These Headphones Could Be the Key to a Better Night’s Zzs
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I’ve spent the past month testing SleepPhones. These wireless headphones feature flat, padded speakers in a thin headband that slips over your ears. This makes them ideal for relaxing and falling asleep to your favorite sounds. Unlike a normal set of cans or earbuds, SleepPhones aren’t made out of metal, plastic, or rubber. Instead, they’re constructed from a comfortable polyester and spandex material that’s both lightweight and breathable. Since the speakers hover over your ears without clamping around them or sitting in the canals, there’s no buildup of heat or pressure even after several hours of use.
As a side sleeper who has struggled with getting a good night’s rest using AirPods, the SleepPhones’ promise of comfort and sound performance convinced me to try a pair. After putting the SleepPhones through their paces, here’s how they held up.
SleepPhones Breeze Wireless Sleep Headphones (Medium)
$99.95
amazon.com
Wireless Headphones With Unrivaled Comfort
SleepPhones’ woven fabric features a mesh-like construction that ventilates heat and is soft to the touch, similar to athletic wear made by Under Armour or Nike. It’s airy and wicks away sweat, which is ideal for hot sleepers like me. The company also makes a thicker, warmer fleece model for cold conditions. The medium sized SleepPhones easily slipped over my head, but be sure to measure your head before buying because there is no way of adjusting the band. While sleeping, I found they’re incredibly comfortable—not too snug to induce a headache, but tight enough to keep the speakers in place above my ears as I tossed and turned.
In the past I’ve tried sleeping with both noise-cancelling over-ear headphones and AirPods but they pushed painfully into my ear canal and ultimately fell off. SleepPhones enclose your ears without any pressure so it feels like you aren’t wearing anything on your head. Even when sleeping on my sides the speakers don’t press or dig into my ears.
The SleepPhones are mostly seamless, but have a slit in the back to remove the Bluetooth module for charging or to remove the speakers so you can throw the band in a washing machine. It’s a bit of a hassle wiggling the wires out from the small opening, and the Micro USB connector is outdated. For $50 more you can get the SleepPhones Effortless—I haven’t tried them but they’re largely the same except they use wireless induction charging directly through the fabric.
The Bluetooth control panel positioned in the back has three buttons that let you power it on or play/pause, skip ahead or increase volume, and rewind or lower the volume.
My main complaint about the SleepPhones is the lack of a sleep timer. I’d love to be able to set it for just three hours of listening that fades out and turns off to extend the battery. That way I would only have to recharge them once a week. As tested, I found the battery lasted about three nights (7 hours average) between charges—just shy of the 24 hour battery life claim.
Aside from the slight charging hassle, there’s not much to nitpick. Their compact design means I can use them in tandem with a sleep mask. Cutting out both sound and light distractions helped me fall asleep faster. I’ve swapped through three different eye masks when testing the SleepPhones and each mask sat comfortably without pressure, however the back straps often cover the buttons on the back of the headband.
Versatile Connectivity, With Rich Sound
These Bluetooth headphones can wirelessly connect to a variety of gadgets like your TV or iPhone to stream audio without disturbing others. I’ve watched shows, played video games, and listened to music and podcasts while testing SleepPhones late at night without waking my fiancée. I’m impressed by the sound quality that comes from such small, thin speakers. I tested them with some of my favorite vinyl and digital albums that I use as benchmarks.
Vocals and instruments come through crisp and clear, complete with effects like the crackle of a vinyl in Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones, Pt. II” or the tinniness of the old school voicemails left in Kendrick Lamar’s outros. Often, open back headphones will produce audio that sounds a bit hollow and loses small touches like these. But SleepPhones manage to pack a rich sound into rap and rock tracks while retaining layers of detail. But they lack bass: There’s almost no thump or roar, so electronic music and funk sounds a bit off when bass drops get clipped. I don’t need to pump myself up before going to bed but, if you plan to use these for listening to riff-heavy music or watching movies from bed, you may find the bass underwhelming.
On the flip side, the headphones have fantastic sound imaging. This means they accurately identify and place the direction where a sound comes from in a 3D space. I often test headphones with this virtual barbershop clip which surrounds you in a 3D soundscape so that you can measure how effective your headphones are in this area. The SleepPhones not only provided a full 360-degree stage, but accurately separated the layers without muddying up simultaneous sounds like the footsteps, guitar, and voice as they come from different ends—an indicator of a high quality set of headphones.
While listening to the SleepPhones is primarily a private experience, there is some slight sound leakage at full volume. I could vaguely hear them while placed two feet away from my pillow. But since these get surprisingly loud at half volume you likely won’t need to max them out. Even at that volume, they mask ambient noises like the hum of a fan or snoring, but there’s no active noise cancellation to fully blocks them. I could hear my fiancée watching TV at louder volumes and using a hair dryer in our master bathroom.
Noticeably Improves Sleep
To test the headphones impact on my sleep, I simultaneously wore my Fitbit Charge 5 and Oura ring to generate a sleep score on a hundred point scale then took the average between both numbers. I took these measurements each week night for two weeks; one without SleepPhones for a baseline, and one while wearing them. I ensured my sleeping conditions remained the same with my bedroom temperature set to 65 degrees Fahrenheit, no sleep aids or disruptors like alcohol, and closed blinds to eliminate light. On nights I used SleepPhones I used their included SleepSounds app to generate calming white noise and music.
As you can see, my score made a slight improvement while wearing SleepPhones except on a particularly stressful Tuesday (my peak score was 85). I almost immediately noticed an improvement in how long it took for me to fall asleep. I can often spend an hour or more in the dark looking at walls or ruminating about things to get done the next day while wearing a sleep mask. With SleepPhones I found I was often out in 15 minutes or less, and stayed asleep without randomly waking up in the middle of the night and playing on my phone. And, over time, I found mornings slightly more tolerable. Next to a quality sleep mask, SleepPhones are now an essential part of my bedtime routine.
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