I have been looking for a set of earbuds that suit a side sleeper, like myself for a long time and came across these, which, at a reasonable price, seemed worth a go.
I was amazed, when opening the box, at how small the earbuds are. Really Tiny, hardly bigger than a few grains of rice. Incredible they can fit a battery, all the hardware and the speaker in such a small container.
Each earbud is covered by a changeable (depending on what size you require) silicon sheath, with makes them easily accessible in and out of ear. Also, there is a choice of seals, which are easily changed, again, depending on what size you need.
The earbud live inside a quite big round case, when you take into account their size. Presumably to contain a large battery. But it is a nice pearl white colour and a lot nicer to the eye than most earbud cases I've seen.
In ear, they are comfortable and if you follow the instructions as to to wear them, they will fit in snugly and stay in, not causing any issues for side sleepers. The only times I've had an issue is when I didn't insert and twist (as per instructions) and the buds weren't sat properly. But, do as it says and it's is good.
These are not Noise Cancelling earbuds. Given the size, if they were, the battery life would be so short, they be useless. Instead they rely on a tight fit, thus blocking most external noise and then, with either inbuilt music/nature sounds or your own audio choices, complete the job of cutting out unwanted racket.
Battery life is variable, depending on what you do with them.
If just playing inbuilt music/nature sounds, then the can go about 8 hours before one or both bud battery dies.
If playing your own audio, about 4 hours, give or take. I know this because I woke up early the other day and turned them on to listen to an AFL game from Australia and they didn't quite make it to the end of the game. One earbud going flat before the other. Good news is that even when one goes flat, the other carries on until it's own battery demise.
This makes sense as they are using more power with bluetooth connecting to your Android/Apple gadget of choice, whilst if running in sleep mode, it cycles through a downloaded music piece, thus using less power.
Either way, when you consider the size, not bad.
TO operate the earbuds, you double tap the right to start/stop play and the left to choose between sleep mode (which plays the downloaded clip) and Music mode, which plays whatever audio you choose on the linked gadget., be it music, audiobook, etc.
The sound itself if pretty good considering the size.
So, hardware: Top marks.
Now to the firmware/software.
First of all, in order to get the most out of these earbuds, you need an Android/Apple gadget, be it a phone, tablet or similar. I sue an out of date phone which I use at home as a spare MP3 player just running it on wifi.
Once you install the Soundcore app, all you need to do is open the earbuds case, and pair them to your gadget.
On the app, you get a choice of "Sleep mode" audio clips to download to the earbuds. This clip will play when choosing sleep mode. Some have soft music, (the sort you get in new age shops),some are just nature sounds. As It totally hate the new age music clips, I have not even bothered with those so I will only comment on the nature sounds.
They are a bit hit and miss, TBH. Being so short, possibly given the size of the hardware, the ones with bird songs, etc, are too repetitive and I found myself listening out for the repetition without knowing and thus not being able to get to sleep, so in the end, I only play the rain/stream/thunderstorm sounds, which are better, albeit, I can't really tell the difference between some of them.
There are sliders for volume and a simple EQ. No need to explain these, as they work well enough.
You can set an alarm, but:
1. I haven't tried this yet
2. I don't know if it would work if one or both earbuds go flat before the time comes
3. Not obvious how to set it
The Sleepbuds somehow monitor you movement as you fall asleep and are meant to record how long you sleep. How I am not sure, but anyway, so far in the past week, they've only captured my sleep info for two nights. Not sure what use it is, except for techno nurds who like that sort of thing, but it splits the data into: awake, deep and light sleep. Looks totally pointless to me, still, if it rocks your boat......
Playing your own audio is a breeze, you set the earbuds to music mode by double tapping the let earpiece or via the app, then play whatever you want you linked gadget and let them do their magic. So far, not lost the connection at all, so no worries there. I assume, just like in sleep mode the audio stops when the buds sense you're asleep as there is no sound when I wake again.
Anyway, to cut long story short, I'm pretty impressed with these so I would recommend. How long they last, well, it's early days yet, so who knows? Ultimately I suspect it'll come down to how long before the batteries fa...
