It's no secret that I struggle with sleep, at least at night.
And ever since the birth of my firstborn back in 2012, I've resorted to using earphones to help me catch some Zs.
But everything that I've ever used has at least one flaw.
Wireless has been a big improvement. I used to chew through Sennheiser IE80s and cables like Tic Tacs.
But even with those, I've still dealt with comfort issues,
retention issues, and accidental touch control activations in the middle of the night.
Even my current daily drivers have a fatal flaw.
They only last about five hours before needing to be juiced
in their charging case. Oslo, who reached out to sponsor this LTT video,
claims that their new product addresses all of my issues.
Bold. But I've also been using them for a couple of days,
and while I wouldn't call them perfect, I will say that they've the best feature set
that I've seen so far. These little guys are the appropriately named Sleep Buds.
They don't get a feature film about a dog. But these tiny buds are packed with special features
that might make them less ideal for daily use earphones,
but perfect for folks that are trying to get a better night's sleep.
Let's take a look at what's included. Obviously, you won't get quite the level of care package
that we did. Hoodie, handwritten note.
Is this pills? Ah, calming pillow mist. But what you will get is this.
Well, this. The smart case, which has some cool features
we'll get into later. The Sleep Buds themselves. Four sets of ear tips,
including the ones that are pre-installed, a USB-C cable, and a delicious snack.
Oh, never actually put them in my mouth before. Don't do that.
It's the tips that address the number one issue for a lot of people, comfort and retention.
Other earbuds do include silicone tips, but there's often still a part of them
that comes in contact with your skin that's made of harder materials, especially if you're a side sleeper like me.
Not the case here. And the super low profile of the earbuds themselves
helps to reduce the pressure that you feel on your ear as well. Movie magic, big reveal time.
I've already been using these for sleeping, but sure, let's put them in and try them on camera.
Okay, this is really not representative. This pillow is so thick. Do we have anything that's more like a normal pillow?
Anything would be comfortable with this convenient ear donut.
They isolate shockingly well. I don't even have anything playing through them right now.
And I think you said LTT something pillow. Yeah, let me say the new.
Oh, you got the backpack back there. Here we go.
Can confirm they are flat. Also can confirm they are extraordinarily difficult
to get out of your ears.
Like you gotta really wanna get them out of there.
Reach in, grab the little silicone anchor piece
and pull them out. But make no mistake, that's not a bad thing.
The comfort is really solid. Like something shoved in your ear canal
is always gonna feel like there's something in your ear canal, especially if you're not used to it.
But this is about as good as I felt. And more importantly,
they have not fallen out overnight yet. My daily driver AirPod Pro 2s on the other hand
fall out at least three times a week while sleeping.
Elijah, who wrote this video and also has sleeping issues tried using these buds.
And his first thought was he forgot that they were in when he woke up because they didn't press against his ear
and they stayed in all night. It's a pretty similar system to what I've seen on some workout buds,
but way less bulky. Let's take the silicone tip off though
and look at the device itself. There you go.
That's it. I think I've eaten pieces of corn that are bigger than that.
They are less than one centimeter wide in each direction.
And my first thought after seeing these was they're probably gonna sound like hot poo poo.
But they don't. They're not streets ahead of audio file headphones
or anything, but the sound quality is reflective of the team
that built them. A group of ex-Bose engineers who worked on the now discontinued Bose sleep buds,
which might explain the very similar looks.
Now, a small elephant in the room is the lack of active noise cancellation.
Given that Bose is known to be a leader in the space and Oslo worked with Bose
on licensing technology for this product, we wanted to understand why the decision
was made to leave it out. When we jumped on a call with the engineers,
they explained that while canceling as much noise as possible can help with focusing on work,
sleeping with noise cancellation has been found to wake people up more in the middle of the night
than something like a white noise machine. For my part though,
I suspect it has more to do with maintaining the small form factor and with maximizing battery life.
And after using them, I actually don't mind the trade-off.
The sleep buds create a very good seal in the ear canal,
which combined with their selection of ambient noises helps to very effectively muffle outside sound.
It's so effective that I can't put them in until pillow talk is 100% over
because I will definitely miss that one last. Good night, I love you.
Which is gonna earn me a shove in the backside. I love you too, Han. It was the sleep buds.
Anyway, your selected ambient noise gets loaded onto the sleep buds themselves.
As a Vancouver boy, I'm partial to misty rain,
but there's also fire crackling and a variety of other brown noises,
which yes, is what they're called. The exact noises are not the important part right now though,
since they're working on adding more. The big deal is the part about the sound being stored locally
after you pair the sleep buds to your phone. This functionality allows the sleep buds
to be used in two ways, stand alone with no connection to your phone,
or the same way that I use my regular Bluetooth earphones,
which is typically to listen to reruns of adventure time until I fall asleep.
After that, things get super cool. The sleep buds will detect
if your media playback stops for some reason, blacks, or it'll use its onboard sensors
to determine if you fall in asleep and it will switch over to your selected ambient audio track.
And so far, it's been working a treat for me.
Yeah, well, the first night I actually got woken up
by my ambient sound, but I have since determined that that was a skill issue.
I didn't dial in the volume before going to bed, so the sudden loud firecrackling sound,
which I also didn't configure on the first night, a little alarming.
The other major stumbling block I hit was Bluetooth connectivity issues,
but once again, it was down to not fully understanding the product.
In order to achieve their impressive and personally validated 10 hour battery life,
Oslo is using Bluetooth LE or low energy.
The problem is that while many modern chipsets do support Bluetooth LE,
some phone makers, notably Apple, have not yet chosen to enable it in their firmware.
So Oslo is using kind of a hacky workaround.
The sleep buds connect to your case using Bluetooth LE,
and then the case connects to your phone using whatever your phone supports.
So I had some range issues when I was close to my phone,
but not close to the case. And also when I put my ARM over my face like this,
but there's no fix for that issue
because water is not good, your body's full of water.
Since we're on the subject of the case, the sleep buds magnetically snap in for charging,
taking about two and a half hours to reach a full charge. And the case features light, noise,
and temperature sensors that for now will only detect when you're sleeping
to do that audio switchover thing, but for the future,
Oslo plans to expand the information they look for, so it'll be able to tell you
if an ambulance drove by your window at two in the morning, which caused you to wake up
and it wasn't your stupid brain's fault. That's not here yet,
but they're hoping to roll it out soon, and they have committed that there will be
no subscription fee for the functionality. Absolute bro move.
Now, there have been so many products pitched to us in the past that claim, better health monitoring,
or better lifestyle that we've turned down, or we've discontinued our partnership with
because they have an outrageous or deceptive subscription model. So it was pretty refreshing to hear the CEO say that,
quote, they are pretty committed that the hardware, the noise masking library, and the sleep tracking
are all part of the purchase price. That doesn't mean there will never be a subscription,
but it does seem to at least indicate that you get to keep the functionality you paid for
without getting rug pulled. I hate that that's the W these days,
but it kind of is. I also appreciate the W of being able to highlight
both what's good and what's imperfect about these.
In spite of the sponsored nature of this video. Oslo's not hiding that these are not a replacement
for your fruit flavored ear beans. The lack of on-device volume control in particular
is a bit of a downer for me. And they don't expect me to say that I magically
got an uninterrupted eight hours with sleep buds.
What I will say though, is that for the type of sleep aid that I need,
which is comfortable, all night, noise blocking,
these are solid. And I can see why so many people were jazzed
to see the sleep buds return. If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe check out the time that Alex and I tried to build
a temperature controlled mattress topper.