Bose's new $250 'Sleepbuds' are designed to help you sleep - here's how they work

Bose

• Bose's latest release is a wireless pair of earbuds that are supposed to help you sleep.
• Sleepbuds block out sound - first through the seal created by the earbud tip, and then mask it by playing relaxing sounds controlled via a mobile app.
• They're $250, and are available now.

Living in a city, sleeping next to a snoring partner, or having noisy neighbors will likely affect your sleep schedule.

That's the reasoning behind Bose's latest release: the $250 noise-masking Sleepbuds.

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The Sleepbuds are low-profile and designed to comfortably sit in your ear all night without falling out.

The ear tip, which comes in three sizes, helps block out external noise, and the pre-loaded sounds on the device's memory chip help mask out the rest of the noise that might leak in.

There isn't any active-noise cancellation in the headphones, which Bose engineers at a press event said was in order to save space. The simplified design, including a small silver-zinc battery with up to 16 hours of life, allows the Sleepbuds to have a diameter smaller than a penny. Thus, they are intended to be comfortable while lying on either your back or your side, something that isn't always possible with wired or wireless headphones.

The Sleepbuds are meant to be paired up with the Bose Sleep mobile app, which acts as a sort of remote to play the on-board sounds in the Sleepbuds. So far there are 10 pre-loaded sounds, including ocean and forest sounds, but the company plans to add more.

These earbuds were not designed for music or podcast listening - only for sleeping or relaxing. If music functionality was included, the low profile couldn't have been achieved, Bose engineers said.

Bose

Through the Bose Sleep app, users can choose the sound they want playing and its duration, and they can set an alarm to wake them in the morning.

Bose engineers said they were concerned about the potential for hearing damage that could occur after wearing earbuds playing sound night after night, so they made sure to keep the maximum volume well below the upper limits where damage starts to occur.

The Sleepbuds come with a storage case that also serves as a charging station, which uses a mini-USB cable. Unplugged, the case can hold an additional 16 hours of battery life for the earbuds.