My wife snores like a water buffalo.
I mean how I imagine a water buffalo snores, I've never slept with a water buffalo...
that I remember anyway, my mid-30s were a mess!
As a countermeasure, I've taken to laying on my side and covering my top ear with a really heavy Tempur-Pedic pillow.
The bottom one's a Tempur-Pedic too, so it's like wearing the world's biggest, heaviest pair of ear muffs
that only work when you're laying sideways.
That method doesn't work perfectly, but it's better than nothing.
So my wife got me a pair of these Bose Sleepbuds 2 for Christmas thinking they might help.
They're definitely smaller and lighter than Tempur-Pedic pillows
and Bose Electronics seem to be a go-to solution for a lot of people to get rid of unwanted noise
so it makes sense they might help.
Truthfully, I was skeptical, but open-minded.
Really I had no other solution, so I tried them in spite of my doubts.
It's kind of like sitting on a toilet looking at a spend roll of paper going, "That's not gonna do it, but I've got to try."
Now the first thing I have to say is, HOLY **** they're expensive!
I didn't realize at first because I've never shopped for them and I didn't look them up after Christmas
But when I checked them on the Amazon site... on sale no less... HAHA!
They're packaged like they're expensive, that's for sure.
It's funny how in recent years we've come to care how things are packaged.
Seriously, how often do you look at the box your phone came in?
But we want that experience... that magic... that passive pampering that only a fancy box can deliver.
The little hard shell case they come in is pretty top-notch as well.
It's heavy and it's got a powdery metal finish that reminds me of 1970s hi-fi equipment.
And that cool sliding lid... whoa!
And those slick LEDs right out of a Black Mirror episode.
I've never been an earbud guy, but I'm told the design of these particular earbuds is pretty top notch as well.
They fit comfortably enough, I guess.
I grew up listening to my dad's Koss Pro 4AA headphones.
Those sounded so good plugged into my dad's Marantz 2270.
And these days I use Audio Technica's M50x over-ear headphones.
The kind seen here used by Dr Dre.
So I'm an over-ear guy.
And those over-ear headphones work amazingly for music or meditation apps.
They passively block out environmental noise and work great for ASMR when I get my head in the right spot.
The Bose passively block sound pretty well too, but at the expense of pressure inside your ear if you're sensitive to that.
And if you lay sideways and the pillow puts pressure on them, that'll be even more noticeable.
Not that over-ear headphones work any better for laying sideways.
I've seen these listed as "noise canceling," even in some of Bose's own ad links, but they're not.
They Bose website has a pretty good explanation of the differences between noise canceling, noise blocking,
and noise masking, and I'll link that.
The TL;DR is these are noise blocking and noise masking, not noise canceling.
Another thing to clear up is a lot of people might mistake these for wireless headphones much like Apple's Airpods
or those Raycons you see advertised on YouTube every two minutes.
These don't stream stuff from your phone. They CAN'T stream stuff from you phone.
And it's not just a software thing, they're physically incapable.
PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE!
You see, they use a low energy type of Bluetooth that doesn't accommodate streaming.
Most of the time that Bluetooth is just used to send instructions from your phone to the Sleepbuds,
but it's also used to transfer sound files.
The sound files are contained on the earpieces themselves.
That means if you wanna relax, meditate, or fall asleep to a podcast or some ASMR or an app like Headspace
you're out of luck with these babies.
That also means if you want to listen to a different sound from Bose, you have to spend the time uploading it.
With that low energy Bluetooth, that can take a while... up to twenty minutes a sound.
And the software won't let you do that if you've used even a little bit of your battery power.
Another thing of note, those sound files are uncompressed,
the earpieces don't have built-in MP3 decoders, which would also shorten battery life.
And that's fine, but it limits the size of the file you can upload, which loops all night,
and if you're ADHDAF like me, you'll start to notice the repeating pattern.
Apparently that was a bigger issue with the first version of these and you'll see a lot of reviews that saying
they've solved the issue and it's isn't noticeable, but I disagree.
With these, the only white noise sound I've found that doesn't eventually drive me nuts is "Rinse."
That loop seams together pretty well.
I tried one with traffic sounds, but it drove me berserk because I heard the same truck driving by like every ten seconds
and instead of lulling me into sleep, it made my mind wander into thoughts about how the engineers probably don't use
the product themselves, or they'd never settle for a repeating truck sound that would never occur in the natural world
on natural highways with natural trucks!
It's hit-or-miss with the other sound types, I'm not going to run through them all, I don't think that's why you're watching.
Interestingly, you don't have to have your phone on, or even near these, once you've started your sound in the app
but doing that means you won't be able to use the alarm feature or get call notifications.
About that alarm though... no thanks!
Right in my ears? Are you kidding me?
The battery life for the ear bud part of these is about eight hours.
And the battery life for the case that charges them is supposed to be three ear bud charges
It's dead right now and I haven't even been using them.
The app is easy enough, mainly because it doesn't do much.
There's no way to see in one list which sounds you have installed on the ear buds, you have to swipe from side to side.
And there's no way to preview a sound through the ear buds before you upload it.
You can preview them on your phone, but if it's the middle of the night and you want to change sounds and you don't want to
wake up someone sleeping in the same bed, you'd better have another pair of headphones handy.
Speaking of another pair of headphones, I don't have any regular headphones that are the in-ear type
but I'd have a hard time believing I couldn't find a pair that were just as comfy as this.
And for a hell of a lot less money.
I gave them a solid try, but to me they're not worth the price for their limited functionality.
So, they're going back.
If I earned your subscription, please hit the button and the bell.
Both my daughters have YouTube channels, I'll link them at the end.
Thanks for watching... stay out of the comfort zones.