1,300 Miles in an RV With My Friend’s Anti-Snoring Device: Seven Days of Our Group Chat

I have never worn an anti-snoring device. I don’t own one, I don’t share a house with anyone who does, and until this month my entire opinion of them was based on late-night ads and one colleague who gave his away after a week.

Then I spent seven days and roughly 1,300 miles in a rented RV with three friends, one of whom has worn one every night for about five months. Six metres of vehicle. Four adults. Two sleeping areas separated by a curtain that a determined cat could walk through. In a space that small you cannot be discreet about anything — which turned out to be the most useful thing about the trip.

I set the group chat up for campsite confirmations and parking logistics. By day two it had quietly turned into a running commentary on Marco’s throat. I’ve pasted it below, day by day, with short notes where the context isn’t obvious. The numbers, such as they are, are in one table at the end — his own app plus a tally the three of us kept at breakfast.

The cast

• Marco, 41. The wearer. Front passenger seat by day, dinette bed by night, device fitted every night without exception.
• Priya. Over-cab bed. Describes herself as a light sleeper and is not exaggerating — she once woke up because I stopped breathing for a second.
• Dan. Also over-cab bed. Claims he can sleep through a fire alarm. He can.
• Me. Rear bench bed, and the person who ended up keeping everyone’s notes because I was awake for most of it anyway.

Day 1 — “don’t judge it on tonight”

First night was a proper campground with hookups, which meant hot water and, more importantly, unlimited power. We ate outside, argued about the best way to level the vehicle, and went to bed at about eleven like four adults pretending they were still nineteen.

Two things happened that I didn’t expect. The first is that everyone was painfully polite about going to bed. Nobody wanted to be the first to mention snoring, so nobody mentioned it, and everybody lay there listening. The second is that sound in an RV has nowhere to go. It doesn’t travel through walls, it travels around the curtain, and it arrives at your pillow with the original quality intact.

The chat the next morning:

Marco · 07:12
first night in a strange bed is always rough for me, don’t judge anything on tonight

Priya · 07:13
I’m not judging. I’m reporting. Twice, around 1 and around 3:20.

Dan · 07:14
slept great 👍

Priya · 07:14
of course you did

I woke twice as well. Two, for context, was already a better first night than I’d been bracing for — I’d spent the drive down convinced I’d signed up for seven nights of no sleep. Marco’s own log for that night showed a shape I’d see again: a noisy first half, a quieter second half, and one long stretch around 2 a.m. where the vehicle was completely silent.

Day 2 — the power bank problem, and the worst night of the trip

Day two was a long driving day to a spot with no hookups at all. Which is fine, except that four adults with phones, a kettle, a drone, and one anti-snoring device were all competing for the same two USB outlets and one small power bank.

You can guess who lost that competition. We’d left the bank plugged into the inverter while we made dinner and recharged phones, and by the time Marco went to bed, his device was showing under 10 per cent. He wore it anyway. It ran out at around 1:40 a.m.

Priya · 01:52
Marco

Priya · 01:53
Marco. Is it on? I’ve been awake since 1:20

Marco · 01:54
dead battery. sorry. putting it on charge now

Priya · 01:55
do you have to charge it for it to work or

Marco · 01:56
obviously yes

Me · 01:57
3 wake-ups for me so far. this is a work meeting now, we’re doing this tomorrow

I’m including that night in full because it’s the most useful night of the seven, and it has almost nothing to do with the device itself. Everything that went wrong was a logistics failure on our side: we didn’t plan the charging, we drained the bank, and we found out the hard way that a dead device is exactly as loud as no device. If you’re reading this because you’re taking one of these on a road trip, that is the single most useful thing in this post.

His app log for that night is only two hours and ten minutes long. That length is the review. Six hours of the night went unrecorded because the thing had nothing left to give.

Day 3 — the fitted-jacket mistake

Day three we stayed put. Marco spent the morning doing laundry and the afternoon doing something quietly obsessive with the dinette bed.

His problem, which he’d been nursing for two nights without admitting it, was the pillow setup. At home he sleeps with one pillow. In the RV, the dinette bed is flat and the storage under the bench means there’s nowhere to put anything, so he’d been propping his head up on a folded fleece jacket to get comfortable. That had his chin tipped down towards his chest all night — which, from what he showed me on the app, was doing exactly the opposite of what he wanted.

Once he went back to a single proper pillow and stopped stacking the fleece underneath, the difference was measurable within one night. He was slightly less comfortable. He also wasn’t fighting the thing all night.

Marco · 21:40
ok I think I’ve been doing it wrong for two days

Priya · 21:41
I think so too

Marco · 21:41
the jacket. my head was tipped forward all night. it’s the angle, not the setting

Dan · 21:42
I have no idea what any of you are talking about

I woke once that night, at about 4:30, and it was the vehicle rocking in wind rather than Marco. Priya woke once. Dan logged his usual zero.

Day 4 — 430 miles, and the passenger-seat dozing

The longest driving day of the trip. Marco took the first three hours, I took the middle, Dan took the last stretch through a canyon he insisted on narrating like a documentary.

Around 3 p.m., in the passenger seat, Marco fell asleep mid-sentence. Not unusual for a long drive, except that Priya pointed something out that hadn’t occurred to me: she’d assumed all of this — the device, the app, the whole routine — was about noise. It isn’t. He’d told her the reason he finally bought one was that he was falling asleep at 2 p.m. at his desk, and his doctor had started asking questions about his sleep rather than his snoring.

I don’t know what that means clinically and I’m not going to pretend I do. What I can tell you is that by the end of the trip he was the only one of us who could drive a fourth hour without anyone else suggesting a stop.

That night was cold, around 2°C, and the heater ran on and off all night. App log: nineteen events, eleven minutes. I woke once, from the heater cycling on.

Day 5 — the night it rained, and the honest caveat

Rain from about 10 p.m. If you’ve never slept in an RV in heavy rain, it sounds like being inside a drum. We were all awake on and off until nearly one. Marco’s log that night was actually his third-best of the trip — twenty-six events, about fifteen minutes, most of it before the rain started.

I’m flagging this night deliberately. It’s the one that keeps me honest about the whole seven days: on the noisiest, worst night of the week, the device was doing its job fine and none of us could tell, because the weather was louder than the snoring. Half of what we call a “bad night with the device” is just a bad night.

Priya · 00:47
this is worse than the van night

Marco · 00:48
it’s the rain! I’m wearing it! check the app!

Priya · 00:49
I know, I’m not blaming you, I’m just saying this is worse

Marco · 00:49
fair

Day 6 — nobody was polite about it anymore

Something shifted on day six. For the first five days the chat was jokes and accusations. That morning, over instant coffee, Priya asked Marco to show her the app properly, and then all three of us did the thing we’d been avoiding: we asked sensible questions. Not the kind you ask a salesperson. The kind you ask someone you’re about to sleep three feet away from.

The answers, briefly, because they’re what I’d want to know: it took him about nine or ten nights before putting it on stopped feeling strange, and about three weeks before it stopped waking him up when he rolled over. He’s never had it come off during the night. He takes it off for the bathroom and puts it straight back on, which he says is the single most annoying part. Battery is good for around two nights of full use, which everyone in that vehicle now agrees is one night more than he actually plans for. And no, it doesn’t make him silent. He was very clear about that, almost rehearsed. “It makes it so people can sleep in the same room as me. That’s it. That’s the product.”

One wake-up for me. Zero for Priya. Zero for Dan.

Day 7 — the last night, and what I actually think now

Last night was a campground about two hours from home, chosen entirely because it had showers. Everybody slept. All four of us, through the night, in a tin box.

Dan · 06:31
did anyone wake up at all last night

Priya · 06:32
no

Me · 06:33
no. first time this week

Priya · 06:33
Marco?

Marco · 06:41
I don’t know, I was asleep

The numbers

His app logs snoring events and total snoring minutes. All three of us logged our own wake-ups each morning. I’ve put them side by side, including the nights that make the device look bad, because a table that only contains good nights isn’t a review, it’s an advert.

Two readings of that table, and I’d rather give you both than pick the flattering one.

The first: across the first two nights we logged ten wake-ups between us. Across the last five, we logged five — and three of those five came from the one night it rained so hard nobody would have slept regardless. On the two genuinely quiet nights, the device went from a thing everyone in the vehicle was conscious of to a thing nobody thought about at all.

The second: it never made him silent. Not once, not even on night seven. The quiet bits still had sound in them. What changed was the kind of sound — from something that sits you upright to something you half-hear and roll over through. If you’re expecting silence, you’ll be disappointed by any of these. If you’re expecting to be able to share a six-metre box with someone, that part held up.

What I got wrong as the skeptic

• I thought it was a gadget for the wearer. It’s mostly a gadget for everyone else in the room. Marco barely notices it; the three of us noticed every single night.
• I assumed bad nights meant it wasn’t working. Both bad nights had a mundane cause — a flat battery and a thunderstorm. Nothing to do with the device at all.
• I thought fitting was obvious. It isn’t. His two bad nights at the start were both a stacking error he’d been making for weeks without knowing.
• I expected him to be defensive about it. He was the most clear-eyed person in the vehicle. He volunteered that it doesn’t fix everything before any of us asked.

If you’re taking one on a road trip

• Charging beats every other consideration. Plan it like you plan water. A device at 40 per cent at 11 p.m. is a coin flip, and you only find out at 2 a.m.
• Bring a second power source. One bank between four adults is a fight you will lose. Two is peace.
• Keep your home pillow routine. If you sleep with one pillow at home, sleep with one pillow in the vehicle, even if the bed is flat and uncomfortable.
• Check it after you’re lying down, not before. Getting into a bench bed involves more rolling around than getting into your own bed. That’s where position gets lost.
• Give it three nights, minimum. Nights one and two in a new place are not data. Ours weren’t.
• Say the awkward thing on day one. We spent two days being polite about it and it cost everyone sleep. On day six, when the questions came out properly, everybody relaxed.

The short version

Would I have chosen Marco as the person in the next bed for a week before this trip? Probably not. Would I now? Without hesitating.

What I can’t tell you is whether it would work the same way for you, because I haven’t watched anyone else use one and every night I have data for involved the same person, the same device, and a very specific set of logistics mistakes. What I can tell you is what changed from the back bench of a rented vehicle over seven days, which is that somewhere around night four I stopped keeping score.

(Seven days of group-chat screenshots and a paper wake-up tally, kept by a passenger who never wore the device and has never lived with anyone who does. All numbers are self-reported and from a consumer app, not a sleep study — individual nights vary wildly and so do outcomes, so treat the table as one person’s week rather than a prediction of yours. Nothing here is medical advice. If you or someone in your household snores heavily, stops breathing during sleep, or is exhausted during the day, the right next step is a doctor, not a gadget.)