Ladies and gentlemen and others: my sleeping has finally improved thanks to this device I picked up for £130.
Now, I’m a light sleeper. A very light sleeper indeed, and if I am woken up in the night, it can take an age of sheet swirling, exasperated sigh-inducing turmoil before I finally re-enter the Kingdom of Nod.
So I thought I’d see if tech could provide a solution to my nocturnal woes.
Step forward the Soundcore Sleep A30 earbuds, which are designed for sleeping, and come with a load of soothing sounds to help you bag those essential ZZZZs.
They’re incredible small and lie flat in the air, so they’re totally comfortable even if you like to sleep on your side with a rock-like pillow.
I live in the middle of a big city with beefy sound systems, shouty drunks and emergency sirens in the middle of the night and screaming kids and wailing babies in the morning (I live next to an infant school and creche).
I’m also cursed with bat like hearing, so if a partner makes a slight snore or the cat decides to chase after a mystery object at 5am, I’m awake in seconds.
So I’ve been trying these earbuds for the last month, and I’m now averaging around 30 mins extra sleep every night – and that can be enough to make my day considerably less grumpy.
And what’s really made a positive change for me is the highly effective built in noise cancellation.
This does a terrific job of bringing silence to a noisy room, and makes these buds brilliant for afternoon naps and travelling, where it’s not unusual for a new hotel room to be full of strange and worrying creaks, thumps and bangs during the night.
What isn’t so brilliant is the indescribably fiddly accompanying app, which is totally unintuitive to use. Thankfully you can just tap the earbuds for the basic commands, and that’s what I’ve been using.
For those who like to nod off to stories, white noise and other supposedly calming noises, there’s a ton of samples available in the app and the ‘buds will keep going for up to 10 hours if you need to hear something for the duration of your sleep.
If, like me, you just want to use the very effective ANC, you’ll get up to five nights sleep before you have to recharge the buds in the accompanying USB-C case, which sports a pleasing sci-fi glow inside.
The app also offers sleep monitoring so you can confirm how good or bad your snooze was.
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