Great sleep aid for my kid, but the app is the weak link – Hatch Sleep Review

I own the Rest Gen2 for a month now and this has been our go to for making our daughter sleep. I have to appreciate the hardware and the firmware of this product, because they are flawless. The touch ring works like magic. The responsiveness is slick. The abundance of colors is truly remarkable. However, the app doesn’t live up. There are too many artificially imposed limitations that awards only 3 starts for this app. 1. It has a limited set of sounds for the free version. 2. The pro version has a few good audio clips but they are too short. They cannot be queued u p or played in a loop for a longer experience. So I end up playing one rhyme “Danny Boy” for 2 minutes followed by the “Wind” sound from the free library continuously for creating a white / brown noise environment. I wish they allow me to create a playlist of good rhymes and play a few of the item in the playlist more than once (using a play count slider). Further, most of the loops that are available can be simplified to a shorter song, if the looping functionality is globally implemented, and one can play those for however long they want instead of a set 32 min or 54 min duration. Also, with this way, the audio clips will be shorter and smaller in file size. 3. Connectivity is a big drawback since this device doesn’t sport voice commands. With a plethora of voice activated devices at home, it should be possible to connect and control Hatch from them. Say, if there is a Siri shortcut available to play any sound from Hatch library or start a nighttime routine, it will make this device immensely more usable. 4. Lack of support third party music. This device can be a great music streamer with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi option. But sadly it doesn’t allow. This might be harder to get, due to obvious privacy restrictions, but if it does work, then there will be no other product that will stand up next to Hatch.
Review by Sriram Murali on Hatch Sleep.