At CES 2020, Amazfit announced 2 new products that weren’t fitness watches. Both were earbuds, but both are vastly different products. The first being the Amazfit PowerBuds, which lean heavily into fitness with its built-in heart rate monitors. The second being their soon to be released Amazfit ZenBuds whose sole purpose is to help you sleep and focus more by shutting out the outside world. It’s the Amazfit ZenBuds that we’re taking a look at right now and these are different from any other earbuds we’ve ever looked at here.
Let’s first start off with who the Amazfit ZenBuds are for. These are for people who might have trouble sleeping or for those who live in an environment where it might be a bit noisy, or you want something that can help shut that outside noise out. The Amazfit ZenBuds have a very specific function and it’s not to play music. In fact, you can’t even play music with these. These only play soothing sounds from a library curated by Amazfit. There are several preinstalled but more can be downloaded from the app.
What’s interesting here is that the Amazfit ZenBuds doesn’t even need your phone to function. They play soothing sounds as soon as you take them out of the case. You will however need to use your phone and the Amazfit app to choose what sounds you want to play and adjusting the settings on your ZenBuds. Not only that, the Amazfit app is also used to track your Sleep Score, which is Amazfit s metric for tracking how well you slept.
So how do the ZenBuds track your sleep? Easy. The Amazfit ZenBuds are also equipped with a heart rate monitor built-in along with a sleep positioning monitor and sleep quality monitor. These monitors allow the ZenBuds to track such data as how long you sleep, how often you turn and on what side you sleep on the most, the quality of your sleep, and your resting heart rate. It seems to do this quite well. What you’ll like too is because of these sensors, it’ll know when you actually fall asleep and automatically turn off the sleep sounds. This also helps conserve the battery, which is about 12 hours per charge. The charging case adds an additional 56 hours of power.
Now you’re probably wondering how comfortable it actually is to sleep with the ZenBuds in your ear and for the most part, I can tell you it is quite comfortable. There are four different sized silicone tips you can choose from which are more like full body socks for the actual earbuds. The ZenBuds are actually very thin and light and when placed in your ear, you hardly even notice they are there. This also goes for when you’re laying down. Due to their shape and size, when you lay down, they don’t interfere with comfort and they don’t poke you either.
As a sleep aid and tracker, I find the Amazfit ZenBuds to be a much better solution than wearing an uncomfortable smartwatch to sleep. These for the most part stay out of your way and if you have trouble sleeping, these might help you more and at least you’ll be able to monitor your sleep patterns through the night. While these are mainly to help you sleep better, you can also use them to wake you up. There’s a personal alarm built-in and it’ll wake you up gently and gradually. Since only you can hear this, it also won’t wake up your significant other.
So are there any gripes with the Amazfit ZenBuds? As a sleep aide and sleep tracker, not really. These do what they say and they seem to do it quite well. They’re very comfortable, more so than any other earbuds mainly because you don’t really feel them when you’re laying on your side. My only real complain is why I can’t use these to play music. I’d love to use these on the daily seeing as they are so comfortable to wear. If AmazFit is listening, consider adding this function or come out with some audio earbuds that are designed just like this for ultra comfort.
I think Amazfit might have a winner here with the ZenBuds. Most sleep aids or trackers I’ve seen have mainly been wrist worn, but I’ve never found these to be that comfortable. The ZenBuds are much more comfortable and I’m more inclined to think that having a sleep tracker in your ear is much more accurate than one on your wrist.
With that said, I absolutely recommend picking up the Amazfit ZenBuds if you want a means of maybe getting a better night’s sleep and more accurate sleep tracking. These however aren’t currently available yet, but they are on preorder right now via they’re Indiegogo campaign for $69. Amazfit estimates a September 2020 shipping date.
