination of the stim session, the protected chill time, and the feeling that I'm taking action against something that's plagued me my whole life). But no matter how it happened, Somnee's played a helpful role in tidying up my sleep routine, and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to improve theirs.

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