Bose|遮噪睡眠耳塞ii

谈到消噪耳机产品，不得不提的一个品牌就是 “Bose”，其产品有着不错的降噪效果，尤其是今年的新消噪耳塞，效果颇为出色。在个人消费领域，该公司的消噪技术不仅被运用在娱乐、运动用的耳机上，实际上他们在睡眠领域也有参一脚。

Bose 的全新遮噪睡眠耳塞二代产品已经在国内上市，如果你想了解这款耳塞在助眠方面究竟有多大用处，可以继续往下看。当然，初代产品我们在两年前也有评测，感兴趣的话可以对比一下。

外观上，遮噪睡眠耳塞 II 与它的前辈差别不大。新一代耳塞采用了防摩擦涂层，佩戴后可避免听到 “吱吱” 的摩擦声——减少更多干扰音源，这个升级点很重要。耳塞本体非常小巧，按说明正确佩戴后对侧卧几乎无影响，不会有明显异物感。实际测试下来，次日醒来耳塞并没有掉落，也就是说你在睡觉时可以自由翻身，不必担心耳塞意外滑落的状况。

耳塞配套的充电盒也十分有意思。滑动开关盖子的手感，怎么讲，可以用 “绵密” 这个不恰当的词来形容——滑动过程 “柔”，开启、关闭状态下，却又很干脆、不拖沓。滑盖式的设计，让你在使用时能非常方便地开盖，收纳耳塞时操作也极其方便、简约。呼吸灯则是可以让人盯上许久，不感无聊；同时具备令人放松的 “奇妙” 功效。

与 Bose 的其他耳塞产品一样，遮噪睡眠耳塞 II 总共也提供三种尺寸耳塞供选择，以适用于更多人群。依照 Bose Sleep App 的引导，可以完成正确佩戴并进行一系列设置，包括闹钟、遮噪音效等。这里要顺带点赞一下 App，它的引导流程十分友好。

看到这，或许你仍然好奇它如何起作用，简单讲即是：被动消噪加遮噪音效。被动消噪好理解——耳套能紧密贴合你的耳朵，形成密封效果，实现被动消噪。遮噪音效，引用一段官方描述：音效经过优化，可以持续播放，而且频率组合恰到好处，使你的大脑不太会察觉到不想听到的噪声。

打开 Bose Sleep App 进行设置，可从 14 款遮噪音效、15 种 “自然景观” 音效以及 10 种放松音调中选择你想要的。遮噪音效能够将夜晚的噪声频率遮盖在舒缓音效之下，“自然景观” 音效可以把你脑海中繁杂的思绪带入乡间、海岸、栈道等之上，放松音调则能帮助你舒缓压力。

效果如何？体验后，我的感觉是，遮噪音效的确可以遮蔽大部分噪音；放松音调与 “自然景观” 音效在你大脑飞速运转无法在入睡前松弛的情况下，帮助慢慢放松下来，以便尽快入睡。个人比较喜欢海边和下雨天的音效。

当然了，我自身的入睡时间很短，睡眠质量也较高，所以对比不戴遮噪睡眠耳塞，“入眠” 效果的差异可能并不大。

如果你平时在入睡前确实会受到噪音等因素较多影响，在此还是建议优先考虑寻求专业医师的帮助。至于最终要不要使用这款耳塞，还是先听听专业人士的建议为好。如果你有精神或其他方面的症状，这一点尤为需要注意。

图：Bose

回到主角身上，鉴于耳塞的身材如此娇小，它的续航能力如何呢？官方数据是耳塞本体能持续使用 10 小时，充电盒可以给耳塞充电 3 次，总共 40 小时。以其中的一次使用为例：23 点 30 分带上耳塞躺平，设置音效为整晚播放，总共睡 8.5 小时起床，结果电量剩余 40% 左右。官方数据还是要保守一些，如果使用之前电量剩余 70% 以上，用到起床时间（睡 8 小时左右）问题应该不大。

上文有提到闹钟，没错，你可以通过 App 设置独立于手机闹铃的个人闹钟。目前有 4 种铃声可选，音量、闹铃是否渐强播放，这些都可以自定义。所以戴上它后，手机上的闹钟就可以选择关闭了，如果你枕边还有人的话，就不会吵到他/她了。

同时，还可以设置电话提醒。当有电话打进时，耳塞会发出提醒声，不过它并不支持接听电话。写到这，我不禁在想：真正会用到这个功能的人应该不多吧，毕竟买它就是用来助眠的，谁在睡觉期间会想着 “电话有没有漏接” 的问题啊……不过换个角度，这个时候 “有总比没有好” 也是适用的。

总结一下，如果你并非入睡困难者，但保有一颗好奇心的话，当然可以尝试一下这款遮噪睡眠耳塞。另一方面，正如上文所提到的，如果你长期饱受入睡困难等问题的折磨，建议先听取专业人士的建议，再考虑是否要入手 Bose 的这款产品。

The original Bose Sleepbuds were not exactly a rousing success. Long-term testing revealed inconsistent battery life, random shut-offs and unreliable Bluetooth. But the company claims it has fixed those problems and landed on a product that should please its demanding customers.

Brian Oh, our senior video producer here at Engadget and I have both been testing the new $250 Bose Sleepbuds 2 to see if they can help us rest a little easier at night.

Pros

Comfortable and small
Wide variety of sounds
Simple app

Cons

Extremely expensive
Can’t use them as regular headphones
Some of the sounds are lacking

Brian, like many of us, has trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep.

The root cause of his sleep issues are very similar to my own: an overactive brain. Neither of us can sleep in silence because our inner voice literally WILL. NOT. SHUT. UP. For me this has led to a lifetime of chronic insomnia that has at times required medication. There are, of course, differences in our situations. Brian tends to be a light sleeper, waking up at every little sound including his snoring dog. I, on the other hand, could probably sleep through armageddon. (I still frequently wake up in the middle of the night, just usually due to back pain or night terrors… I’m a blast to share a bed with.)

After two weeks we can both report at least some success. The bigger question is, can a wearable sound machine ever be worth $250?

Now, I want to be clear: The Bose Sleepbuds are not headphones. You can not use them to listen to music or podcasts. They can’t answer phone calls. You load a selection of soothing sounds on them from Bose’s library and… that’s it. And yes, you load the sounds on them, not stream. The Bluetooth here isn’t any good for streaming audio, and frankly it’s pretty damn slow for transferring even the small files we’re talking about.

The Sleepbuds are very much a single-use gadget. So, everything rides on how well it does that one thing. In order to succeed they need to be small and comfortable enough to wear all night. They need to block enough sound to keep the nonstop traffic outside at bay, or at least muffle the loud snorer next to you. But they also need to let enough in that a smoke alarm will get you up and moving. The soundscapes also need to be pleasing to the ear, without obvious seams, and cover a wide range of styles to suit people’s tastes. Lastly, they need to be easy to use because no one wants to fight with a buggy and complicated app as they’re getting ready for some shuteye.

Let’s go through these requirements one-by-one, starting with comfort.

Are the Sleepbuds 2 comfortable? Yes, with some caveats.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The soft-touch plastic and antifriction coating are honestly better than basically any earbud, wireless or otherwise I’ve ever worn. Brian also had few complaints. These have all the hallmarks of the sort of premium products Bose has built its name on. And the seal keeps out enough of your environment that you might not even need the sounds if all you’re doing is trying to keep a noisy radiator at bay.

My wife is an incredibly light sleeper; she requires absolute silence. If I get out of bed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, she shoots up like someone just kicked in the front door. So, I’ve tried to wear earbuds to bed before since our sleeping habits are so different, but I just can’t do it. I had no problem passing out with the Sleepbuds in my ears, though.

As the night drags on things get a little different.

Brian, for instance, is a side sleeper, and while he found the buds comfortable enough in a vacuum, he had to position his pillow just right so that it wasn’t shoving them deeper into his ear and disrupting his sleep.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

I toss and turn a lot in my sleep and almost every night either I would end up in a position where the buds were pressing uncomfortably into my ear, or they would just fall out. Brian also had one of the buds fall out a few times and we can both confirm that trying to find these tiny earbuds in your bed while half asleep without glasses on is a surefire way to ruin your night.

So, for short periods of time in a controlled environment, the Sleepbuds 2 are extremely comfortable. But, in actual use it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

The same is true of the sound selection. It took both me and Brian a few nights to find the sounds that worked for each of us. He preferred the steady hum of the Warm Static under the Noise Masking category, while I was drawn to the ambient drones of Wanderlust found in the Tranquilities section.

The Noise Masking, Naturescapes and musical choices cover a lot of different ground that should satisfy a wide variety of tastes. There are 50 sounds in total, which is pretty decent and they’re all perfectly seamless, too. Yes, you can tell they’re relatively short audio loops, but you’d be hard-pressed to identify the loop points.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Now, personally, I found the Naturescapes and Noise Masking settings to be almost oppressive, despite the fact that I often use nature sounds as a sleep aid. (I’m partial to crickets and thunderstorms.) Brian, on the other hand, thought the Tranquilities were just too distracting and could only imagine using them for meditation.

And, look, you can’t please all the people all of the time, but I like my nature sounds. The thing is, I just don’t like the nature sounds here. The Boardwalk, for example, sounds less like waves crashing on a beach and more like someone caught a fraction of a second of a wave and looped it until it was basically indistinguishable from whitenoise. With no variation or movement, the Naturescapes just… don’t sound natural.

This would be less of an issue if you could simply pump in your own sounds. I often like to fire up Headspace to do a wind-down exercise and meditate before bed, but I can’t use that with the Sleepbuds. And I have even created my own sleep sounds from field recordings I’ve taken of storms, crickets and katydids. If the Sleepbuds worked just like any other set of Bluetooth earbuds I could simply listen to that. But, you’re stuck with what Bose gives you.

You’ll obviously need to use the app to browse the sounds and load them on to the earbuds. I’m happy to report it’s clean and simple and functional. One of my favorite options is phone-free mode. Basically it just programs the Sleepbuds to play a specific sound the moment they’re taken out of their case. That means you actually don’t need to use the app at all, which is nice if it’s late and you’re exhausted. This does disable a few features, but honestly it’s not a huge loss.

There were a few questionable decisions made during the design of the app, though. For one, there’s no master list to browse where you can see what is on your earbuds and swap sounds. Instead you swipe through them one by one, and you’re only given a prompt to remove sounds if you try to add a new one, but there’s no more storage.

Since there’s no streaming of Bluetooth audio, all the sound previews happen on your phone, not on the buds. Which means unless you want to piss off your bedmate, you better figure out what you want before you lie down. Lastly, you can’t browse sounds and see what’s available unless the Sleepbuds are connected to your phone, which requires taking them out of their case.

And then there are the alerts. You can have the Sleepbuds ring in your ears if you get a call, which I guess is useful? Honestly, something like alerts from my home security system would be far more helpful. Or even just my phone’s alarms. The Bose Sleep app has an alarm feature, but you can’t simply forward your existing alarms to the buds.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

These are all minor inconveniences, but they add up.

The problem is, since this is such a niche single-purpose gadget, there should be basically zero inconveniences for $250. Sure, the Sleepbuds 2 helped me sleep, but not much more so than Headspace or my own nature recordings. Brian meanwhile, had to develop a convoluted system of playing a podcast on his phone loud enough that he could hear it over the Warm Static on the Sleepbuds to really find a workable solution.

We both agreed that the Bose Sleepbuds 2 aren’t bad; they’re just not great. And they’re definitely way too expensive. If you were desperate to completely block the outside world and struggled to fall asleep every night, they might be a great investment at $100, or even $150. But a $250 wearable whitenoise machine is borderline absurd.

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