Bose Sleepbuds: You still have to count sheep yourself

Bose's Sleepbuds raise questions. Because the Sleepbuds are not headphones. You can't play music with them. It's super important that I mention this in the test, our product manager tells me a hundred times before he hands me the box of buds. Oh yes, and before I forget: The buds don't have active noise cancelling.

Instead of noise cancelling, the Sleepbuds want to mask the noise. This is what Bose writes on its website. According to Bose, it works like this: the different sound frequencies are combined in the inner ear. If the different sounds have the right frequency matches and the masking sound is just louder than the distracting sound, your inner ear and brain cannot recognise the distracting sound. Can you get past this Marketing gobbledygook? Me neither.

After the Soundwear Companion, the neck speaker, the Sleepbuds are the next curiosity from Bose that I'm testing.

After the Soundwear Companion, the neck speaker, the Sleepbuds are the next curiosity from Bose that I'm testing.

Hearing protection

Bose Noise Masking Sleepbuds

1 x

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Hearing protection

Bose Noise Masking Sleepbuds

1 x

19

I was looking forward to testing the Sleepbuds. Not just because I like Bose products - they're usually good, just Bose - but because I live on one of the busiest streets in Zurich. In a shared student flat. With student neighbours. Who see no problem with playing drums at three in the morning or spontaneously throwing a techno party until four in the morning on a Monday night. And then there's my snoring boyfriend. Sleeping with earplugs has become a habit for me.

I spent five nights with the Sleepbuds for the test and tried to find the masked sleep.

No music, because reasons

You can't play music with the Sleepbuds. That bothers me. Because when I have something in my ears, I would like to have music. Bose justifies this decision with several arguments. The buds, or more precisely the batteries, are too small to play music. Bose has done this for the sake of comfort. And they're right: the 1.4 gram buds sit very comfortably in my ears. Even when I lie on my ear, I can hardly feel them. That's unthinkable with headphones.

The second reason is that Bose provides soothing sounds in its app. You can find the app here for iOS and there for Android. You can currently choose between ten calming sounds: Rain shower, ocean waves, soaring, cascade, circulation, stream, gentle rustling, wind rustling, silence and campfire are available to choose from. More sounds will be added later with an update. My favourite is the silence sound. It is not silent, but a repeating sequence of pleasant meditative sounds, but it is by far the best of all. I struggle with the other sounds. The rain rattles too hard for me and a campfire simply sounds very different in reality. The ocean wave sound is also pleasant, but after a while it still got on my nerves as I was falling asleep.

The sounds are supposed to calm you down so that you can fall asleep better. It only worked for me when my neighbours were really loud, my boyfriend felt like he was sawing up trees or my flatmates spontaneously decided to gather their things for a two-week holiday at two o'clock in the morning. Otherwise, I preferred to fall asleep without the buds and their sounds and count sheep. So you only need the buds if you are really often exposed to disturbing noises in the evening.

Fire engines get through, snoring partners don't

I'm a light sleeper. So I wake up several times a night because of some noise. This is where the buds really help for the first time. When I fell asleep after what felt like hours of listening to silent sound, I slept through the night. The buds can drown out my snoring boyfriend. However, you have to turn the sound up depending on the volume of the snoring or your neighbours. Noise masking from Bose therefore means that you simply drown out the background noise.

If you are above a certain volume level, the app gives you a warning that you may not be able to hear important sounds. I can still hear my alarm clock and doors slamming from my flatmates.

I also heard the fire engines that were called out to the major fire at Zurich main station on Friday night for about an hour with the buds. Quieter noise, and especially constant noise such as snoring or the music of your neighbours, can be drowned out by the Buds - or masked, as Bose calls the process. But as soon as a noise suddenly occurs, such as a siren, a slamming door or a roaring car engine, you will hear it through the buds. But that's a good thing - especially if you have a baby monitor or something similar next to you. Incidentally, you can also set an alarm clock via the buds.

If you don't want to have rain sounds in your ears all night, you can set a timer. The sounds then switch off after 30 or 45 minutes, or after one, one and a half, two, four or six hours. Bose calls this function automatic sleep timer and hides it in the settings so that you have to exit the playback function first.

If you're worried about not hearing important sounds, this timer can help. By default, the sounds are played throughout the night.

The connection and disconnection thing

Every time I want to use the Sleepbuds in the evening, I have problems connecting them to my phone via the app. So I use a different phone. The problem remains. Until I realise that it's because I've also connected my Bluetooth headphones. Okay, my mistake. Depending on the Bluetooth protocol, it can be a problem if you have several devices paired with Bluetooth. But the Sleepbuds don't play music and you can only pair them with the app anyway and not in the Bluetooth menu. The fact that the buds can't coexist with Bluetooth headphones is annoying.

In the Bluetooth menu, the left and right buds appear separately - for whatever reason. Because it is not possible to play sounds on just one Bud.

When charging, you have to make sure that the light is really on so that both buds are charged - especially if you fit the larger attachments supplied, it will be tight in the case. If the buds don't sit correctly on the charging ports, you'll end up with an empty battery.

You can only switch off the buds themselves by placing them in the case. Because of my connection problems, I would have liked a reset button. But there isn't one. However, after I always disconnected my Bluetooth headphones beforehand, I no longer had any problems.

Conclusion: the sleep revolution fails to materialise

The Sleepbuds are all well and good and Bose does a good job here too. Nevertheless: I wouldn't buy the earbuds. Not for the price. For how expensive they are, they don't do enough. To be able to sleep, you can simply put earplugs in your ears for passive noise cancelling. They don't even cost a fraction of the buds.

You shouldn't put earplugs in your ears every night, as you risk damaging your health and becoming increasingly sensitive to noise disturbance. However, before you spend so much money on a sleeping gadget, it would be better to hug your neighbours or kick out your snoring partner - or put an anti-snoring plaster on them.

Brian Mulcahey, Bose's Category Director Wellness says about the Sleepbuds:

Translation: I really believe, that with this solution to this really massive problem ... we're going to change millions of people's lives. It's as simple as that.

No, dear Mr Mulcahey, you're not right. The buds would be a nice gadget - if they weren't so expensive. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as you say. Why don't you sleep on these ideas again.