When they were first released in 2018, Bose’s noise-masking SleepBuds were hailed as a game-changer for light sleepers and those who work with snoring sleep partners. Alas, Bose ran into some issues with the battery on both the original model and the second-gen version and discontinued the Sleepbuds, much to the chagrin of many people who really liked them. Well, three former Bose engineers have acquired the rights to the Sleepbud and now come up with the new Sleepbud under their new Ozlo brand. They feature the same design as the original SleepBuds — both the Buds and charging case look essentially identical — but there’s one key new feature: You can now stream other audio from your phone to the Buds via Bluetooth (the original SleepBuds just kept noise-masking in the Buds. Sound and streaming music are not allowed).
One of the biggest strengths of the Sleepbuds is how tiny they are and how comfortably they fit most people’s ears (they come with four different sized ear tips). I had no wearability issues with them even though I am a side sleeper. Although these aren’t noise-canceling earbuds, they have good passive noise-isolation and do a great job of eliminating ambient sound when you apply one of the masking sounds, be it waves lapping at the beach, rain falling, crackling fires burning, and more. You can also set a personal alarm to go off in your ear so your sleeping partner won’t be disturbed, and the buds will know when you’ve fallen asleep while listening to music. And automatically kick in your chosen noise masking sound Finally, there are some sleep-monitoring features as well.
I can’t say everything has worked perfectly all the time and I think Ozlo is still working on its companion app for iOS and Android. When streaming music — don’t expect much bass but the sound was better than I expected — you have to keep the Buds case close as the case is used for streaming — and of course charging (buds) is rated for up to 10 hours of battery life. ). But all in all I’m impressed with this new iteration of the Sleepbud and hope there aren’t any battery issues going forward.
