There are plenty of products out there to try to help you sleep. Anker has already taken a stab at this with the Soundcore Sleep A20, and now it’s trying again with the improved Sleep A30 ($199.99). These buds are designed to sit flush inside your ear, block out noise actively and passively, and lull you to sleep with white noise or lullabies. You can definitely get better-sounding earbuds with more features and more effective noise cancellation for this kind of money. But the ultra-compact size, the ability to program alarms, and active monitoring for and counteracting a nearby snorer aren’t features most other buds offer. If your sleep is easily disturbed, and regular earbuds would just be one more disturbance, the Sleep A30 might be worth dreaming about. 

Design: Tiny Buds Built for Comfy Sleeping

At first, the Soundcore Sleep A30 may seem like typical earbuds. They come in a sizable carrying case with three indicator lights on the front and an easy-sliding lid that helps keep them from flying out a little more than the typical hinged cases. But once you pop the buds out of the case, it’s clear they’re a different breed. The Sleep A30 are incredibly compact, with each bud's main body roughly the size of an M&M. They're available in Moonlit White or Mist Green; a new Special version adds Mist Lilac and Lunar White options.

The silicone eartip and wingtip just about double the bulk of the bud, and even then, it’s still tiny. This is so that it can sit all the way in your ear opening without protruding. That way, if you sleep on your side, the bud won’t be jostled free or jammed into your ear canal. Even pressing my hand firmly against the side of my ear, the buds stayed put without adding pressure. Sleeping with the buds, I was surprised by just how little I felt they were there. I was able to move around, switching from back to side sleeping without issue.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

The Sleep A30 buds also do their silicone sleeving a bit differently than normal. There’s a silicone casing around much of the bud where it touches the ear, and this extends out into the wingtip that helps hold the bud in place. That sleeve has a small round flap that aims to provide some passive noise isolation in combination with the eartips, which Anker provides in an assortment of different sizes. The eartips also come in foam for improved noise isolation.

Since these buds are largely meant for sleep, they don’t have a lot of the typical features you might expect from expensive earbuds. Bluetooth Multipoint isn’t supported. Bluetooth audio codec support tops out at AAC. The waterproofing provides just a modest IPX4 rating for the buds. There’s also just a single mic for making calls. The case lacks support for wireless charging, which would have been a sensible inclusion for something that will likely be set down on a bedside table often.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

Instead of the mainstream features of wireless earbuds, the Soundcore Sleep A30 prioritizes ones for sleeping. For example, the charging case serves a second purpose: monitoring your surroundings for snoring alongside the buds’ own mics to adapt special masking audio, so you aren’t bothered by the snoring in your own sleep.

Battery Life: Decent for Its Intended Purpose

Between the charging case and the buds, Anker rates the Sleep A30 for a total runtime of 45 hours, giving the buds nine hours a night. That said, Anker's estimation is based on just one hour of audio streaming over Bluetooth, and the remaining eight hours are just running ANC.

In testing, I managed to make it through a nine-hour night of sleep with the buds still running in the morning to play the alarm I set on them. Separately, two hours of listening to podcasts took about a quarter of the battery life from the buds, with one side registering 70% and the other showing 80% charge remaining.

The aforementioned new Special version adds an extra hour of battery life on top of the two additional color options, but leaves everything else unchanged.

App Experience: Key Settings Live Here

Like other Soundcore products, the Sleep A30 buds use the Soundcore app, and it’s more or less essential to make the most of them. You won’t find many of the normal earbud settings. Instead, the app is full of background audio options designed to help you focus, relax, or mask sleep-disturbing sounds like snoring. The app provides different sound presets from ocean shores and forests to rainy alleys and fireside camping. You can customize a noise background with monotonous sounds like rain, white noise, a stream, or even less common options like a jacuzzi motor, a washing machine, or a cat drinking. Some special presets combine these soothing background noises with ambient music.

(Credit: Anker)

The app lets you set sleep behavior. You can have it continue playing Bluetooth audio after the buds think you’ve fallen asleep; they can stop playback altogether, or they can play a local media file stored on the buds (which can also be swapped out for different sound effects). You can also decide whether to let the carrying case monitor for snoring and turn on snore masking audio when it's detected. It’s also possible to set up an alarm to wake you up with audio in the buds.

Although most features work without requiring an account, the app doesn’t allow you to track sleep data without one. It claims this is to “ensure data integrity and safeguard your privacy,” but having a profile linked to this information in the first place seems a little counterintuitive.

What you won’t find in the app is an equalizer to tune the sound to your liking. 

Noise Cancellation: Good at Making Things Quiet

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

The buds are very impressive for their ability to block out external sounds. They combine surprisingly good passive noise cancellation with potent ANC that eliminates low-frequency noises wonderfully and even minimizes high-frequency sound. In a busy cafe, they cut down on my ability to hear much beyond the occasional loud sneeze and a large metal bowl being rinsed out with a high-pressure hose, all while listening to calm and quiet sounds of the ocean and wind chimes through the built-in sounds. I caught the buds slipping from time to time while sleeping next to a running air filter fan, with them occasionally letting some of that noise in. Most of the time, the buds successfully blocked the noise out.

There is no transparency, and ANC is fully managed by the device. You can turn it on or off, but you can’t adjust its levels manually.

Sound: Not as Good If You're Awake

The Soundcore Sleep A30 aren't as successful at delivering superb audio quality for music. When playing The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the Sleep A30 buds effectively serve up the bass triplets and sub-bass quarter notes, but the upper register sounds thin. Occasionally, the synth melody has a little bite, but the cymbals and upper vocal harmony sit low down in the mix. There’s a plain lack of brilliance. The focus on the bass and weakened high-end make some sense given what the buds aim to accomplish. A warmer tone should be more comfortable for relaxing and sleeping than risking harshness, with too much high-end.

This low-end emphasis carried over into Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty,” where the vocals sound a little mellow and the Bruno Mars sample is somewhat muted, but the sub-bass line introduced at the 35-second mark in the track almost dominates the tune when it comes in. It sounds so overdone that it almost seems like it should be coming from somewhere outside the earbuds.

Bill Callahan’s “Drover” fares a little better. The upper-end of the bass register isn’t quite so overemphasized. Since the track opens with a constant patter of a kick drum, too much bass can make this section a true racket. But the Sleep A30 holds it at a fair level, even if it is still a little much. Callahan’s baritone vocals have a nice depth, but they miss out on some of that live feeling a bit more high-end presence would have lent it. The fiddle and guitars also aren’t as crisp as they ought to be.

The lack of high-end hurts orchestral performances like John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary. The strings, brass, and choir are subdued. What should have been chaotic strings and biting horns turns into a mellow smattering of notes. They're buried further by the bass tones, which themselves have a muddier sound in the recording.

Ultimately, the Sleep A30 aren’t very good for listening to music if you care much about how it sounds. They don’t sound bad, but they’re no better than OK.

Anker specifies that the Sleep A30 have a single mic for making calls, but it would not activate for me on Windows or Android to make a test recording. Instead, I made a call to myself from a second phone number, and it was no surprise that the audio quality was just so-so.