Sleeping in a hot room with no cooling fan is unbearable and my sleep quality is always worse through summer. I lost hours of sleep and woke up with bags under my eyes, but that changed when I tried Philips’ sleep headphones.
Combined with global sleep expert Kokoon Technology, the Philips Sleep Headphones work with AI to adjust audio as you fall asleep and it tracks your sleeping pattern throughout the night. It’s worth noting the Kokoon App does require an active subscription plan, but it has an extensive library of music, meditation and coaching advice.
As getting to sleep whenever the weather is warm is a struggle for me, I was excited to test the headphones, which claim to use “the world’s thinnest earbuds designed for ultimate sleep comfort”. Originally priced at £229.99, it’s now been lowered to £189.99 and shoppers can get an extra 10% off using code ‘SUMMER10‘ – which brings the price further down to £170.99.
For first-time use, the Kokoon app offers a three-month subscription for free and then it will charge you £35 for a year, but you can sign up for the newsletter and get 15% off, so it works out at roughly £2.48 per month.
The box also comes with five pairs of earbuds in different sizes, a charging cable and a very slim travel case. Trying on the headphones for the first time, I agree that the earbuds are the thinniest I’ve tried and they are comfortable to wear even when sleeping on the side.
On the app, I can choose different white noise backgrounds and from the data analysis, I fell asleep fast to the sounds of ‘meadow’ and ‘rainy day cafe’. On top of that, I can choose calming music to play – it can vary from plain music to a meditation story shared by a narrator. I would avoid using ‘burning campfire’ as the crack of wood gave me a scare when I was about to fall asleep.
Audio not only masks external sounds and distractions but calms the mind – with sounds like white and pink noise scientifically proven to slow your brain waves. It seemed to work on me perfectly as the app showed I fell asleep in 15 minutes on one of the hottest nights this year.
I also find it useful listening to the ‘good sleep foundations’, an eight-part audio guided by experts to share ways to improve sleep like closing curtains, breathing techniques and put my mind at ease. About 30 minutes before sleep, I took a Diso Snooze strip, a cherry-flavoured dissolvable vitamin strip to help me get to sleep.
The individual packaging is also travel-friendly and it calme my mood after a long day of work.
One thing to note is that the Philips Sleep headphones are not active noise-cancelling headphones, it in fact masks out external noises and the clever sensors monitor my sleep activity and automatically fades out the music and turn off as I drift into the land of nod.
I am not the only one mind-blown by the technology, one customer left a glowing review and said: “I’ve tried several sleep buds and Kokoon and the accompanying app worked out the best of them all. They fit well, are comfortable to wear, block out external noise.”
Another said: “These have been a game-changer. Have really helped with my sleep troubles.”
When I looked at the data, it showed me a sleeping pattern of two to three hours as I realised I tended to take it off in the middle of the night. But the bar charts told me when I was in light sleep, deep sleep or rem (stands for rapid eye movement, which is a stage when one usually dreams).
Anker’s Sleep A20, £119.99, is another one available on the market but it does not have a zig-zag cable so it might fall off while you move around in bed. And for those looking for earbuds to block out noises like snoring, Loop’s Quiet2 helps muffle unwanted noise when you need it most.