The Ozlo Sleepbuds 2 are the most comfortable sleep earbuds I've tried, but they'll cost you

Sleep earbuds have almost no room for error. For me, they have to be small enough that I can lie on my side without feeling like I’m being drilled through the skull, comfortable enough to wear for eight hours straight, and dependable enough that I’m not squinting at a Bluetooth menu in the dark. Most of the best headphones for sleeping nail one or two of those and fumble the rest. The Ozlo Sleepbuds 2 are the company’s second attempt to get all three right at once, and this time, they have mostly succeeded.

What I like about the Ozlo Sleepbuds 2

The fit is my favorite thing about Ozlo’s new sleepbuds. The Sleepbuds 2 are noticeably smaller and lighter than the Soundcore Sleep A30, which is the pair I’ve been reaching for on press trips to drown out coworkers’ snoring or any other sounds through hotel walls. As a side sleeper, the Ozlo buds sit flush enough in my ears that rolling in the sheets doesn’t push them into my ear canals, which is often the most annoying thing about sleeping in earbuds. There’s no clever trick to this, really— they’re just physically smaller than nearly everything else in the category, and for something you wear unconsciously for eight hours, a smaller size does matter.

The case is the other big change, and it’s the one that fixes my biggest complaint about the originals. There’s now a button tucked between the two earbuds that pairs the buds instantly and starts or stops the built-in sleep sounds without having to touch my phone. It also snoozes the alarm, which saves me the trouble of having to fumble with an app while waking up. The original Sleepbuds’ pairing process was pretty frustrating, and a new data pin between the buds and the case makes the whole handshake faster and more reliable. Range is better too — the buds stay connected much farther from the case than the first generation, and when they do drop, they come back almost immediately. I was able to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night while wearing the earbuds, with no connectivity issues.

The app is a real step up as well. Navigation is cleaner, the sound library is much bigger, and the buds now hand off automatically — they detect when you’ve actually fallen asleep and switch from whatever you were streaming over to noise masking on their own. Sleep tracking and environmental monitoring (the case measures room noise, light, and temperature) sync fast in the morning, usually within a minute. Ozlo has also added dedicated modes for podcasts and air travel, plus finer EQ control, so you can push the masking sound louder when you’re on a plane and back off when you’re at home.

I put that airplane mode to work on a flight, and the combination of a good seal and the masking sound was more than enough to drown out the cabin’s constant drone. I didn’t have a crying baby to contend with, but for steady engine noise, this is as effective as anything I’ve worn to sleep — with the caveat that the masking sound does most of the work rather than the seal itself. As actual headphones, they’re fine — I listened to some light music and a podcast and had no complaints, but nothing about them would make you reach for these over a normal pair while you’re awake. That’s not what they’re for.

Battery life is now up to 14 hours, versus 10 on the first generation, and it’s the best figure in the category by a wide margin. After streaming for eight hours, I still had ~30% left, and the case adds roughly three to four full recharges. For anyone who streams a podcast to fall asleep and then wants masking sound running until morning, that headroom can be the difference between buds that work and ones that die on you before you wake up.

What I don’t like about the Ozlo Sleepbuds 2

There’s still no active noise canceling, and Ozlo’s justification is that ANC doesn’t handle unpredictable noise like snoring well enough to justify making the buds bigger. There’s something to that argument — masking a snore with steady sound can work better than trying to cancel it — but why not both? The Soundcore Sleep A30 does include ANC as well as a library of white noise in a package that costs less. When dealing with a constant low hum rather than an erratic one, that makes a difference. What you’re getting from Ozlo instead is passive isolation plus masking, and how well that works depends entirely on how well the tips seal in your ears.

With a good seal, our measurements put the average perceived loudness reduction at 71.3%, which is respectable for earbuds with no active noise cancelation. But that figure is carried almost entirely by the mids and highs. Above 2kHz, where voices and clatter sit, the Sleepbuds 2 cut 30dB or more. Below 200Hz — car engines or the bass bleeding through a wall — you’re only getting about 5 to 10dB of reduction. Blocking that bottom end is precisely what ANC is good at.

Then there’s the price. At $279, these are a single-purpose device, and it’s a purpose you can approximate for far less. Plenty of people already own earbuds that will play a rain sound at low volume; what you’re really paying for here is the comfort, the all-night battery, and the sleep data around it. That’s all useful, but it’s a narrow use case, and $279 is a lot to spend on a thing you only use at night.

The case charges over USB-C only — there’s no wireless charging, which is a strange thing to leave out of a device that lives permanently on a nightstand. That’s the one surface in the house where a charging pad makes the most sense, and instead, you’re plugging a cable in every few days. There’s also no Bluetooth multipoint, meaning the buds can only connect to one device at a time. If you’re like me and fall asleep to something on a tablet and want your phone’s alarm to reach you, it won’t unless you remember to switch manually.

Should you buy the Ozlo Sleepbuds 2?

Yes, if you’re the specific person these are built for: someone who genuinely cannot sleep through noise, sleeps on their side, and has already tried and abandoned regular earbuds because they hurt after an hour. The Sleepbuds 2 are the most comfortable thing in this category and now have the battery life to actually last a full night, and Ozlo has clearly gone through the first generation’s complaint list and worked down it. The pairing is fixed, the case button is a genuinely good idea, and the app no longer feels like an afterthought.

But this is still a luxury fix for a problem that some people can solve more cheaply. If you want noise canceling in your sleep earbuds, the Soundcore Sleep A30 ($199.99 at Manufacturer site) gives you that for less money, at the cost of a slightly larger fit. If you mostly want something comfortable to fall asleep to and don’t care about sleep tracking, cheap earbuds and a white noise app will get you 80% of the way there. And if you already own the original Sleepbuds, the upgrade case rests almost entirely on whether the pairing and battery issues were the things driving you crazy. If they were, this fixes them. If they weren’t, hang onto what you have.