I tested Ozlo’s Sleepbuds on a very noisy night – and they put me to bed instantly

I take my sleep as seriously as some athletes take training or diet. And while I can control everything—from the steps I take before bed, to the pajamas I wear, to the sleep mask I put over my eyes to block out the light—one uncontrollable factor often keeps me awake: sounds outside my Brooklyn apartment. apartments.

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My bedroom overlooks a busy and often noisy street. As I write this, motorcycle engines are roaring and a fire truck siren is blaring in the background. I woke up to police sirens, car horns, noisy pedestrians and my neighbors loudly celebrating with songs and celebrations until dawn.

During the 2023 holiday season, loud voices singing songs until 1 am kept me awake and prevented me from falling asleep. But this year I took the noisy opportunity to check Ozlo Slipbadsand god am I glad I did it. They helped me fall asleep in minutes.

For this reason, ZDNET and the rest of the CNET team are selecting it to receive a CES award in 2025. You can see all 12 Best of CES winners selected by the CNET Group (ZDNET, CNET, PCMag, Mashable and Lifehacker) in partnership with the organization that runs CES.

The Ozlo Sleep Headphones are some of the most comfortable and effective sleep headphones I’ve ever tested, and I can’t recommend them enough to anyone who needs to calm their bedtime environment to hear a few more Zs, that is, if they’re willing to pay the price at 300 dollars. Keep reading to find out why.

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If you’ve heard anything about Ozlo, then you were probably interested in the discontinued Bose Sleepbuds, which the audio brand pulled the plug on in 2020 after the headphones “failed to achieve the level of adoption” Bose had hoped for, despite to their avid fan, Bose representative Joan Berthiam told The Verge. The Ozlo Sleepbuds are a reincarnation of the Sleepbuds, taking some of Bose’s patented technologies like the StayHear Plus tips and incorporating them into a new product.

The headphones come in a chunky yet elegant case, and you can customize the size of the earbud and ear wing to suit your preferences. I encountered the most issues during setup and the connection dropped twice before I could connect to the app. As soon as I connected, the app’s introductory pages began to glitch, and I had to close the app several times to restart it. Once my settings in the app were confirmed and the connection was established, I had no problems using these headphones.

Luckily, you don’t need an app to cut out the white noise in your headphones while you jump, and the first night I tested them, I easily used them without the app. But if you want personalization, the Ozlo app provides ten different sleep sounds (or masking sounds) that you can sort through. You can use a headphone alarm (though I’ve had no luck with these alarms, considering I wake up with headphones strewn across the bed), a sleep timer that turns off the headphones after a configurable period of time to save battery, and an auto-sleep sound feature. which detects when you’ve fallen asleep and switches from the podcast or music you’re playing to the masking sound you choose.

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Ozlo Sleepbuds hit the market with two key features that are unfortunately missing: sleep tracking and environmental sensing. Ozlo will eventually release an over-the-air update to add these features. I’ll test them out as soon as they’re available and update my review with my thoughts, although I’m disappointed that these key benefits aren’t available at launch.

These earbuds are designed to stay in your ears all night. It’s rare for a pair of headphones to stay in my ears all night, given how often I move around in my sleep. When I wear headphones to sleep, they help me fall asleep with noisy sounds outside my window. Once I fall asleep, I can continue to sleep and won’t be woken up much. I need them to stay in and fit in well at the start of the night; I don’t need them all night, although I don’t mind having them on.

The wings on the Sleepbuds stabilize the fit for a long time, and when I wake up, one earbud is usually still in my ear (there was one night in the last week of testing where both stayed in my ear all night). The battery lasted about a night and a half before it had to be recharged.

Every night when I wore these buds, I slept like a baby and fell asleep within minutes. I found myself first gravitating towards them at night when my neighbors were celebrating in the street outside my apartment. However, I ended up putting them in my ears even when there was little external interference. They are simply convenient and effective. They manage to mask the noise around me and isolate me from the annoying engines and sirens outside.

The only thing I couldn’t test is whether they mask snoring. Based on my experience using them alone in the bedroom to muffle outside sounds, I’d say they do a good job of eliminating ambient distractions, but I can’t confirm how effective they’ll be at minimizing snoring around you.

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Unless you’re lying in bed all night, they’ll get stuck in your ears—and they’re quite comfortable for side sleepers. I didn’t feel any pressure build up over time and I didn’t feel any soreness or tenderness in the morning.

One of my favorite aspects of these headphones is the sleep sounds combined with the power of the Sleepbuds’ sound, which is somehow loud enough to completely drown out the outside sounds outside my bedroom window, yet quiet and neutral enough to send me to sleep. This is a tough call, and one I had a hard time finding when testing competing sleep headphones.

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So who are they for? People who prioritize comfort in headphones for sleeping, and ready to pay $300 for this. These earbuds melted into my ears as I slept, and as I moved from one side to the other, I found myself absolutely happy with these earbuds in my ears. Ozlo Slipbads masked the noise properly and effectively, muting outside noise during one of the busiest weeks of the year in my area.

So yes, they work as a noise masker (technically they are not noise canceller). Setting up and connecting can be a little complicated, but launching new products is bound to come with bugs. The product itself is great when connected. I’m looking forward to sleeping with these headphones next time my neighbors are up all night singing and having fun.