My partner usually sleeps with headphones on and TikTok videos playing. She formerly just had the TV on all night.
Anywho, I was thinking about getting her the Bose Sleepbuds II, but also saw the Zen buds.
My reservations are price, and they don’t play “tv” sounds (e.g. people talking), only the sounds from their own apps.
Would appreciate any experience you’d care to share.
I can’t comment on the sequel, but I reviewed the original Sleepbuds and was deeply disappointed in the quality of the sound.
I realize that complaining about sound quality on a product like this seems snobby, but believe me when I say the unit I tested wasn’t just “meh” it was actively, surprisingly, distractingly bad. Imagine the worst gas station earbuds you’ve ever heard and then take it down a notch from there.
If you’re mostly interested in the various flavours of white noise, that might be fine, but if—like me—you were mainly interested in using the nature sounds to fall asleep, the experience was deeply sub par. I was willing to forgive the fact that you can’t listen to your own stuff, but the idea of paying $250 to pipe such poorly compressed, lo-fi sounding white noise loops into my head didn’t exactly appeal.
Now…it’s entirely possible that I’m just too picky, or that I got a lemon (I did check with two store pairs and they were the same but you never know). It’s also possible that they significantly upgraded that aspect with the second generation.
In fact, this info page seems to suggest there’s a new driver, new BT radio, and other revisions that might impact sound quality on the Sleepbuds II.
They have an extremely generous return policy if you order through their site, so it could be worth trying them.
I have the Bose sleepbuds II. Here’re some thoughts:
+ They fit my ears great.
+ They do a very good job at masking sound. Better than noise canceling if you put the volume high enough.
+ At this point, even putting them in my ears makes me feel sleepy.
± They require your phone to adjust, but there is a phone-free mode where you can pick one sound/one volume and they will play without the phone nearby.
- They sometimes lose pairing w/o the phone nearby. If you don’t sleep with your phone (
) this makes them unreliable.
+ White noise sounds are great.
- The nature sound loops are too short and kinda obvious when the loop occurs.
- The review videos I watched talked about how great the battery was, but in my experience it’s something you need to charge everyday. This could be because I keep it in phone-free mode.
± The way the charging case is designed makes it easy to use in the dark, but the light’s too bright (in the dark).
Bottomline: I am very happy with them, but I only needed them because I’m a light sleeper and wanted noise masking. I would not recommend them to someone who needs something that’ll help them zone out (e.g. TV show or book) to fall asleep.
Oh, and: I got my refurbished from Bose’s eBay store and they were about $100 less that way.
Bose are $119 on the refurbished store, free 2-day shipping, 90-day risk-free trial. That sealed the deal!
Let us know what she thinks!
I appreciate your sharing your experience @marius . Hopefully the second generation is better. I heard battery life was terrible on the first gen, and that’s why they stopped selling them. Current advertised life is 10 hours. I guess if one is a teen, that might be an issue 
No problem! I really wanted to love them so I’ll be interested to hear your feedback once you’ve had a chance to see what they’re like. Hopefully gen 2 is as big an improvement as they claim! 