Sleep better. Cover unwanted noise with soothing sounds.

Your device (smartphone, tablet etc.) must support Bluetooth® Low Energy (also called Bluetooth Smart) to work correctly with the Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™. Apple devices with iOS 10 or later are compatible, and most devices with Android 5.0 and newer versions support Bluetooth Low Energy.

Noise cancellation is most effective in environments with lots of low-frequency sound (aeroplanes, buses etc.); in Bose Acoustic Noise Cancelling products, it’s combined with passive blocking to achieve good reduction of sound at all frequencies. However, no combination of passive and active technologies that reduce sound entering your ears can make unwanted sound, particularly at voice frequencies, completely inaudible. And when a sound is bothering you—like your snoring partner keeping you awake—you want it to be inaudible. Noise masking can achieve this.

Masking works because of the way that different sounds combine in our inner ears; if they have the right match of frequencies and one (the masking sound) is just slightly louder than the other (the disturbing sound), your inner ear and brain cannot detect the disturbing sound. Cancellation creates quiet in our ear canals; masking—in the right conditions—creates quiet in our minds.

Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ combine passive blocking of sleep-disturbing sounds with a choice of sounds that are engineered to mask what isn’t blocked by the eartips. The masking and passive blocking work together in synergy, so the masking can be listened to at a quiet level that is soothing and fades from your attention as you drift off to sleep.

No. Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ have been engineered specifically to solve the problem of unwanted noise keeping you from falling asleep and staying asleep. In order to achieve a form factor small enough to be comfortable for sleeping and to house batteries that can support sound playback for an entire night, we made the conscious design decision not to stream audio to the sleepbuds™. Instead, we store the sound files on each of the sleepbuds™ and play them back locally, dramatically extending the audio playback time achievable in this tiny form factor.

Depending on the size of the sound and your Bluetooth signal strength, a transfer should take between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Sound files are stored directly on each of the sleepbuds™ and, because of the small form factor of the sleepbuds™, the amount of storage is limited. The requirement to delete a sound (typically after you’ve reached 8–12 sounds) is based on the combined size of all the sounds on your sleepbuds™, not on the number of sounds. The Bose Sleep app will tell you when you need to delete a sound before transferring a new one from the Sound Library.

Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless technology, which is optimised for low battery consumption to achieve all-night battery life. While BLE works well for sending wireless commands (play, pause etc.), it’s not optimised for fast file transfers, as noted by the transfer times above. We recommend that you select a sound from the Sound Library to transfer before you go to bed. That way, the sound will be available for use the following night.

No. All sounds will be provided by Bose so that we can optimise the masking and/or relaxation experience.

All user control is done within the Bose Sleep app. This includes the selection of soothing sounds, volume control, setting alarms and managing updates. The sleepbuds™ will turn on automatically when you remove them from the case.

Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ default to playing the sounds all night. We recommend this setting so that your sleep is protected from noise disturbances throughout the entire night; there are many noise-induced “micro-awakenings” that can happen over the course of the night that you don’t realise, but they still negatively impact your sleep quality. However, you can choose to schedule a timer if you don’t want soothing sounds to play all night. This timer can be set within the Bose Sleep app and the sound will fade out when the timer ends.

Yes. If your phone battery dies and your phone disconnects from the sleepbuds™, they will still play your first scheduled alarm automatically. So, as long as you still have battery life in your sleepbuds™, you will still hear a wake-up alarm.

Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ are designed to mask unwanted noise and disturbances while you sleep. Because of this, they can affect your ability to hear other sounds, such as alarms, warning systems, people or pets.

However, to balance the levels of noise masking and awareness you want, you can set an appropriate volume level for your needs within the Bose Sleep app. The volume should be high enough to mask noises that disturb your sleep, but not so high that you can’t confidently be awoken by the sounds you want to hear. If you are still concerned about your ability to hear sounds while wearing the sleepbuds™, you may want to take alternative measures, such as relying on a partner, wearing only one of the sleepbuds™ or scheduling the masking sound timer.

Yes. You can choose to use just one of the sleepbuds™. Simply remove one of the sleepbuds™ from the case and play a sound.

Yes. The sleepbuds™ are sweat and water resistant. However, the charging case is not designed to be sweat or water resistant because it’s not a wearable product and is designed to reside in a benign environment (e.g. on a bedside table).

Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ achieve ultra-low radiation exposure because we do not stream audio or other content throughout the night. Instead, the product plays back audio files that are stored locally. In addition, the sleepbuds™ use a class III Bluetooth radio, which has the lowest transmit power among all the Bluetooth classes. Over an entire night, the sleepbuds™ emit a fraction of what traditional Bluetooth headsets emit during a single phone call.

We are also working on a feature called “phone-free mode”, which will allow you to disconnect the sleepbuds™ from your phone while still accessing limited functionality. Phone-free mode is coming soon.

No. Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ are a consumer product. As such, they don’t require a prescription or the referral of a doctor to purchase them.

We recognise that this is a product that you’ll be wearing for extended periods of time while you’re asleep. So we took extra care selecting a battery. Silver zinc batteries use a unique chemistry that self-limits power output for greater safety. These batteries have been tested by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and are certified by UL under the UL2054 Battery Standard.

Bedside sound machines and earplugs are currently the two most common approaches to mitigating night-time noise disturbances. However, neither are quite effective enough at blocking common night-time noise disturbances, especially when the noise source is a snoring partner right next to your head. In addition, with earplugs, there’s an anxiety that you won’t wake up to your alarm in the morning. Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ synergistically combine the underlying principles of sound machines and earplugs to give you dramatically superior noise blocking, while simultaneously giving you the confidence that you’ll still be able to wake up to your alarm in the morning.

Noise-masking sleepbuds™ were designed from the ground up to do one thing, and that was definitely not to just be another pair of earbuds. We started with the fundamental problem of unwanted noise in the bedroom and we laser-focused our engineering on singularly addressing that problem. This design approach led us to optimise around very different variables than normal earbuds do—most notably in the size of the sleepbuds™ and acoustics.

As the vast majority of people sleep with their ear pressing into a pillow, designing an in-ear device that is comfortable for side sleepers was of paramount importance—you can see this in how Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ are dramatically smaller than other wireless earbuds on the market. And our sounds have been carefully engineered to maximise both masking and relaxation, and can be played softly because of the way they’ve been designed to work with the noise reduction of the sleepbuds™ themselves.

We’ve limited the maximum sound pressure level (SPL) output of the sleepbuds™ to 70 dBA. This is based on the most conservative reference we are aware of: the World Health Organization’s 1980 “Environmental Health Criteria for Noise”, section 1.1.4. It states that there is “no identifiable risk of hearing damage” in noise levels of less than 75 dBA averaged over 8 hours. Most international standards use the equal energy rule to adjust the safe exposure time to a noise by doubling it for every 3-dB decrease in level. As such, the 75 dBA for 8 hours equates to 70 dB(A) for a full 24 hours. Read the World Health Organization’s 1980 “Environmental Health Criteria for Noise” document.

By comparison, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) issued a document in 1998; in Chapter 3, it summarises studies that show the increased risk of hearing loss after 40 years of exposure to 80 dBA for 8 hours daily (the lowest exposure for which data was provided) at between 0–5%. NIOSH endorsed the 3-dB equal energy rule. This would allow 5 dB more exposure than the WHO guideline does. Read the NIOSH document. Similarly, in the European Union (EU), the Noise at Work Regulations (Directive 2003/10/EC) set the maximum 8-hour exposure limit at 80 dBA before some type of hearing protection must be provided. Below this limit, there are no limits to exposure. Read the Noise at Work Regulations document.

Bose noise-masking sleepbuds™ are a unique addition to the Bose product line-up. As the first of its kind, we’re providing a warranty that’s tailored specifically to this product. Bose sleepbuds™ are covered by the Bose Limited Warranty for a period of two years.