Hi, I'm Ethan Green from nosleeplessnights.com and in this video I'll be unboxing and testing out two
of the latest sleep masks from Alaska Bear. One of them is a contoured memory foam sleep mask with
space for your eyes and eyelashes to move about, and the other one is a silk sleep mask with a
wraparound design that has more material covering your eyes and face. I'll start by opening them up
and checking out the key points I always look out for with sleep masks, such as the material,
the shape, the strap, and the stitching. And then I'm going to use them in different sleep positions
to see how effective they are at blocking light and how comfortable they are. And after that,
I'll use them for several days so I can get back to you with a final verdict. So, let's open them
up and take a closer look. Okay, so I'm going to start with the contoured sleep mask, which is in
the white box, and then we'll do the wraparound silk sleep mask in the blue box. So we have a
queue of Alaska bears! So, I have cheated and removed the plastic sealing tape already because
sometimes when I do these unboxings it takes me forever to unwrap them with my fingers, and it
doesn't make the most interesting viewing. So let's have a look at the carry bag first. They
tend to be pretty cheaply made these carry bags for sleep masks. I guess because it's not a very
expensive thing in the first place so they don't want to spend too much on the carry bag. It has
drawstrings there and I'm not quite sure what the material is, but yeah, it's pretty cheaply made.
But you know, it'll do the job. So let's move that out of the way. And here is the mask itself.
So it's quite soft - quite soft to the touch. I actually wrote to Alaska Bear to ask them what
the exact materials were and they told me it was nylon and spandex. So there's no silk in this one,
but there is memory foam on the inside and that's what creates the eye cups. And you can
see here on the back side of it that you've got some padding around the eyes there, which will
create some sockets. And that allows some movement for your, room for movement rather, for your eyes
and eyelids. However, they're not the deepest sockets. I mean, if I compare them to the Manta,
for example, which was number two on my top 10 sleep masks review, that had enormous eye sockets,
these ones are not too big. But I guess it's going to depend on how big and how long your eyelashes
are. What I do like is that it has the padding all the way around, so it's going to feel quite nice
and soft on the face. And it has like a little bit of a triangle there for the nose. There's no
flexible or bendable nose cartilage though, though there is in the one coming up next. So the strap
itself is, I think, the nylon stretchiness there, and it is adjustable as well. It has one of these
typical slider buckles, you can see there. These are very, very common with sleep masks. There's
quite a big one there, so I'm gonna be interested to see if I can feel it on the back of my head
when I'm wearing it. As for the size, I think, at the moment I haven't got it on its maximum length,
but I imagine because of the adjustable strap it's going to fit pretty much every head size. So there
you go, that's the mask itself. I'm going to try it in the bedroom in a bit. Oh, lets have a look
at this label actually before I do. What have we got here? Some instructions: hand wash, air dry,
do not twist, do not tumble, do not iron, do not bleach, use only mild detergent. That's quite a
lot of ‘do nots’. At least it doesn't say ‘do not wear’, that’d be problematic. But there you go,
that’s sleep masks all over - they're very rarely able to be washed in a washing machine.
It's pretty much always hand wash. So that's that one, now let's have a look at the wraparound silk
one. And again I've already removed - this one actually had plastic wrapping all the way around
the outside, which, you know, I'm not particularly impressed by. I don't think in this day and age
there's no need for, I don't think there's a need rather, for plastic wrapping around the outside
of boxes. But maybe they just wanted to keep it nice and clean. So the Box itself is quite pretty,
quite sturdy. Yeah ,I'm not going to need that for very long. And inside, oh, what we've got
here? “sleep is God. go worship.” A quote by Jim Butcher. Nice. So here we've got a, oh, this is
actually a much nicer bag than the other one, so I'm gonna take back what I said about sleep mask
carry bags always being cheaply made. I mean, it might be cheaply made as well, but it's certainly
less cheaply made than this one I think! So yeah, if the carry bag is what you're interested in,
the silk wrap around is going to be much better. And again, it's a drawstring bag at the top. So
let's move that out of the way and have a look at the actual mask. Okay, so I can immediately feel
that this has the soft silky feel which personally I really like with sleep masks. The original
Alaska Bear sleep mask had that silky material that I liked a lot. It just feels nice on the
skin. And you can see that it has the wraparound design, so there's a lot of material there. And
it doesn't really have a nose, well, it doesn't at all have a section to go over the nose. It's just
this one headband, I guess, that's going to go all the way around your head. It feels very, very
soft. It’s gonna be nice to wear, and quite a lot of padding on the inside as well so it’s gonne be
hopefully good at blocking out light. Let's have a look at the strap because this is something that I
also believe is going to be quite interesting. And there you go, you can see that it has silk all the
way around the strap as well. It does have a nylon strap on the inside and actually you can take the
silk back. I'm not sure which side from, no, not that side - obviously it's going to be the side
that I try second! Okay, so there you go - you can peel it back and see the nylon strap. And it has
a very similar nylon strap to the other one. And there you go, it's got the slider buckle as well,
so you can adjust that how you want to to fit your head size, and then pop back the silk cover. And
that's just going to make it more comfortable to wear in the night time. And then you can stretch
it out to fit different head sizes. So this one at first glance looks really super comfortable.
Slightly nervous to try it and see how well it's going to block out light, unless, actually, let me
think about it - there we go, there is something else that I knew, nearly forgot to say. It does
have a built-in bending nose cartilage. Now these are great because you can use them to bend
them over your particular nose shape, and that just helps it to block out light on the bottom.
However, this one doesn't feel particularly sturdy, so I'm not quite sure how well it's going
to hold its shape in the night. But I guess I will have to test that out and then I will tell you.
And just looking at the stitching, this one is stitched as well, which is nice, because the
other one – where have I put it? Somewhere over here. The other one doesn't have stitching to hold
it together. I think it's either heat sealed or laser sealed - not quite sure, I wasn't there in
the factory when they did it! Um, but personally I prefer it when it's stitched. So there you go,
at the moment I have to say if I had to put my money on which one's going to be better,
I'd say this one's going to be more comfortable and potentially better at blocking out light,
but I might be wrong - it's very hard to tell. So, let's go through to the bedroom and I'm going
to wear them in different sleep positions and tell you exactly how well they work.
After filming the previous section, I spent a couple of days testing the sleep masks in
bed and this is what I found. The contoured mask was comfortable to use on my side, back, or front
and I liked how there was plenty of space for my eyelids and eyelashes. However, it didn't block
out 100% of the light for me. It was fine to use if the bedroom was relatively dark already, but if
the room was very bright I could sense the light coming in around the nose with my eyes closed.
The silk wraparound sleep mask did a much better job of blocking out light though. With all the
material and the adjustable nose piece, I could easily block out 100% of the light when on my
back, my side, or my front. I did have to adjust it when I changed positions though,
which happens with most sleep masks in my experience. The material did feel quite warm
though, probably because of all the padding. So if you're sensitive to warmth around your face,
you might not like that. So my final verdict of the Alaska Bear sleep masks is that I really like
the silk wraparound design. I found that it's very comfortable and it blocked out 100% of the light,
which is exactly what I want the sleep mask to do. I like the fact that it has the adjustable
nose piece and the silk cover around the back covering up the strap. I thought that was a
really good design touch. Now, the contoured design, you know, it just didn't quite work.
Perhaps it's because of my Roman nose and if you've got a smaller head or softer features,
it might work better for you - especially if you're looking for one with a contoured design
that allows space for your eyelashes to move. But for me, it just didn't do the job. Now,
for over 20 pounds in the UK or 20 dollars in the US, they are quite expensive for
sleep masks. So I also recommend trying out the original flat silk sleep mask from Alaska Bear,
which came out top in my previous review of 10 sleep masks, and you can watch that one here if
you want to. Please also subscribe to my YouTube channel to keep in touch and see future videos.
And if you're interested in buying either of these two that I've covered in this video, you can
find links in the description below. Thanks for watching, this is Ethan from No Sleepless Nights.