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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Nice for Sleeping, but Finicky

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  Pros: Nice sound quality Small, easy to fit in your ears, and they don’t fall out Great battery life Earbuds fit easily in the case, and are easy to place even in the dark Decent app Large selection of sounds Sounds are downloaded to plenty of memory in earbuds allowing operation without the case Helps you stop snoring (for whatever reason) Cons: Finicky to get it paired and connected Too many required steps and conditions to do anything with them Battery charge indicators hidden when case is closed Most sounds sound like white noise It takes too long to download the sounds to the earbuds and can’t use or wear them while downloading Snooze button does not work Build Quality: The earbuds feel high quality and well made, although the case feels a little less durable and flimsy. The earbuds fit in the case using a magnet and fit well, so well that they can be placed in the case in a completely dark room without a problem. Battery: The earbuds have excellent battery life. At 50% volume, I can get around 10.5 hours of use, plenty for a full night’s sleep. The case can charge the earbuds around three times, and it takes around an hour to fully charge the case and earbuds together. The batteries are probably the most impressive part of the system. Fit: The earbuds fit well in the ears although I do find them hard to get in initially. I’m able to get them in and stay in but not how they recommend in the directions. It’s kind of an annoying experience but that may just be me. They are small enough to allow you to sleep on your side without pain or them falling out. They come with different size tips, but my experience has been the same with all of them. The fit is snug and completely blocks most but the loudest sounds. Sounds: There are a few dozen sounds to select from of all different types, but I have found that most of them sound like variations of white noise. There are a few that don’t and those are ones I use. My favorites are jungle and ocean. I wish that thunderstorms sounded good, but that is one of the once that sound just like white noise. In general, they have good sound quality for what they are supposed to be used for. The sounds are selected from the app which allows you to preview the sounds before selecting them. Once selected, you can download them to the earbuds themselves. Unfortunately, they must be placed in the case to download them which means you can’t use them or even have them placed in your ears. That also means you can’t really download sounds while you are in bed. It also takes around 10 minutes to download each sound which is way too long. All this means is you really need to plan ahead when you want to use a different sound. Lucky, there is enough memory in the earbuds to download plenty sounds. Case: The case seems a little flimsy but gets the job done and the earbuds have a good fit in it. While the earbuds can play the currently selected sound without the case, you need the case to do things like change the sound, change the volume, download new sounds, and charge the earbuds. The case has a system where when you open it, it boots up the firmware in the case and connects to your phone. When you close it, it turns off the case. If you want to do anything that requires the app, the case must be opened and connected to your phone. The case charges via usb-c port. There are indicators that tell you that the case and earbuds are charging, but the case must be open to see them. It would be nice if they were visible all the time. Earbuds: They fit well in your ears although it is hard to initially get in based on the directions. They fit well when sleeping on your side and stay put. The connection between them and the case is reliable. They block out almost all sounds when the earbuds are worn, but playing sounds blocks out all outside noise, including talking. There are no buttons on the earbuds so you must use the app and case to do almost everything. Connections: Bluetooth connection to your phone is where things start to fall apart. Connection to the case is required for the phone to communicate to the earbuds. The connection between the case and the earbuds is reliable, but the connection from the phone to the case is not. I installed the app and followed the steps to connect the phone to the case, but it just would not connect. I tried several times until it finally worked. When you start the app, you must make sure the case is open and booted up before the phone can connect to it. This connection was extremely unreliable. I did get a new phone a couple of days after getting this to work. Again, it was painful to get the new phone paired with the case, only this time it seemed worse. I tried several times to get it to pair, and it was only after installing the app a couple of times that I could get it to work. I updated the firmware, and it seemed to make the connection from the app to the case a lot more reliable. Every time you open the app, or open the case, you must make this connection again which does take a few seconds, time that is noticeable. One more thing to keep in mind is that the phone connects to the case via Bluetooth and the case connects to the earbuds via Bluetooth LE. There is no direct connection from the phone to the earbuds. If any of these connections don’t work reliably, everything falls apart. Alarm: There is an alarm that you can set through the app. It will play piano sounds when the alarm goes off, and loud. They claim it is a gentle alarm, but it is not. The piano sounds just play at full volume as soon as the alarm goes off (again not gentle). Supposedly you can change the alarm sounds but I haven’t found a way yet. And here is the biggest flaw of the whole thing. There is no way to easily snooze the alarm. You are supposed to tap the case to snooze the alarm but no matter how many times I tried it, it did not work. The only way I was able to figure out how to snooze the alarm was to pick up my phone, unlock it, and click the snooze button. Those steps are the last thing I want to do when I want to snooze the alarm. Lucky the app is open, and you don’t have to open and connect it as well. This is the biggest bummer, except that I now get out of bed right away without snoozing which may be for the best. Snoring: My wife claims that I snore way less when wearing these, and she won’t let me in bed without them. That is something I can’t explain. Finally: Overall, these are worth the investment, even at the high price, especially if you like to hear sounds like nature and water when you are trying to fall asleep. When they work, they work well, but there are sometimes too many steps and conditions to do anything, such as sometimes having the case open, or closed and sometimes having the earbuds docked, or not. You do have to have a lot of patience with them, so keep that in mind. You also must update the firmware to fix a lot of reliability issues. This is mandatory. They will play your default sound when you just put them in your ears, but doing anything else beyond that requires the case and app which can be finicky. There are plenty of sounds but only a few makes sense. You also must use the app to do almost everything. You must use the sounds as just putting them in your ears to block out outside noise with no sounds, while works ok, does not make sense. Finally, I really wish the snooze button on the case worked.

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  Posted 3 months ago by Dalton

• Rated 3 out of 5 stars

  Quality Sound, Extremely Comfortable, Bug Riddled

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 100 Contributor

  TLDR: A comfortable & unique set of headphones aimed at improving sleep quality but is held back by poor Android implementation & ridiculously long updates. PROS Extremely comfortable Light weight Plays ambient noise automatically while sleeping Upscale and Premium Look & Feel CONS Android software buggy Does not revert to streaming when awake Ridiculously long firmware updates Ridiculously long ambient noise downloads INTRODUCTION Ozlo, a little-known earbud company (at least I was unaware they existed) founded by 3 former Bose employees. These 3 former employees set out to establish a product that filled a niche market that no one had successfully filled to date. Their goal was to design a set of earbuds that were comfortable enough you could use them while sleeping, not to mention a product that streams, for lack of a better description, white noise while sleeping with the goal of getting a better night’s sleep. They succeeded. The Sleepbuds are incredibly comfortable to wear. So light and comfortable, you barely notice they are there. Fitting into the ear without protruding into the actual canal and the silicon strap provides just enough tension inside the ear to keep them from falling out. Most earbuds that fit down into my ear canals eventually leave my ears feeling sweaty and itchy. Not the Sleepbuds. Because they don’t fit down into the ear canal, I can wear them all night long without feeling itchy and uncomfortable. SET-UP AND USE There is no other way to say it. The Android software implementation is bug filled and impossible to use. In today’s market, there is no excuse for poorly designed and implemented software, especially in a premium product like the Sleepbuds. Ozlo is aware of the issues too. It starts when you first try and pair the Sleepbuds with your Android. They warn you of pairing issues during set-up. Unfortunately, the Ozlo software cannot overcome the bugs. Neither my older Galaxy tablet nor my brand-new Pixel 10 Pro could configure the Sleepbuds. Each device hung during the initial firmware update. Ozlo warns you that it could take up to 30 minutes to update. Nope. I waited and waited and after 1 hour, it was still at 0% on my Pixel. 0% on my Galaxy and after another hour. Unacceptable. You cannot bypass the mandatory update either. Without the update, the Sleepbuds are unusable. Thankfully, I have an older iPad for just these situations. Sure enough, the iPad pairing and updates all proceeded without hiccup. Sadly, Ozlo appears to have devoted most of their time and efforts into iOS. Not only did it update without issue, but it also took less than ½ the time, it would have required with Android. Right from the beginning it estimated a 15-minute update procedure. Once paired with my iPad, I proceeded to watch one of my favorite podcasts. Sure enough, I fell straight asleep, not even realizing that I had dozed off. When I did wake up, the Sleepbuds had paused my stream and began playing ambient white noise. From my timeline, it looks like at just over 20 minutes, the Sleepbuds noticed my change and began streaming its own ambient sounds. The included ambient noise with the Sleepbuds is impressive. Ozlo has included a terrific and varied number of different noises that should surely appeal to nearly everyone. The sheer number of noises is quite impressive. The repetitive clacking of train tracks, freeways, rain, creeks, thunderstorms, forest, air travel, box fans, crackling fires, etc. Ozlo’s selection is fantastic. Coming from someone who has used YouTube and/or Amazon Music for ambient sounds while traveling, I find the Ozlo sounds substantially clearer and much more satisfying than other offerings. OTHER ISSUES & OBSERVATIONS As good as the Sleepbuds were at changing states when I fell asleep, I would like to see them be equally adept as when I wake up. I would like them to be able to resume their last streaming service when I wake up. After unlocking my iPad and carrying it around with me, the Sleepbuds never transitioned back to the streaming, maintaining its white noise playback. Furthermore, switching between apps requires constant reconnections with the Sleepbuds. With YouTube and Ozlo Sleep running in the background on my iPad, switching between apps disconnects the Sleepbuds and requires a re-connect. While it only takes a few seconds, it is annoying and to date, is the ONLY product I own that exhibits this behavior. This also brings up another issue with the Sleepbuds. After waiting so long to get them up and running I couldn’t wait to try them out. But I couldn’t. After the initial update, all the pre-loaded soundtracks were no longer compatible with the Sleepbuds. EVERY single ambient noise track had to be re-downloaded. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge issue. Even with a basic internet connection, download times are normally only a matter of seconds. Not with the Ozlo Sleepbuds. EVERY single ambient noise soundtrack takes approximately 15 minutes to download and install to the Sleep Buds. To get all those wonderful soundtracks back, the user is looking at approximately 3 – 4 hours of downloading and updating. TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. Granted you could only download one or two tracks, but there were so many included in the demo when I first got the Sleepbuds, it would be nice to have them all back and available, but now I’m not sure if it is worth all the time and effort. FINAL THOUGHTS Do I like the Sleepbuds? Yes, I do. They are a novel and comfortable product. Bose headphones have traditionally been the gold standard for noise cancellation and comfort (in my opinion). You can tell the audio quality that made Bose headphones so famous was a priority for the new owners of Ozlo. The more I use the Sleepbuds, the more I forget about all the issues that plagued them during my initial set-up process. But I can’t totally forget about the beginning. Had I not had an iOS device; the Sleepbuds would currently be unusable. I couldn’t get past the firmware update. Not only that, I have just one soundtrack downloaded. I don’t want to devote 3 – 4 hours to get back to square one. Not to mention, if I were to download the entire catalog available, it would take 8 – 10 hours to install. I’ve always said in my past headphone and ear bud reviews that they must be equally as capable with iOS and Android. The Ozlo’s are not. If I were a total Android household, there is no way I would recommend the Sleepbuds at this point in their development. If I had a total iOS household, the troubles and dislikes would be much less of an issue. Thankfully, with a mixed device household I was able to finally get the Sleepbuds working. This is not a detriment to the Ozlo Sleepbuds, more of just an FYI. For those thinking the Sleepbuds would be their go-to buds for day-to-day use, they are not. They are not for working out, not for making calls, they are made to help you fall asleep and have better quality sleep. Would I buy the Sleepbuds? If I had an iPhone; Yes. If not; No. I’ll give the Sleepbuds a recommended rating, but only 3 stars at this point. There are still too many bugs that need addressed for their Android customers to give them a rating any higher, regardless of how good they sound and feel.

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  Posted 3 months ago by NAMO

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Comfy Way to Tune out Sound

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  I’ve always been a light sleeper, even the dog moving around wakes me up at night. Not to mention all the noise or a neighbor having a party a couple of houses over. I always have a pair of safety earplugs next to the bed, those neon orange ones that are super soft, just in case I wake up in the middle of night and cannot fall back to bed for one reason or another. I was considering a white noise machine, but wanted something a bit easier to carry with and wouldn’t disrupt anyone else. That’s when I saw the Ozlo Sleepbuds, which not only streamed audio but provided background noise. So, I got a pair to try. Pros: - Very comfy earbuds. - Sounds are relaxing and customizable. - Multiple Eartips for perfect fit. Cons: - Connecting and updates takes a bit. - Comfort in ear will depend on your pillow and position while sleeping. Setup: The setup was simple; download the app, then pair to the case and then to the earbuds. You have to pair to the case to setup, but after that unless you’re going to stream audio from your phone or update the sounds, you don’t need to connect your phone to the buds each time. The initial setup will walk you through the first time to select your preferred background sound and set the few options available for how it triggers and your morning alarm. It’s very simple and takes only about 5 minutes after all the updates. Connecting: I usually watch a show or listen to something before falling to sleep so I’ve been connecting my phone each night before going to bed. I did notice that it usually took 45 seconds to a minute for my phone to connect to the earbuds each night, which is much longer than normal earbuds. I assume this has to do with the connecting to the case, then earbuds but I always catch myself wondering if something is going wrong waiting for the earbuds to connect. You’ll see a reminder multiple times to keep your phone 30ft from your smart case and your earbuds 10ft from the smart case, because of the tethering between phone to case to ear buds the distance is much shorter than most earbuds. This isn’t much of an issue unless you are getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or go check on another room. I’ve lost connection a few times, but each time, the earbuds reconnect as soon as I get back into range with the case. Software: The Ozlo app is easy to use. Ozlo has been updating the app regularly, I’ve already seen an update come through that included more sounds and a soon to come feature to help you track your sleep. I found that I’m using the app regularly as I get used to the earbuds to adjust the sound and volume of the sleep noises. I also check out the new options that are available. The main page of the app provides you with all the controls to check battery life, current sleep sound, and volume right at the top. Below are the settings selected during initial setup, that can be adjusted anytime like Alarm, Sleep Timer, Auto-Play Sleep Sound (enable this!). The Auto-Play Sleep Sound is a great feature that automatically switches over from streaming your phone audio to the Sleep Sound once it detects that you’ve fallen to sleep. I’ve found it works well, usually triggering right after I start to drift off to sleep, which helps when I forget to stop what I was playing before I fall asleep. Fit & Feel: The earbuds are very comfortable, the silicone tips/wings make the Ozlo SleepBuds some of the most comfortable earbuds I’ve ever had. 4 sizes are included, 1 on the earbuds and 3 in the box to ensure you get the best fit possible. I did find the default tip was a bit too small, which let in additional noise while sleeping and allowed the buds to shift out of my ear the first night. But with the larger tip, I’ve not had any issues with the earbuds falling out. You can barely feel these in your ear in the beginning of the night. The only issue with feel I had was the next morning, as I usually sleep on a firmer memory foam pillow, which depending on how I lay my ear ends up as the main point of contact with the pillow. Which unfortunately pushed the earbud against the side of my inner ear, causing discomfort after long periods. When I woke up in the morning I had a sore ear, along with an indent in my ear. If you’re a back sleeper or using a softer pillow, you won’t even notice. But if you are using a firmer pillow, you might need to shift or switch pillows. I ended up switching to another pillow with a shape to it, where my neck and head get better support, and my ear isn’t the main point of contact. That solved the discomfort! Sleep quality: I did find the Ozlo Sleepbuds helped improve my sleep mainly by reducing the number of times per night that I would wake up due to a noise, though I would put them on the same level as my old safety earplugs there. They were much more comfortable than the earplugs, which block-out almost all sound and put pressure on my eardrum and inner ear. I can only wear the earplugs a few nights in a row before I need to not wear them, that was not the case with the Ozlo Sleepbuds after I swapped out my pillow. I look forward to the future feature that tracks your sleep, as I use my watch right now which is good, but I would like to have another measure of sleep quality to compare it to and see if there are any different suggestions besides “sleep more”. Alarm: The alarm is also a big part of the benefit of the Ozlo Sleepbuds, as it can be an issue when sleeping with earplugs to hear your alarm unless you have it blasting or shaking your bed. I’ve missed my alarm more than once because of having earplugs in. The Ozlo alarm comes with different sounds and nicely alerts you that it is time to wake up, though if you need one that shocks you awake there is a “Wake Up!” alarm sound that is reminiscent of the old alarm clocks. Sound Options: I found the different sleep sounds to be very calming, I mainly used the Fireglow and Soar as both gave me a warm but calming sound. There are a lot of options to pick from and Ozlo is adding more. I liked the consistency of all the sounds, being pleasant and constant background noises. I was going to suggest that they include some kind of city or road sound, but then with the last update I saw they had added an Interstate and All Aboard soundscape that mimics a highway and train. I was thinking these would be very helpful for anyone who lived in a city or populated area, when going on a trip to somewhere much quieter like camping in the woods or a lake house. As the transition from noisy night life to quiet night can be a shocker for many, so having the familiar background would allow them to sleep better. Conclusion: I really like the Ozlo Sleepbuds, as I’ve used earplugs for years to help manage my sleep due to how easily I wake up from any sudden noise. The earbuds are very comfortable and can be adjusted to fit almost any ear snuggly. Plus, with the variety of calming sounds, you’ll be able to find one that soothes you to sleep and helps keep you asleep. Just beware if you’re a side sleeper using a firm memory foam pillow, you might want to swap out your pillow or adjust how you lay on it. I’ll be adding the Ozlo Sleepbuds to my recommendations for anyone who is a light sleeper that wants a better way to sleep and wake up.

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  Posted 3 months ago by BradfordBT