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Mattress maker Casper’s first gadget is a smartphone-controlled bedside light

Mattress maker Casper’s first gadget is a smartphone-controlled bedside light

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The Glow is designed to help you wind down at night

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Casper, one of the leading online mattress sellers, is expanding beyond bedding with its first connected gadget. Called the Glow, the smartphone-controlled bedside light announced today joins the company’s lineup of mattresses, pillows, bed frames, and sheets. The device can operate on battery power and so is portable, which lets you use it as a flashlight of sorts when getting up in the middle of the night. It also charges using a wireless base station that sits plugged into your bedside table. The product is launching today through Casper’s website at $89 for one unit and $169 for a pair.

The Glow was designed in the same vein as Apple’s Night Shift mode on iOS and macOS, in that it’s supposed to be adjustable based on how you like to wind down at night. There are gesture controls for turning the light on by simply flipping it from one end to the other, and rotating it will initiate a 45-minute shutdown sequence in which the Glow steadily goes from a bright, warm light to a dimmer, redder light before shutting off entirely.

Image: Casper

That dimming process can be manually adjusted through the Glow’s accompanying app, which can also manage multiple units (up to six in total) as a single system that dims and gets brighter in unison. By shaking the light, you can also activate the Glow at its lowest light setting, for when you might take it to the bathroom or get a glass of water, the company suggests. Perhaps most importantly, the device can be set to wake you up in the morning with gradually brighter light.

As for specs, Casper says the light can last days on a single battery charge, if you ever want to use it as a truly portable light source, while it should last for around seven hours if you’ve paused it to prevent it from getting brighter or dimmer. It’s only five inches tall and three inches wide, so slightly smaller than a second-generation Amazon Echo speaker. And regarding its warmth, the Glow emits light via a high-efficiency LED at 2,700K, which is on the lower end of the color temperature scale, and it ensures that it can move between red, yellow, orange, and white light.

The goal of Glow, Casper says, is to help you get in the mood for sleep without any harsh blue or white lights, like those that might emanate from a phone screen or a high-temperature bulb. It certainly seems to fit with the company’s broader sleep and wellness focus, which has grown from its internet mattress beginnings to include all manner of mid- and high-range bedding products like linen sheets, Merino wool duvets, and a $75 pillow with a product spec list modeled after a consumer electronic device. For Casper to move into the smart home with a focus on bedroom gadgets seems like a smart move and a natural evolution of the Casper brand.