I’m somebody who watches TV shows in bed on my iPhone or iPad every night, so when the opportunity came up to review a pair of Soundcore buds that are made specifically for sleepers, I was excited to test them out.
These earbuds are made for sleeping, and not really made to be worn out of the house, which makes for an interesting proposition. They have a low-profile design with a very soft wing so that they stay in the ears, but can also be slept on in a side profile without causing any discomfort.
I was fairly impressed with how comfortable they were in the ears even when sleeping on that side, but to say they weren’t noticeable at first would be a lie, but it was definitely leaps and bounds ahead compared to an AirPod or other earbuds that I’ve tried.
There’s a number of difference wing sizes as well as two sets of tips in the box, half of which are to block out noise and the other half specially have holes to let in noise, which I opted for, as sleeping without being able to hear the outside world is a little bit much for me.
As far as the controls go, there’s a button on either side that has to be tapped (not pushed in) 2-3 times to swap between modes or turn your volume up and down, and it’s a little bit cumbersome, but these are the type of earbuds that you want to put in and set and forget before you sleep, so I understand why they went for a more simple design as opposed to something that would add to the size.
The case is small enough to chuck in your bag, but I do feel like it could have been a bit smaller, and it’s also a little bit difficult to get the buds in at times, but you get used to it with a few tries. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s not a lot of in-ear detection for when you remove them, so you want to make sure you take them out and put them back into the case.
As far as audio quality goes, these definitely won’t be the best earbuds you use, and they’re not supposed to be, but they do a fine job for being used in bet with a focus on clarity rather than bass, which is probably exactly what you need whilst you consume content whilst you sleep.
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The earbuds can connect to your device by Bluetooth which allows for 10 hours of battery life in the buds and 55-hours with the case, and that works how you’d expect, but there’s also a Sleep mode that allows you to pull over a number of white noise sounds such as rain or a campfire, and you can also overlap them to build your own sleep sounds, which is the part that interested me most.
I’m somebody who needs to watch something to fall asleep, but these earbuds have sleep detection and can flick over to sleep sounds once it detects you’re asleep, and whilst I’ve only used them for 4-5 nights, I definitely felt that they kept me asleep for longer, which is super interesting. Alternatively, you can just have the buds turn off all noise once it detects you fall asleep too.
On the back of that, there’s also sleep monitoring which will automatically sync to your phone (seven days of data are held on the buds) and whilst it’s not as in-depth as the likes of your Apple Watch and there’s also noway to export the data that I can tell, there’s interesting data that I’ve not seen available from other wearables including how many times you turned over, and also which side you primarily slept on.
All-in-all, I’d really struggle to move away from AirPods or the recently reviewed Beats Solo just purely because the ability to swap between devices on the go is unbeatable, but as far as sleeping goes, I really, really like the concept of the Sleep A20, and if you are a side sleeper that has trouble staying awake, or likes white noise, I definitely recommend giving them as go as it’s a much better experience than playing them through your speakers.
