you've probably seen both the muse and mendy headbands around and wondered which is the right device for me well i can tell you that i've probably had about a thousand people asking for this comparison and it's finally come in this video we're going to break down the current pros and cons of each device so that you can decide which best fits your needs as far as technical specifications go both these devices are quite similar both have around 5 to 10 hours of battery life which should be more than enough to get you through a week of neurofeedback training if you're using them every day both connect via bluetooth to both ios and android devices they have similar weights 55 versus 41 grams the big obvious difference is that muse uses eeg or electroencephalography to detect brain waves globally on your brain most notably in the frontal and temporal parietal regions whereas mendy uses something called fnirs which is functional near infrared spectroscopy that uses a laser to detect blood flow and activation of your frontal lobe of your brain i've gone into technical detail on both these modalities in the past but the big question for this video is what is the practical benefit for you if you're gonna buy one and use one one of the best ways i know how to communicate the difference between these two devices is to tell a story for each one in which they've had some pretty wild impact on my personal life so that i can set up some reference points and discuss the differences between the two back in mid 2019 i was doing a lot of reading about how to improve my meditation so one morning i got up at the normal time at about 5 am went into the spare bedroom that i had converted into a studio that looks a lot like this one walking very quietly so the floorboards don't creak because the townhouse that we're renting is about a hundred years old in chicago and i don't want to wake up my wife too early so i go into the office and i pick up the muse headband and i notice that i'm feeling a little frustrated actually because i have half an hour to meditate about an hour to get to the gym and then come back and shower and leave the house by 7 15 so that i can be up at the naval base to see patients as active duty navy psychiatrist by 8 am so needless to say i don't have a lot of time and i don't want to be wasting it on something that's not really helping me and i had been a little frustrated about the muse meditations lately because when i would do the muse meditations yeah it was great i could relax into the calm state get a lot of birds but did i really feel different after the meditation session and i had been doing a lot of reading recently about some amazing phenomena that can come up with meditation but what would frustrate me is that when i would try these techniques to explore things like nemeta and feeling bliss upon bliss energy is that that would actually make the neurofeedback the muse headband kind of go haywire uh it worked very well if you sat diligently with your attention on the breath or another meditation object maybe right here in the crown in the middle of your forehead but if you try to follow your bliss it would actually give you a lot of negative feedback and would be very distracting because the the wind and the rain kicks up you just feel like you're not doing a good job on meditation along with the understanding that i gained from ajim brahm's meditator handbook and experiences that i was having during meditation i understood that if you focus your mind on one point for long enough you actually become very present to the moment and as a result you get these feelings of bliss that come up you just start to feel really good one of the things that ocean brahm talks about is that as these energy packets come up not to get distracted by them to actually keep your focus on the meditation object for as long as you can before diverting your attention to these feelings of bliss that you can use themselves as a meditation object and what happened on this particular meditation session is that i had a lot of nemeta floating up it just was one of those mornings but i ignored them i maintained my focus so that i could get the positive muse feedback and towards the end the middle were getting very strong and only after the mu session was done i diverted my attention to the bliss that had been built up throughout the meditation exercise with the muse and i boom just so what happened in this particular meditation session is that because the muse was keeping me accountable for keeping my attention on the breath until i was done with the muse exercise it's like all that good will had built up into a crescendo and once the muse exercise was done and i diverted my attention to the large amount of bliss that had come up when you switch your attention to bliss itself as a meditative object it can feed on itself and you just get this rush of incredible energy throughout your body i must have went through three or four different whole meditation spaces where i didn't even really feel like it was connected to my body anymore and needless to say i didn't go to the gym that morning because i wanted to continue that amazing energetic experience for as long as possible before i needed to get up to the hospital in 2022 a lot of things had changed i had gotten married and we moved to the current house that we're in now pretty standard four bedroom house two-car garage with nice landscaping in the back a sprinkler system i mean i had basically made it in my book being out of the military and being an entrepreneur i just living the dream but the last year had been very difficult i lost my best friend in a freak drowning accident i had a lot of anxiety about getting out of the military because of the lack of structure i think i had been institutionalized over time and going out on your own and being an entrepreneur is very scary thing and of itself so unfortunately my autonomic nervous system reacted quite violently to that i was having very very high anxiety levels and in order to do the transition i talked to some professional friends and they recommended that i go on an ssri i was on lexpro for a little while but after the transition i was feeling much better and wanted to wean off the medication once i got down to half the dose that i was at uh the feelings of anxiety started coming back the self-doubt what if i was going to not have enough energy to get my work done what if i was going to have a panic attack what if i was going to do something dumb and just ruin everything these thoughts were going through my mind even though i knew that i probably would be just fine my subconscious was just still getting out of control and i'd been working with this company called mendy and we have been talking a lot about the wonders of strengthening your frontal lobe with strengthening your frontal lobe you just have so much more control over your cognition including not letting your anxiety catastrophize and run away on you to ruin your whole day so i said why not like i'm gonna double down a mendy training and make sure i do it every morning and literally after three weeks i noticed a big difference i was able to redirect my thoughts if i started having doubts about getting off the medication i just generally felt better i even started to feel this thing that i'm starting to call the mendy pull effect where after the neural feedback exercise it's as if my focus is pulled anywhere i direct my attention either externally or internally and that was very helpful for meditation obviously having really good focus pulls you into the meditative experience makes you very present and allows those pleasant bliss energies to come out during a meditation session it also provided a great flow state that i could take into my work and use on runs and go into the gym you can see that over time i've gotten a lot of practical benefit from both these devices and have developed my own style of using them to sharpen my cognitive skills especially for meditation each of these devices offers a different perspective on how you can train your brain with neural technology with mendy i'm priming my focus i'll sit down and do a mendy session to create that mendy pull effect and then i'll use that pull effect to do a meditation or take it into other activities like long distance running or weight lifting or working during the day the mendy pull effect makes my meditations easier by pulling my attention to any meditation object that i choose whether that be my breath or an energy center it also makes it easier for nemita to come up during sessions muse is a better tool to use during the actual meditation session with your eyes closed it will tell you if your attention has strayed from the meditation object and the longer you maintain your concentration the more likely that nemita will arise mendy has a more immediate noticeable effect on your day without need for meditation whereas muse adds a layer to meditation sessions and has more resources to take a look at if you're curious how your brain is functioning during meditation or other experiments throughout the day if you want mendy is better for focus priming muse is better for teaching meditation for practical impact i give 4 out of 5 to both mendy and the muse i've had great benefits from both when used regularly with good training protocols for variety mendy gets a three out of five whereas muse gets a four out of five there's just a lot more variety and mental exercises in the muse app than in the mendy app in addition there's some great third-party apps to include mine monitor for mapping your eeg patterns or mine lift where you can work with a professional to do clinical neurofeedback training using the muse with an auxiliary electrode to do neurofeedback exercises as far as ease of use i'm giving mendy a five out of five it is so easy to throw on the headband just make sure that red sensor is next to your scalp and start their one training program it's very straightforward and quick to do and if you're consistent over the course of several weeks you are going to notice an improvement in your ability to focus muse on the other hand i'm only giving three out of five right now because of the nature of eeg itself compared to fnirs now mendy has done an incredible job of engineering in a way where fners is really easy to use whereas eeg in general muse has tried different ways different headbands to make it easier to use but the fact remains the eeg in general can be quite finicky with the muse headband no matter whether you're using the muse 2 or the muse s you really should wet the sensors i use a paper towel to wet them before putting on my head and that's a whole process in itself you have to wet the headband and then put it on and make sure it's fitted correctly so you get the right signal some of the water tends to drip down my face and on my shoulders which can be distracting as far as meditation goes and then i have a lot of clients that have a lot of trouble either they have a large or a small head or they have a lot of hair that gets in the way of the signal it really takes practice to get good at putting on these eeg sensors so that they get good signal and you really don't have to deal with that with fniers and the mendi even their apps seem to reflect that mandy right now has one exercise that you do so it's very straightforward on what you should be doing with the mendy now muse they've really expanded their suite of options that you can do you can do mind meditation breath work focus on your heart rate meditation for going to sleep and i think all these options are helpful for beginners who want to build some body awareness but i myself just feel drawn to the mind meditation and i want quick access to it where's the easy straightforward mind meditation it's like i have to wade through all these different options and it felt a little overwhelming recently when i log into the muse app now that's awesome if you get bored easily if you don't want to keep doing the same exercise every day to improve your cognition and you'd rather have a bunch of different options to try out that's what muse is right now but i could see that muse app being a little overwhelming to a beginner that's really just trying to get started with neurofeedback at this time as far as personal research goes i would give muse a four out of five whereas mendy only a three out of five one of the great things about muse is they've been around for a while there's some third party apps that you can use to take a look at your brain waves in different situations if you've been meditating for a while and you have questions about how your brain is operating in different situations muse is going to be the way to go for the small portion of you that are specifically focused on frontal lobe function with blood flow go with the mendy i will say that both companies are quite open to doing research projects with academic groups both use bluetooth signal there have been a lot of reports over the years of certain muse headbands not doing well with the bluetooth connection muse interaxon has done a lot of hard work in improving their bluetooth connection of their devices and it seems like that issue has been largely resolved especially in the new muse s software with the mendy it's been out for less time but i've not heard of anybody having bluetooth issues my headband connects very quickly to my smartphone through bluetooth and i haven't had any issues with the sensors we know that the muse s sensors can break down over time we've seen evidence of this and a lot of it's from people stretching out that stretchy band and those soft eeg sensors will get worn out if you do that so make sure if you stretch the muses just keep it to the black band in the back to get around your head whereas many again around for a less period of time but i haven't heard of any issues where sensors have been breaking down as far as the hardware goes now the cost of these devices might depend on what sales are going on but generally you can expect to get a muse to for 250. amendy for 350. and amuse us for upwards of four hundred dollars if you don't get the annual subscription i will say that muse is leaning more and more towards a subscription model whereas mendy has said at least so far that they expect all features of their app to be free with the mendy headband purchase each company also offers a 30-day trial period with the technology again if you're having focus issues or just want to get started with neurofeedback go with the mendy if you are versed in meditation and want to take that specific skill set to the next level go with the muse the muse s also has some sleep features that can be helpful if you are having trouble with insomnia and many will definitely be coming out with more programs in the near future so this video might need a revisit within a year to discuss the variety of f news exercises coming out there overall i find both muse and many incredible devices it really just boils down to what strategy you want to use to sharpen your own mind if you're interested in purchasing either of these devices i do have discount codes in the description of this video if you're curious how people are taking their meditations to the whole next level by using extra hardware with the muse headband take a look at this video and i'll see on the other side you