For many, sleep has been elusive this past year. Between the pressure of lockdowns, pandemic planning and home offices bursting with school and work, getting a good night’s rest has become something of a hardship. For us, insomnia has always been right around the bend, so we were intrigued by the Bose Sleepbuds II.
These comfortable, simple to insert earbuds were created specifically to help people sleep, by a company known for its audio prowess. Nope, you can’t stream music or podcasts. Only soothing sounds to help you relax and an alarm to get you up in the morning. Think of them as a personal, wearable sound machine you control with your phone. But do they really work? Here’s what you need to know.
Price and Availability: The Bose Sleepbuds II are available now for $249 at Bose, Amazon, Best Buy, and HSN.
Why We Chose It: Sleep is not our friend. In fact, we frequently use those hours lying awake to get some reading done or sometimes even work. So, when Bose announced a product which it claimed could clinically help you fall asleep faster, we were psyched to give it a try.
As the name suggests, the Bose Sleepbuds II are the second iteration of the product, the first being plagued with battery and Bluetooth issues. The newest Sleepbuds seem to have gotten past these problems, at least as far as we tested them.
Bose is known for its noise-canceling technology, which it uses so well in its QuietComfort line of headphones. So it makes sense that they would use this expertise to create a product that masks noise rather than just cancels it.
The SleepBuds come in a sleek, slide open battery case and pair with an app on your smartphone via Bluetooth. Once you set it up, you simply take the earbuds out of the case to connect them, then use the app to decide which type of sleep noise you want to listen to—if any—and at what volume. You can also choose to add an alarm as a wake-up call since you’ll be hard-pressed to hear anything externally.
The design makes for comfortable sleeping and comes with little wings to secure them, though you will have to get used to getting your Z’s with something jammed in your ears. They also come with several different sized silicone tips to make sure they won’t fall out during the night.
Why You Need It: Whether you’re like us, and have always had trouble sleeping, or the anxiety of a global pandemic has been keeping you awake, these Bose Sleepbuds II are quite the revelation.
Once we got the right fit for the tips and set the battery case up next to our bed, we were impressed with the comfort and how they truly masked the noise of snoring, sirens from the streets outside our Downtown Brooklyn apartment, and even video game noise from our teenagers who definitely stay up later than us most of the time.
The first few nights we actually didn’t bother with the different sounds and used them strictly as noise masking earplugs. But we soon felt the need to check out some of the nifty sounds on the app, which come in three categories: Noise Masking, Naturescapes and Tranquilities. It may be boring, but we really enjoyed listening to the rolling waves in Swell which was in the Noise Masking sounds, though if you’re a white noise fan, we thought Warm Static, Rinse and Rustle all fit the bill. The Tranquilities noises like Gilded Dream and Fabled reminded us too much of getting a massage, and the more consistent noise of the Naturescapes, like the pounding rain in Window Seat, were just a tad too aggressive for us. But to each their own.
The one thing we had to reconcile with was the idea that the Sleepbuds are easier to control if you have your phone next to your bed. That way, you can easily change the volume or even switch to a different sound at any time in the night. We have a strict rule of leaving our phone out of the bedroom, so instead we used the phone-free mode in the app and set-up a timer once we figured out how long we wanted to listen to our crashing waves (not all night it turns out).
Were we completely cured of insomnia? Not so much. But we definitely fell asleep quicker after waking up in the night.
What Others Are Saying: The folks at TechRadar share our view on comfort, and think Bose Sleepbuds II are designed for sleeping in. “Just when we thought they couldn’t get any better than the originals, the Sleepbuds 2 design offers even better ergonomics. They’re super lightweight and delicate and so go completely unnoticed in your ears. The new soft and springy silicon tips help here, adding an extra feeling of comfort in the ears. This is all packed up superbly in a sleek and minimal-looking anodized aluminum charging case.”
Cnet was also impressed with the sound masking and the alarm function. “You can program the Sleepbuds to play a soothing sound for a relatively short duration (30 or 60 minutes) or have it play for the whole night. It’s worth noting, too, that you can use the app to set an alarm that wakes only you and not your partner. That’s a thoughtful feature.”
Final Conclusion: The Bose Sleepbuds II do exactly what they claim: help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. There is a nice selection of different noises to choose from—though they also work sans audio if that floats your boat. The one caveat is the steep price of $249, but if you’re ready to change your sleeping patterns, the Bose Sleepbuds II are most definitely worth it.
https://decider.com/2021/04/10/bose-sleepbuds-ii-review/
