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Philips Amara View
#11
RE: Philips Amara View
I have a love/hate relationship with this mask, but it is certainly the best full face mask I have tried.

Regarding whether you might need a chin strap, my bottom lip sometimes drops out of the mask, especially when back sleeping.. If it starts happening too much, I will have to dig out my old chin strap!Sad

It is very tricky to fit. Some nights it goes straight on, I don't have to adjust, and I get really low leak rates.
Other nights I can't get the fit right. I get leaks around the nose, and also the sides against my cheeks. I've had some pretty horrendous nights of leaks if I don't get the adjustment 'just right'.

The mask is great for side sleeping. It seems to cope very well with side-to-side movement and rarely do I cause leaks by pressing too hard on the sides when side sleeping.
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#12
RE: Philips Amara View
Hi,
I tried about 5 full face masks and this was the only one comfortable for me to use. With the others I hard soreness on the bridge of my nose and they leaks when I slept on my side.

It took me about a week to get use to the mask, now I just loosen the lower chin straps to put it on and of and leave the other two straps in position. Sometimes I do get leaks so I just tighten the top ones a little. The head strap rubs a bit on top of my head when I am on the side on the pillow so I put a soft rubber strap (1 cm wide by about 5 cm) which helps stop the rubbing.
I am glad I found a full face mask that is reasonably comfortable to use.
Cheers
Steve
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#13
RE: Philips Amara View
1. When you change the straps, only adjust 1/8" at a time. Quite sensitive
2. the little strap by the breathing slot sits flat against your upper lip and not up under your nose
3. the mask does not seal against the bottom of your nose, it inflates from the sides and front to make the seal
4. just the tip of your nose goes into the cup of the nose cover
5. sometimes it works best to put your nose in first and then rock it down to your chin and sometimes the other way around and sometimes I set it on my face too low and slide it up to my nose to get that little strip to lay flat.
6. I can often adjust the seal by turning my head slightly with the mask pinned against the pillow
7. I can actually yawn with the mask in place and tuck my chin back under the mask without having to reset everything


Good luck, I love this mask!
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#14
RE: Philips Amara View
I have leaks with the Amara view medium. I had been give an extra cushion for it that was a small so I tried it and the leaks stopped. I think if the cushion is larger than you need it will leak. My cheeks tended to whistle on the medium.
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#15
RE: Philips Amara View
(09-07-2016, 08:57 PM)JJJ Wrote:
(09-07-2016, 03:18 PM)hegel Wrote: I think that this is a sweet little mask, certainly compared to a full face mask. You can scratch your nose! If you can make it work, you may well like it. Can you play around with the straps before committing to the night in bed?

I thought I'd never find a mask more comfortable than my Wisp (+chinstrap), but the Amara View is even more comfortable. That's probably mostly because I don't need the chinstrap, but nevertheless I am motivated to get this thing working. Clay L (above) said that it took him a long time to get the fit right, and I expect it will take me a long time as well.

I should add that I posted my results this morning before the coffee was fully working. Looking at Sleepyhead again I noticed that the leaks were actually quite reasonable - not much over 24 - until 4am. Then things suddenly went nuts, and stayed that way until I got up at 7am.

I've been wrestling with this mask myself, and your comment about 4 am matches my experience. Virtually leakless until around that hour for me, too, seems to get "slick" against my face and begin to crawl open and leak. Don't know what it is, I can tinker with the position and straps and get it to stop for a bit, but it re-appears shortly thereafter, and once I get "that awake," I'll be done sleeping for a while. Still tinkering.

(09-07-2016, 08:57 PM)JJJ Wrote:
(09-07-2016, 03:18 PM)hegel Wrote: This mask really balloons up when it fills with air--some people warn against over tightening.

Yeah, that stunned me at first. It was also really noisy from all the whooshing. But after a couple minutes it settled down and wasn't any louder than any other mask.

(09-08-2016, 01:09 AM)PoolQ Wrote: 1. When you change the straps, only adjust 1/8" at a time. Quite sensitive
2. the little strap by the breathing slot sits flat against your upper lip and not up under your nose
3. the mask does not seal against the bottom of your nose, it inflates from the sides and front to make the seal
4. just the tip of your nose goes into the cup of the nose cover
5. sometimes it works best to put your nose in first and then rock it down to your chin and sometimes the other way around and sometimes I set it on my face too low and slide it up to my nose to get that little strip to lay flat.
6. I can often adjust the seal by turning my head slightly with the mask pinned against the pillow
7. I can actually yawn with the mask in place and tuck my chin back under the mask without having to reset everything


Good luck, I love this mask!

Thanks for this, makes me want to keep tinkering. I was quite happy with my P10 pillows until the last couple months I've taken to mouth leaking (again) and would rather not do the chin strap thing (again). Can you elaborate, or more vividly describe, items 2-4? I've been "placing" the mask against the bottom of my nose, but not pressing to a nose crinkle, and that strap is "flat" against my face, but closer to the nose than the lips.
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#16
RE: Philips Amara View
Sure. My first thought was that the mask should be held tight against the underside of my nose by the straps, to form the seal. This was not correct and besides caused my nose to be sore. So there is a pocket for you nose to fit into, this pocket is just deep enough to go a very little way up the sides and front of the nose. You can actually have the bottom of your nose not touch the mask at all, 1/16" or at most 1/8" gap and still get it to seal. When you turn on the pressure the silicone seal balloons out and presses against your nose from the sides and front. Lets see if I can explain this in another way.

Take a water glass (the "nose") and place it on a table (the part of the mask under your nose). now wrap one of those balloons that the clowns make into animals (the very long skinny ones), put very little air in the balloon just to give it some shape, but don't let the balloon touch the glass. This is the mask before pressure is turned on. Now blow up the balloon a little bit so it expands and touches the glass. This forms the seal, balloon to glass and not glass to table. It is balloon to table, and balloon to glass. Mask to face and mask to nose-once pressure is applied. This is why you can leave a small gap between the mask and the underside of your nose- this area does not make a seal, so a gap does not matter.

This seems a clear as mud even as I read it, I hope you can decipher it.

"that strap is "flat" against my face, but closer to the nose than the lips" exactly correctly. This causes the opening slot to be directly over where the air flow in and out of your nose is.

#4. so hold you hand out flat, palm up. now curl just your finger tips up. Now imagine a big nose being place on the palm of your hand with the end of the nose right up against your upturned finger tips.

Now take the mask and hold it as you would put it on, look down on it, you see the breathing slot and the "strap" that goes against your upper lip. and on the other side you see a small "cup" (like your finger tips) that will slightly cover the tip of your nose. Take the mask and place your thumb where your nose will go and see how the mask fits around your thumb, the cup on the tip of your thumb, and the soon to be inflated seal around the sides of your thumb.

I hope this helps, best I can do.

I suggest that as you tweak things, that you keep a journal with what you did and what the result was. I know I changed so many things that I forgot what worked and what did not.

Only you can know what comfort settings work for you, all we can do is say to try them all and figure out where you need them. My FIL only changed humidity twice and sleeps like a baby ever since, me on the other hand has changed everything and take almost a year to get it set up right for me. Not a single setting is still on default.

Never give up, never surrender!

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#17
RE: Philips Amara View
Last night, I put the P10 back on, very comfortable if I could keep my mouth shut, woke at 4 am with my mouth stuck together with dryness, leak stats indicate "moderate" leaking. So tonight I'll begin working on this Amara view once again. I do understand your direction, seems counter-intuitive to start out that "loose," but I'll give it a shot and nudge the straps carefully.
On sizing, the gauge showed me as a medium, and the tip of my nose just touches the "end" of the cup, the nostrils touch at the sides, a little gap in between on each side. When I get a leak around the noze, it is in that gap, so my previous effort had pulled the mask up and in a bit around the nose. The up, of course, resulted in the mask bottom being near the lower lip. With my tugging at the straps to seal, there was a bit of pressure under there. Eventually (usually 4 am), moisture/oil from the skin or from the humidifier (Airsense 10 on Auto) would make the skin to mask interface very slick and the mask edge would begin to slip with the pressure until it opened into a leak. Of course that resulted in strap tugging . . . I do clean the mask and skin with one of those alcohol and aloe free baby wipes before donning. I think this next time I'll start by taking the airsense off auto and nudging the humidifier down.
Rambling a bit, but if you'll (or another successful user) maybe comment on the nose cup fit I described, I'll be ready to start over.
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#18
RE: Philips Amara View
To me it sounds like a good fit around your nose. When I get a leak there I use my finger to pull a little at that spot to move the silicone away from my nose so it can inflate. So far this has worked every time. Of course sometimes I also just pull the mask away from my face and re-seat it, without turning off the pressure.

This mask seems to have more "tricks" than most, but once you get used to it....
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#19
RE: Philips Amara View
By the way, how long do these masks usually last? My insurance will toss me 1 a month, or 2 nasal pillows a month.
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#20
RE: Philips Amara View
(09-09-2016, 03:10 PM)edfreeman Wrote: By the way, how long do these masks usually last? My insurance will toss me 1 a month, or 2 nasal pillows a month.
I used mine 6 months before replacing it with a different type.
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