soundcore Sleep A30 by Anker, Ultra‑Comfortable Earbuds for Side Sleepers,Dedicated App, Sleep Monitoring, Soothing Sound Masking Technology for All‑Night Rest (Mist Green)

Completely changed my sleep, these are amazing! The noise cancellation paired with one of the local in-built sounds (I find the ‘engine hum’ the best’) makes for a perfect 8 hour sleep. I don’t get disturbed if my partner gets in/out of bed while I’m sleeping or snores, and they’re comfortable enough that I can sleep on my side. I do wish the battery life was a bit longer, because sometimes I’ll wake up and realise they’re dead, but that’s only if I’m sleeping longer than 8 hours. The battery life for the case itself is good though, and will re-charge them 3 or 4 times before needing to be plugged in. Highly recommend!!

These are one of the first wireless earbuds designed for sleeping and on the whole they work pretty well. The fit pretty flat in my ears which means I can indeed side sleep comfortably with them in. They come with a decent selection of earbuds and wings to fit most ears but I would guess they would not fit someone with a smaller ear. With ANC switched off they make it through the night pretty easily, but with it switched on, it's touch and go. I've had them go flat by morning on occasion, however they are designed to mostly not need ANC on. There are a couple of design problems, which I think are mostly software and so hopefully fixable. You can start the earbuds in bluetooth mode and then when they detect you've fallen asleep they switch to local mode where they play a chosen white noise effect. Local mode then raises and lowers the volume of the noise to mask background noises like snoring. It also recommends the noise config to choose based on the frequency distribution of the background noise. The first problem is that if whatever you're listening to on bluetooth as you go to sleep, runs out before it detects you've fallen asleep then it doesn't turn on the noise in local mode. The sleep detection is looking for now movement for 70 minutes. This means that if your content (say a podcast) isn't longer than 70 mins then the noise won't automatically kick in. Most of what I listen to is less than 15 mins which means no automatic switch. If I wake up, I double tap on the left bud twice and it comes on. IMO it should always switch on the noise when the bluetooth track finishes or it detects you're asleep. The second problem is with the sleep onset detection feature of the app - ie to tell you how quickly it thinks you went to sleep. This doesn't work with bluetooth mode at all crazy as that sounds. Again, you should just tell it you're going to sleep and it should work independent of mode. Otherwise the headphones work as you'd expect, they do not have top of range audio, ANC or battery life but then they have to be very small and slim so not surprising. I have found them very effective for the main reason I bought them, for use while sleeping to help with background noise etc.

TLDR Summary at the bottom of this overly long review! See the video for the charging issue. I got extremely lucky and these started to charge the third time I put them in the case, but even when they show the charging light slowly blinking to indicate a charge, I would still find at least one of the buds completely dead when I went to use it that night. REVIEW: Overall I'm pretty disappointed with the A30 Sleepbuds. I have the A20s and I use them pretty much every night. I was intially put off by the cost of the A30s as they are double what I paid for the A20s (which have had a 20% prike hike since release as well), but I thought that if they truly helped me have a better night sleep than with the A20s then I could probably just about justify the cost. To save you reading through this whole essay I'll just tell you - they're not worth the cost. Even less so if you already own the A20s. If I didn't own either and tested both, I'd probably still chose the A20s. Let's talk about the good stuff first, because there's less good than there is bad. Comfort - They are comfortable. Size wise they're slightly bigger than the A20s, but they are actually a bit more comfortable. Using the A20s, when I sleep on my side the bud on the side that my head touching the pillow presses into my ear and blocks the sound from reaching my eardrum. This doesn't occur on the A30s. The range of tips and earwing things keep them in the ear better than the A20s, although this could be solely down to the Memory Foam tips. There's a light on the case to tell you when they're charging, which is useful to know when the buds are charging, but they don't charge properly, so I can't really talk about that in the good section of this review. For more info on that, see below. Ok, on to the bad stuff/what I dislike about these or I'm unhappy with. The biggest disappointment for me is the ANC. or lack of it. I wanted the A30s because the ANC is an important feature for me as there is a low frequency noise in my neighbourhood that becomes disturbingly loud at night when the city quietens down. I don't think the mic in the earbuds/case is good enough to pick up on the noise, as I can still hear the hum that sounds like a big heavy engine running in the distance. Even with the headphones in and ANC turned on. In fact, the ANC is so mild it's honestly hard to tell if it's functioning. A test I conduct with all of my earplugs/sleepbuds/headphones etc is to have the buds in my ears, hold my fingers close to my ear, and then rub my thumb and first finger together like the hand gesture for money. If I have a good seal/decent ANC I cannot hear my fingers rubbing together at all. Unfortunately I can still hear my fingers with the ANC on and using the memory foam earbuds, so the seal could be better, but I cannot really tell much difference with ANC on or off. I tried the A20s again as that has no ANC, and the hum is not any better or worse and that doesn't have ANC at all, making me think that the ANC is not very good or strong. The battery life is especially poor. I've recorded my useage over the first 3 nights. Here is how much I slept each night according to the sleep tracker (which ties up to the time I went to bed and woke up) and even with these low numbers, at least one of the buds has been completely dead and turned off when I woke up: - Night 1: 5 hours 35 minutes. ANC on, Bluetooth. - Night 2: 6 hours and 33 minutes. ANC on, Bluetooth but turning to local after sleep detected. -Night 3: 6 hours 44 minutes. ANC on, Local Audio only. When I woke up during the night and checked the battery life I would regularly see the left earbud between 10 and 30% lower battery than the right earbud. Since then I've not manually recorded the useage, but pretty much every single morning when I've woken up at least one of the earbuds have been dead, usually the left one. This isn't great as I rarely sleep more than 6 or 7 hours and they don't even last for that. There's something wrong with the fact that the left bud always seems to have much less battery but it's not specific to my pair, as I've seen other reviews here commenting on the same issue. The only time the A30s have managed to last all night with ANC on has been when I've had them on local mode (so not using bluetooth) and the volume turned down so low I can't hear the sounds. Not that there is a great deal of point to the ANC anyway, as it seems to make no difference at all to sounds I can hear, from what my comparisons with the A20s is anything to go by. There is a light in the case, which is useful for removing/inserting your earbuds to and from the case. The light is good because it allows you to easily remove or insert them in the dark, and this is essential as the buds frequently don't make a decent connection to the case and charge them, so in the short period of time I've had them I've already had three nights where I couldn't use them at all because one of the buds was dead. They fit in magnetically but even with this, and the it sounding like the contacts connect, but it still doesn't connect that reliably. The third night I was very annoyed by this because after 2 nights in a row, I had spent the time to ensure that the buds were 100% charging. Typically though the charging light displayed for a very short period of time and then went out. Now I have to watch them for several seconds to make sure the light wasn't actually lying about charging the buds and I have to be very careful not to nudge the case or move it too much as that seems to disconnect a bud frequently too. This may be to do with the ear wing rubber that fits around the bud and is cut out around the battery contacts. I occasionally had this with my A20s and would have to remove the wing and put the affected bud in the case naked after removing the wing and eartip (which you have to remove to get the wing off). This definitely seems worse with the A30s based upon how many nights I've been unable to use these even after I thought I was being careful and had confirmed they were charging. TLDR Good: Comfortable, even for side sleepers, memory foam earbuds are nice (but don't seem to improve the noise isolation), light on the inside of the case and to tell if the buds are charging is useful (particularly due to the charging issues) and lying on your side no longer presses the earbud against the inside of your ear, which stops you hearing the audio (the A20s do this). Bad: As far as I can tell the ANC does absolutely nothing, the price is excessively high, 80% of the time I have to mess around with the earbuds in order to have them actually charge and not be dead. Also hard to trust these, since my A20s have stopped working less than a year after I bought them and I basically had to throw them away. 90% of the time I couldn't get the right earbud to charge at all, and when it did it would only charges to 40%. Considering I'm already getting charging issues with the A30s and they are brand new, it does not bode well for the future. The A30s already have a significantly lower battery than the A20s, so they really can afford to not charge fully, if you're even able to get them to actually charge. CONCLUSION: I have returned these. I would have given them 2, maybe 3 stars had they been the price of the model they're replacing. Sure they have ANC but it doesn't work even remotely well enough to justify the increase price in my opinion. You're basically paying £200 for a slightly more comfortable fit and memory foam ear tips. If they can't even fix the charging issues with the A20s and they barely last a year, then Edit: You can see from the video that I have to remove and reinsert the headphones into the charging case more than once before it starts charging. I actually got lucky on this one as often I'm trying over and over to get both of the headphones to display the slow blink of the charging indicator light. EDIT AGAIN: Even after this video showing that the charging light came on, when I went to use them that night, the left earbud was dead. I am returning these. They have been out of charge more often than they've had charge even when I'm very careful to make sure the charging light blinks to indicate charging.

I’ve been using it for a month now, and it’s the best purchase I’ve ever made! I’ve been sleeping so much better, the noise cancellation is absolutely amazing, it’s comfortable to sleep with, the app is super easy and super cool. I also use as normal earbuds to listen to music and specially for audiobooks, when I don’t want to be distracted by the outside noise. Absolutely amazing product!

Bra ljud och ANC. Bekväma att använda. Bra programvara med rikligt med alternativ att välja på. Toppenprodukt helt enkelts.

Bolą w uszy i są niewygodne. Funkcje są niedopracowane, w aplikacji jest dużo błędów. Aplikacja jest niestabilna. Ostatecznie zwróciłem słuchawki.

I might have finally found the holy grail for my sleeping situation. About me: I sometimes have a hard time falling asleep so I love going to sleep listening to my current audible book. Of course I don’t want it to play for too long so I usually set a 7 minute sleep timer but on the nights I have a hard time falling asleep I have to keep resetting it. Also I’m a light sleeper and my husband has started snoring so he wakes me up in the night or early morning. I usually end up waking up about an hour and a half before my alarm is set. I’ve tried so many things to keep me asleep when my husband snores. Mack’s Ultra Soft foam ear plugs - these are fairly comfortable and work great at blocking the noise, but sometimes my ears are so sore in the morning and I can’t listen to my audible to fall asleep. Loop sleep ear plugs - these are comfortable and fairly effective at blocking sounds but sometimes they fall out and of course I can’t listen to my audible. Bluetooth sleep headband - these are comfy and work OK for listening to a story as you fall asleep, but they do not help me block out the snoring at all. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’ll try playing some kind of sleep music, but the snoring breaks through too much for me to be able to fall asleep. Hearprotek wireless sleep earbuds - I tried these for about two weeks. They worked great for falling asleep and they are relatively comfortable, but they would sometimes fall out. I found the wires connecting them to each other to be annoying. AirPod Pros w/ANC - I do not recommend this for sleeping, but I have done it. They work great for listening to a story while you fall asleep and blocking noise, but they are not comfortable at all. One nice thing that you can keep resetting the seven minute sleep timer by just clicking on the AirPod, but that’s about the only plus. Now for these sound cores. I switched to the smallest silicone tips (they also have foam ones for more sound blocking, but they say they’re less comfortable). You can also switch out the little silicone pieces that sit in the other part of your ear, but I stayed with the default ones. I listened to my Audible via Bluetooth and then let it switch to snore masking sounds when I fell asleep - with the volume at 30%. I did opt to back up my book a little bit the next time I listened. I do recall waking up twice and I could kind of hear my husband snoring, but I was able to fall right back asleep with the “whispering brook” sounds. In the morning the app suggested a different snore masking sound based on its analysis of the snores it heard in the night. It suggested the “himalayan downpour” - which I look forward to giving my husband a hard time about. I don’t think this will mask sounds as well as the foam earplugs, but they’re more comfortable and I’ll happily take that trade off to be able to listen to my story when I fall asleep. I’ll update my review if I change my mind down the road but so far so good.

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