Hi, I'm Ethan green from nosleeplesnights.com, and in this video
I'm going to unbox and test out the Quieton earbuds.
Now, as I see it these are essentially very fancy
high-tech earplugs. They have active noise cancellation.
You can't play music through them, but what you can hopefully do is block out
more noise, such as snoring, than you would do with traditional earplugs.
Since they cost just under $200 though, they're going to have to really impress
me to make me think that they're better
than the standard foam ear plugs that I've been using for many years,
and that are cheap and effective. In a moment I'm going to unbox them. And then
I'll test them out and use them for a few nights to see how effective and how
comfortable they are. If you're not interested in watching the
whole unboxing, please skip ahead a few minutes. And I'll also put timestamps in
the description below. So with that said, let's head over to the
table and check them out. Okay, before I actually open the box I'd just
like to say that I think first impressions do count sometimes. And so
far so good. I like the way that it looks, and it
looks like it'd be something that would make a nice gift. But yeah, the proof of
the pudding is in the eating. So let's take a look.
Okay, inside here "your partner in a noisy world".
Let's hope so. Here we have a case. And what else have we got in here? Some,
what looks like different size tips. Small and large. Presumably the medium
are already placed on the actual earbuds then. And here we have a charging
cable, which is a USB to micro USB. It's extremely short, but I
hope that's not going to be a problem. There's no power adapter supplied, so you
need to provide that yourself. But it's not an issue to find USB sockets in
most people's houses, I don't think. Here we have a user guide, which looks
like it's in English. And it looks like down there we've got
some other languages as well, which is useful for some people.
So, I'm not going to go through the entire user guide, because I've been told it's a
little bit boring when i've done it before!
But I know some people appreciate being able to see the instructions. So I'm just
going to scan through quickly so people can pause if they don't have the
instructions or they lose them.
There you go. And the other side is mostly warnings I think. So if you do
lose your instructions - there you are, you can pause the video.
Now let's have a look at the actual earbuds themselves. This case is quite
heavy actually - quite surprising. Oh, and on the back we have the charging
port as well. I believe that you don't actually charge up the earbuds,
you charge the case that they sit inside. So the device itself - let's have a look
inside. Here you can see the two bits there that
go from the charging port into the actual earbuds. We've got a
sticker here, which you need to remove. Mode button - I believe that it has a
hearing and a silent mode, so you can have it with the noise cancellation or
without, if you'd rather be able to hear what's
going on around you. So, here let's have a look at the tips. And here you can see
that they're quite squidgy. I believe it's memory foam, and I like
that. Hopefully, it's going to be able to make a nice fit in your ear,
because ultimately the active noise cancellation is not going to be that
much use if they don't really fit nicely inside your ear. So
really, I think there's not much more for me to do in the actual unboxing. I think
the main bit that's going to be interesting
is charging them up, which I believe takes about an hour.
And then putting them in my ears and testing them out, and seeing how well
they block out different sounds in my bedroom. So that's exactly what I'm going
to do, and then I shall be back in the bedroom to tell you about them.
Okay, so I've now had a chance to play around with the Quieton and test them
out in the bedroom a little bit. And I've got to say there's good news
and there's some bad news, at least as far as my first impressions go.
The good news is that they definitely work. And I think the fact that they have
that button that allows you to change between
hearing mode and silent mode means that you can actually
find out whether the technology does something, or whether it's just merely
having something inside your ears like ear plugs that's preventing noise.
Because, when you do press the button, which I have to say is a little bit fiddly -
finding it and then pressing it - you can... like, automatically I had it on hearing
mode. And now it's gone to silent mode. You can hear there's a real difference
in the noise cancelling, so that's a good thing.
And I've got to say, it does block out some of the ambient noise. This is
actually a really good place to test noise reduction because
I live in a building on the 20th floor, with an enormous amount of air
conditioning units, which, I don't know how many of them are on at
the moment. But I always say the sound of my neighborhood is an air conditioning
unit because there's just so many of them. And I can hear it even with the
windows closed, as they are now. So when I have these on the hearing mode
- on silent mode rather - it definitely cuts out some of that
drone, which is great because that's the noise that really annoys me in the night
time. I also tested it with my own air
conditioning unit on in the bedroom, and it cuts out some of that noise as well,
but not all of it. So as far as the actual technology
is concerned, and the fact that, you know, you might be wondering whether they work
or not: they do work. Now for the bad news. So, first of all, as
you can see I'm lying on my side. And even though the actual tip is memory
foam, this still - let's see if I can get it out, there
we go - there's still this part of it here which is solid
plastic. And you can feel it on your ear, even on your
side. So I think if you're a side sleeper I'm going to have slight concerns about
how comfortable they are to wear. But that's something I'm going to find out
over the next week when I continually use them.
So that's one thing to note. But you know, lying on your back it's not an issue
at all. However, the main issue that I've found
so far, at least in my initial couple of hours of testing,
is that they're no better than my foam earplugs. And that's a real
disappointment, I have to say. One caveat is that I have discovered
already that the fit that you have with them
makes a massive difference. I've tried with the small tips and the
large tips, and they definitely don't really work at all. So that
automatically makes me think that the fit is important: the fact that
one set of tips makes a big difference, and also the way that you have them
angled in your ear. You need to twist them backwards to get the fit right.
And I've found that in some positions they really don't do much at all. And
then all of a sudden, playing around with it: "oh, okay that's the
position." And you realize that they're actually doing something.
And pressing the button is something that I wouldn't recommend doing too much
because you end up kind of pushing this plastic thing
into your ear, which isn't the most comfortable. So yeah, those are my first
thoughts. Now I'm going to try it out for the rest
of the week, and try and sleep with them, and see what that's like, and use them
around the house as well. And try them with some different noises and
then I'll get back to you. So I've now spent a few more days using the Quieton
and I have to say I think my first impressions were largely accurate.
However, I do think it's worth discussing their usefulness during the day and the
nighttime separately. For the night, for me, I just can't get
past the fact that my foam earplugs did a better job.
You know, with their noise reduction rating of 33 decibels, they just blocked
out more noise than the Quieton. However, I know that some people find
foam earplugs uncomfortable because they expand in your ears and put too
much pressure on your ears. And I found the Quieton were actually
better than wax and silicone earplugs. So I can imagine that for some people
the Quieton might be more suitable, but just not for me.
For me personally though, perhaps the best use of the Quieton was during the
daytime, which surprised me. I like the fact that they feel comfortable and you
can easily switch between the hearing and silent mode without having to take
them out and try and put them back in again,
which can be tricky with warm foam ear plugs. And actually, I found that the
noise cancellation was just on par with my Bose Quiet Comfort 20i,
which, you know, although they can play music as well have been some of my
favorites when it comes to noise cancellation. So the fact that they matched
them impressed me. Another point in their
favor is that they only take an hour to charge, and they'll last for a good 20
hours. And I also like the fact that they're pretty quiet you don't really
hear much of the white noise sound that you sometimes do with noise cancelling
headphones. The fact remains though that the Quieton
are expensive, which might be fine if money is no object and they fix a
particular problem you have with noise. However, if you're on a budget, I don't
think I could recommend saving up for them unless you really don't want to use
normal earplugs or headphones or earbuds, or whatever it might be.
And you really like the idea of being able to switch the silent mode hearing
mode, and change between them very easily without needing to take them out.
So there you go, I hope that you found this review useful. If you did and you're interested
in buying them, please use the link in the description
below. And please also subscribe to my YouTube channel to keep in touch with me,
and see future reviews. Thanks again, this is Ethan from No
Sleepless Nights.