1MORE SleepBuds Z30 – Using earbuds to lull your way to sleep (Review)

I am a hard sell when it comes to wearing any kind of earbuds to sleep. Some companies have marked full-size headphones for this purpose and I have never understood the point. The moment you begin to roll around in your sleep, they are likely to shift off and wake you up. However, 1MORE has a pair of tiny earbuds that don’t stick out, fall out, or create a lot of pressure for side sleepers. It’s the 1MORE SleepBuds Z30 Earbuds.

These really are tiny and when you place them inside your ear, they actually sit inside without any edges or parts sticking out that could catch onto your sheets/pillow. This means they will stay in your ears no matter how many times you roll around in your sleep (trust me, I have tried, including trying to shake them out excessively).

Looking at the above image, you can see how they compare in size to a quarter sitting next to them (I assume I don’t have to say “quarter not included”). The bodies of each bud features a thin profile and very little weight (2.7 grams each). So they don’t feel like you have something giant shoved into your ear.

That being said, if you are a side sleeper, you will still feel something. The feeling isn’t terribly noticeable, but it is there. You can’t really do anything about this as it’s like having a small pebble in your shoe. No matter how big that pebble is or what shape it takes, you will still know that there is a pebble in your shoe. Only in this case, the pressure of it being in there is so small, you shouldn’t have any troubles tuning it out and falling asleep.

The only slight caveat I noticed is that if you have hair in your ears (which most people would), as you shift while sleeping on your side, you will hear the hair sliding/rubbing against the bud. It’s about the equivalent of having polyester pillow cases or anything else that might make a slight noise as you brush against them. I’m stretching a little when coming up with a comparison, but that seems more fair that calling it a light plastic-like sound as that might come off sounding (text-wise) worse than it is.

Like almost any pair of TWS earbuds, they come tucked away into a small case that helps to keep them charged when not in use. Each bud will last up to 8 hours, with the case taking that total up to 32 hours depending on how you are using them. Or how loud you take them–although that shouldn’t be an issue as you are buying these to help you sleep, not to violently wake you up at random when your favorite Gwar track comes on.

The case is simply a means for traveling with them in your pocket or bag without taking up any space or noticeable weight. So you can go on vacation and likely not ever have to charge everything for up to 4 nights of rest.

There is nothing fancy like Qi charging or anything. You simply charge them via the USB-C port on the back of the case and that takes care of everything.

They come with a total of four pairs of tips to help make sure you dial things down to the right size for your ears. You can to make sure they fit snugly without creating too much pressure. There is no having to have a perfect seal to trap in the bass since there really is no bass to worry about with these.

There is a USB-C cable for charging everything and a small/soft drawstring bag for storying everything when needed. And, of course, some instructions. Although everything is pretty straight forward out of the box.

The 1MORE app helps to manage these buds like most 1MORE products. It’s a simple interface for this model as there isn’t really much to them. There is no built-in microphone for phone calls or anything, because again, you are buying these for sleep and nothing else.

You can use them to listen to music, or you can choose from a library of soothing sounds within the app. Like drizzling rain, wind, the rumbling of a volcano, or anything else that you might find relaxing (to each their own). There are 30 sounds to choose between and five different timer settings for automatically shutting off to save battery.

They support up to 16bit/48kHz sound and take advantage of Bluetooth 5.3 for less compression and better battery performance. When it comes to “high-res”, you won’t be too excited about the specs, but again, these are for sleep. The range is mostly within the mids to highs. Nothing boomy or exciting to the ears. A lot like using a typical soothing noise machine, only its tucked directly into your ears.

Besides mentioning that they are planar magnetic (which doesn’t make much of a difference this round). 1MORE says they will block out up to 24 decibels of environmental noise so you can focus on your sleep. Although, unless you tighten the tips to your ears (size-wise) to get the best seal, you likely won’t actually see 24 decibels filtered out. Even with the bigger tips, I could still hear just about anything around me just fine. Let it be a quiet fan kicking on or a plane flying over head. There is no active noise canceling or anything with this model. Just the seal of the silicone tips and the drop in decibels that provides.

Our Conclusion

These are some of the smallest sleep-style earbuds I have ever tested. They fit neatly into the ears and never (in my experience, thus far) fall out no matter how active of a mover your are in your sleep. Again, I tried shaking them out and they still stayed in there.

The battery life is good enough as long as you don’t need constant music for 8 hours. Typically, you would have them time out after an hour or more. But this all depends on the user. The fact that they are BT 5.3 helps thanks to BT 5.3’s lower power requirements. This is important since the smaller the bud, the less space you get for internal batteries.

It would have been nice to have active noise cancelation to help isolate the sound around you a bit. However, this would deteriorate the battery life too much. BT is getting good, but it’s not there yet when it comes to get this kind of battery life in such a small size. Maybe next time though if things shift to Bluetooth 5.4, or more likely something closer 6.0. Still, it would be nice to make the world around you disappear some more if it involves having to stick something in your ears.

The price point seems a bit high for what they are limited to. Maybe this is due to the use of planar magnetics. Hard to say for sure. But their MSRP is $79.99, which seems a bit high for limited (frequency) range buds that don’t really pack a lot of features. It could be because we are a hard sell as our standards can be a little hard to work with. However, this is a good brand with many great products that have released over the years. So that helps. That, and they are also on sale at the time of writing this.

Specifications:

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