Soundcore Sleep A30 by Anker

The hardware

The Soundcore Sleep A30 come generously equipped: a round charging case, the in-ears (IPX4), charging cable, quick-start guide, plus four pairs of silicone ear tips and three pairs of memory-foam tips. There are also three pairs of ear wings to ensure a secure hold in the ear. An additional layer of silicone on the wings, which sits like a ring over the ear tips, provides extra passive isolation.

Since the earbuds should sit as comfortably and securely as possible – after all, you want to wear them all night – you should take your time trying different combinations of ear tips and wings. For my part, I find the memory-foam tips less comfortable than the silicone ones, even though they seal better.

Thanks to their compact, flat design, the Soundcore Sleep A30 don’t protrude as much as “normal” in-ears, and they really do stay put and barely press into the ear canal when you rest your head sideways on the pillow. You can’t deny there’s still something in your ear, though, and very sensitive people should definitely try that out.

Function and control

The Soundcore Sleep A30 pair quickly and easily via Bluetooth 5.3 and are ready to play straight away. The touch surfaces on the backs of the earbuds, which are thankfully not overly sensitive, handle control, with only double- and triple-tap gestures available.

The assignments can be set in the app, whose installation is essential if you want to access all the functions of the Soundcore Sleep A30. In principle, the Sleep A30 recognise two modes: Bluetooth mode, where everything runs “as usual” from the source device, and a local mode, where the Bluetooth connection is interrupted and only a locally stored sound is played to maximise battery life.

Sound

Before I get to the many features around healthy sleep, it’s worth noting that you can of course also use the Soundcore Sleep A30 to listen to music. The tuning is very bass-leaning and certainly full, which comes at the expense of mids and highs and makes everything seem a little veiled.

After switching on ANC, the bass asserts itself even more clearly, with a slight lift in the mids also audible, which makes the overall picture seem a touch fuller and more balanced. In the absence of an equaliser in the app, you can’t change that.

Overall, the sound of the Soundcore Sleep A30 is solid but bass-heavy, which at the same time creates a cavernous, cosy-warm basic mood and may well have been intentional.

All about sleeping

For restful sleep, a quiet environment is a prerequisite. If that’s not given because the street outside is noisy or your partner snores, Soundcore essentially offers three ways to reduce the disturbance.

First, through the right combination of ear tips and ear wings mentioned above, which creates a first wall against the noise. Activating ANC, which filters low and mid frequencies quite effectively, makes things noticeably quieter, even if the snoring bedfellow certainly doesn’t fall silent.

If you add a sound from the first library, titled “AI brainwave audio” and consisting of a variety of relaxing tones and soundscapes, you suddenly feel less like you’re in bed and more like in a yoga/relaxation session – under a vast sky and deeply connected to infinity – which can indeed have a calming effect.

To further distract yourself from the snoring, you can adjust various parameters within these sound worlds and selectively add individual instruments such as singing bowls or natural sounds in the form of rain or bubbling water. That can be really lovely …

The second category deals with snore masking. Here it’s about selected sounds intended to cover up the annoying snoring of the bedfellow. Offered are the noise of rain, water, wind, waves, a fireplace or engine hum. Clever naming of the sound files (“Niagara Falls”, “Colorado blizzard”, “whispering winds”) and expressive images further fire the listener’s imagination, transporting you to the heights of the Himalayas or onto an intercontinental flight.

This is where the charging case also comes into play, as it contains a microphone that measures the volume of the snoring. Based on a generated graph, the sleep headphones then suggest a sound that seems best suited to effectively cover exactly this snoring. You can then transfer this masking file to the earbuds and play it even without a Bluetooth connection, in local mode. In addition, the case offers continuous snore measurement to automatically adjust the sound volume accordingly – however, I did not notice this function.

In the third category, Soundcore offers a large number of sounds – white, pink, brown noise, all kinds of rain, nature sounds, instruments and much more. You can combine up to three sounds yourself or via a random generator. Also nice.

Alarm and local mode – further settings

You can set two alarms: one to go to bed and a second to wake up. This is entirely in the spirit of a consistent evening and morning routine. You can define whether the sound should continue to play in local mode after you’ve fallen asleep, or simply stop.

In addition, the app creates a sleep report based on movement data measured via the earbuds, in which sleep and wake phases and total sleep time are compiled, enriched with data on snoring and movement during that time. I can’t judge how accurate and meaningful these data are. But they do fit our times, in that they provide fodder for self-measurement and “state optimisation”.

Conclusion

The Soundcore Sleep A30 by Anker are comfortable in-ears that can be worn well in bed and, thanks to clever power management, will reliably play through the night – even without an active Bluetooth connection. Their good passive and active isolation provide more peace and quiet, even if not absolute silence.

By using the different sounds and tones, you may well sleep better. When “masking” is mentioned, in my view it means “distraction”. On that basis, I can go along with these features. With atmospheric noise – whether rain, trickling water or white noise – it really can work to distract you from the irritating snoring of a bedfellow so you can drop off more easily. Masking in the sense of “covering” or “erasing” does not apply – apart from the ANC-induced reduction of the snore’s low-frequency components and the overall volume already cut down by mechanical isolation.

Basically, in combination with the app, the Soundcore Sleep A30 offer an interesting and, in a positive sense, playful approach to distracting and relaxing yourself with the numerous methods and from the noise and snoring to the point where you simply fall asleep. Sleep well.