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Hands-on: 1More Z30 sleeping earbuds are great for going to bed, but not much else

Ben Schoon | May 8 2024 - 7:30 pm PT

I don’t know about you, but I love falling asleep to music. But sometimes, even the quietest setting on a speaker is enough to disturb others in the room, so I’ve long wanted a pair of earbuds I can comfortably sleep in. That’s the goal of the 1More Z30, and they mostly get the job done.

The problem with sleeping while wearing earbuds, at least for side sleepers, is usually comfort. Earbuds are not large, but they often protrude out of your ear and that can be uncomfortable at best, and dangerous at worst if your head is on the pillow. That’s the main difference you’ll find in the Z30 – they’re super tiny.

The 1More Z30 are roughly half the size of a normal pair of earbuds and sit completely flush inside of my ear. They’re quite comfortable to wear in general, but really make the best of their size when you lay on a pillow. I can actually fall asleep wearing these, though I will say it’s not always comfortable. There is pressure from the earbud sitting there, because of course there is! There’s no way to stick a hard object in your ear in a way that you can’t feel at all, but these are far better at the task than any traditional earbuds.

Often, I’ve find myself using these with only one earbud in. One bud sits in the ear, not on my pillow, and, thanks to the small size, I don’t feel it if I toss and turn overnight and end up on that side of my head. The weight also helps keep these comfortable, with each earbud weighing just 2.7g. For comparison, each earbud in a set of Pixel Buds Pro weighs 6.2g.

They’re not “invisible” as 1More likes to say, but they’re pretty darn close.

But there are still two issues to tackle.

Firstly, there’s getting the earbud to actually stay in your ear. Admittedly, I’ve not gone a single night where these didn’t fall out of my ears by morning, but I’ve yet to lose either of them. Realistically, I’m not sure it’s possible to have comfortable earbuds that never fall out, but these at least hold in well enough that they don’t fall out before I fall asleep. A helpful feature when these inevitably fall out is the auto-off timer, which will disable the earbuds after a few hours to save their battery life and, more importantly, disconnect from Bluetooth so you don’t wake up with your phone unable to play audio through its speakers.

If they do manage to stay in your ears all night and you don’t set the timer, they can last up to eight hours on a charge. The case brings the total listening time up to 32 hours, and I haven’t had to charge the case even once since using these. The case charges via USB-C (no Qi support) and also has a convenient pairing button that the previous model completely lacked.

The other question is sound quality. 1More Z30 by their very nature won’t sound as good as a traditional pair of wireless earbuds. They’re smaller and cheaper, so it makes sense. Sound quality is a bit muddy for my usual tastes, but for their designed purpose of falling asleep, I think it gets the job done.

The same applies to noise cancellation. There is no active noise cancellation to be found here, but there’s enough passive cancellation for a typical bedroom.

And that’s where the narrow focus of this product comes into play.

These are not do-it-all earbuds that just so happen to be tiny and good for sleeping. They’re only good for sleeping. For the same $80 (usually less) you’re spending on these, you can get numerous other earbuds that sound better and perhaps also offer noise cancellation and other features. That’s also why these earbuds, with the 1More companion app, support white noise and automatic turn-off timers.

On the whole, I think these work rather well, and they’re fairly priced despite the limited scope. You’ll often find them on discount for around $65 or so, or even less.

1More Z30 are available on Amazon and through 1More’s website.