MindPlace Proteus USB Light & Sound Meditation Mind Machine

A little bit of background: I've had a bit of a spiritual wakening over the last year. In the course of this, I have been trying many form of meditation with minimal success. I've been very frustrated.So last night my new Proteus arrived. I was excited but tried not to get my hopes up too high.First the machine: Everybody has already stated that it seems a bit flimsy. Well, it's cheap but has a two year warranty and the mindplace folks really seem to care a lot about their customers. It's not like you're gonna go jogging with this this thing on. There's a return policy if you don't like it.The multiple wire setup is easily tangled, but again, it's cheap. Get over it.So I tried the first preset. I did not care for the tones this thing made.So I tried a few more with the same effect. The sound was obnoxious enough that I hardly noticed the lights.So I tried an audiostobe mp3. Again the music as awful and completely distracting.Then I put it on a visualization preset and used my studio headphones with a very long, trippy Universal Mind mp3 and just used the glasses from the Proteus.5 minutes in and I was cruising the cosmos.I've listened to that meditation session many times. This time, It was amazing. Just amazing. It was serene, but intense and the colors.....Good Lord, the colors! Complete mental euphoria.So I got up this morning and tried it again. This time with a deep meditation mp3 designed to clear the mind of all thoughts. I used a different visualization setting this time. Again, I've listened to this meditation many times with very minimal success. This time, completely different. That was 4 hours ago and my mind is still completely at peace. I even went to WalMart about an hour ago. Usually I'm fit to be tied by the time I get out of a grocery store. I'm still totally calm. Feeling very relaxed.Can't wait to try this with my NLP collection. I've got the complete Eric Bandler Neurosonics series. I have a lot more cool things to listen to with these glasses on too. They just seem to really relax my mind and let it go on a journey.Summary: The sounds did nothing for me, but the glasses sent me tripping. So far, really seems to be worth the price of this thing. I'd have paid 160 bucks just for the 2 sessions I just experienced. Can't wait to experiment more.

I'm rating this four stars to acknowledge the leadership these folks have taken in offering more-or-less affordable "mind machines" to the public, and for what it does when it's doing what it should be doing. But I found the actual product disappointing, and returned it.Some positives: the effects are delightful. The several dozen pre-installed programs are variously engaging and fascinating, though I didn't find any especially calming or energizing. (Your neuropsychological mileage may vary.) There are enough of them that even daily use probably wouldn't eliminate freshness for years, and there will presumably be lots of new tone/light programs available. Interestingly, though I have had migraines induced by flashing light, an hour's exposure to this device on its brightest setting produced no ill-effect at all. The supplied AudioStrobe sampler CD produced what I thought were even more compelling effects. The two-color LED system produces much more dramatic effects than the red-only original models. My visual experience was of a full gamut of bright colors, averaging clear white, even though everything was filtered through eyelids. Amazing gadget, the brain! (And the swirling blue afterimages were as good as the main show.)Some negatives: The interface is clunky: non-intuitive, too many functions buried in too few switches, primitive state coding on a low-information-content display. The packaging is also clunky: far larger than it needs to be; this could easily be a shirt-pocket device. In fact, the whole thing has a 1990's early-digital feel. It's long overdue for an update. When I bought this, I also got a Sony MP3 player that's about an eighth of the size, including a 30-hour lithium-ion battery, has a flexible and powerful interface, plays videos on a full-color screen, and still costs about 40% as much as the Proteus. Sony benefits from a larger engineering and design infrastructure, and economies of a much larger scale. But the Proteus and its ilk could be completely re-engineered for a price that would probably add $20-50/unit, and might drastically increase sales. I hope the maker is considering this. I also don't think much of the LED glasses; they seem optimized for style over comfort. Is anyone likely to use one of these in an un-private place anyway? I would prefer a skeletal wire frame that would be much more comfortable and adjustable, perhaps with clip-on shades as an option if one had to use it in a brightly lit area.What induced me to return the unit, however, was none of these. It is, apparently, a design defect that leaks LED drive signal into the audio system. When the display is on, there is an extremely annoying, broken beep always on in the background - like a ringing phone in the next room. It is possible to switch off the display after starting a program, which silences the beeping. But display and noise come right back on at the end of each program. Get relaxed, mellow, meditative, tranced-out, and then wake up to an alarm clock (albeit a quiet one). Not pleasant or necessary, and means that the Proteus might not make a good sleep-inducer for anyone seeking that function. (I wasn't.) Thinking I had a defective unit, I checked the user forums; this behavior seems to be the norm.Overall, an under-engineered product that works well during sessions, and disappoints severely at the end. For those who don't mind the display noise and don't care about portability or ease of programming (which for most may not be critical), I'd recommend it.