Wireless Sleeping Headphones & Sports Headband – Perfect for Sleep, Workouts, Jogging, and Insomnia Relief

Earbuds are the wrong shape for a pillow

If you fall asleep to music, a podcast or white noise, you already know the problem. An earbud is a hard object sitting in the one place your head presses into the pillow. Roll onto your side and it grinds into your ear canal until you wake up and take it out. Over-ear headphones are worse — they turn your ear into a hinge.

This is a soft knit headband with two flat speakers slid inside it. There is no hard shell, nothing in your ear canal, and nothing standing proud of the fabric. Pull it down over your eyes and it doubles as a sleep mask. Push it up to your hairline in the morning and it is a sweatband for your run.

The speakers are thinner than your fingertip

That is the entire design. Each speaker is a flat oval disc, wrapped in the same fabric as the band. Hold one on edge between finger and thumb and it is visibly thinner than the fingertip holding it. When your head goes down, your ear meets cloth. The disc compresses into the pillow with the rest of the band instead of pressing back at you.

The discs sit loose in a fabric channel rather than being sewn to one spot, so you slide them along the band until they line up with your own ears. That is worth doing on the first night — it is the difference between the sound arriving at your ear and arriving at your temple. It also means they can shift if you toss around, and you nudge them back. We would rather tell you that than have you discover it.

It covers your eyes as well as playing the audio

Worn low, the band sits across your eyes the way a sleep mask does, so the streetlight through the curtain gap and your partner's reading lamp stop being your problem. That is a genuine two-jobs-at-once benefit and it is the reason people who bought it for the audio end up wearing it for the dark.

What it does not do

We would rather lose the sale than have this arrive and disappoint you.

• It does not cancel noise. There is no active noise cancelling in a flat fabric band, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What it does is mask — playing rain, a fan track or a podcast over the top of the noise you are trying to ignore. That works well on a snoring partner or a hotel corridor. It will not silence a building site.
• It is not built for critical listening. Small flat drivers held against the side of your head give you clear speech and comfortable music. They do not give you the bass of a proper pair of headphones. Buyers who love this one are listening to audiobooks, meditations, white noise and podcasts.
• It is not a medical device. It plays audio and it blocks light. Whether that helps you sleep is a question about you, not about the product.

The speakers slide out, so the band can be washed

This is the question everyone asks second. The speakers are not sewn in. They sit loose in a fabric channel that runs through the band, and they slide out of it the same way they slide along it. The supplier lists the band as washable, and this is why: take the electronics out and what is left is cloth.

Take the speakers out first, every time, and let the band dry completely before you feed them back in. We are deliberately not printing a wash temperature or a machine cycle, because the supplier does not document one and we are not going to guess with your headband. Treat it as a hand wash until we can tell you otherwise.

Charge it in the evening, it lasts the night

The supplier documents a two-hour charge and over ten hours of playing time. Ten hours covers a night with room to spare, or a long-haul flight, or a week of hour-long runs between charges. In practice most people put it on charge while they shower and forget about it.

The three buttons on the outside of the band handle volume down, play and skip, and volume up, so you can turn the podcast down without opening your eyes or finding your phone. It pairs over Bluetooth to a phone, a tablet or a laptop the same way any wireless headphone does.

It goes where headphones are awkward

On a plane or a train it does the job of an eye mask and a pair of headphones at once, and there is nothing to fall out when you finally drop off. In a gym class it stays put through a run or a lift, because there is nothing rigid on it to bounce. Same band, three places you would otherwise be carrying something else.

What arrives

• One knit headband, in the colour you choose — heather grey or black
• Two flat oval speakers and a three-button control tab, joined by a thin cord and already fitted inside the band
• A USB charging cable
• A printed instruction sheet

No charger plug is included, and no carry case. Use any USB port or phone charger you already own.

Questions worth asking first