This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I've been wanting to find a pair of earbuds that would work well for sleeping for awhile now, so I was excited to give these a shot. I've used a variety of true wireless earbuds over the past couple of years, and my current favorite are just too big to be comfortable.
Let's start with fit. These are the smallest true wireless earbuds I've ever used. They fit very well, and there are a variety of silicone tips and "wings" included, so there'll likely be one that works great for you.
The box includes the earbuds, their charging case and a USB-C cable for charging. The cable is pretty standard, nothing notable here. The case is a sort of pearl white, and holds enough juice for seven charges, according to Anker. It takes about two hours for a full charge, which will last 6 hours in Music mode and 10 hours in sleep mode at 50% volume. I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate, but I've had plenty of charge left on the earbuds after wearing them to bed (my volume is set to around 30%). The charger face slides open smoothly with a satisfying click as the magnets lock it into position.
Oh, and If part of the reason you're looking at these is because someone sleeping next to you doesn't want to hear what you want to hear, I can tell you that even outside of your ear, they're inaudible at less than a foot away at 50% volume.
Audio quality is good, especially for something I'm primarily wearing to bed. It doesn't match my other earbuds, but it's fine for sleep. Most of the time I'm listening to an audiobook or something with the volume fairly low. It did seem to struggle pretty hard with quality above 50% volume until I went into the Soundcore app and started playing with the equalizer. Even the built in presets dramatically improved the sound. It's also important to make sure you've got a good fit.
The app is unintuitive. It starts off strong, immediately attempting to pair the earbuds and walking you through some basics, but it quickly goes downhill. The Discovery and Profile tabs seem more interested in trying to sell me sunglasses than providing me with functionality, and I had to hunt around to try to figure out how to use it. I did manage to stumble across the equalizer, which you're going to need, and the white noise function, which is impressively customizable. Want to listen to dogs barking and ducks quacking in the rain? Anker's got you covered. There's also an alarm function inside of the sleep mode if you want to make sure it stops playing white noise and wakes you up.
Unfortunately, if you really wanted to fall asleep listening to dogs barking and ducks quacking in the rain, you're going to have to do it outside of sleep mode. This means the alarm function won't work, and it won't track your sleep patterns. Not a huge deal for me, because I track my sleep with another device, but if that's something you're looking forward to, know that the only things you can listen to in sleep mode are one of Anker's 30ish presets. You can't listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks, your custom DogDuckRain white noise profile, or anything else with sleep mode turned on.
Overall, the earbuds are very comfortable for sleeping. I'm a side sleeper and while I did initially fear that one was going to fall out during the night, so far they haven't. There's no way I could smash one of my other earbuds into a pillow and be able to fall asleep, so that alone makes these worth it for me, I just won't be using the Soundcore app for anything other than the equalizer. I recommend this if you're looking for small earbuds with good audio quality to wear to bed and aren't expecting to use them for much more than that.
