The soundcore Sleep A20 are Anker’s second attempt at sleep earbuds, and they’ve done an excellent job. I’m sold after one night. Are they worth R2,800? Without a doubt – if, like me, you sleep with earbuds. If you are a light sleeper and struggle with noises, these are a very good option to check out.
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Given that I go to sleep every night listening to Audible, the Anker soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds seem made for me.
There’s nothing wrong with my AirPods 4, which I am generally delighted with.
But they are designed for everything but sleeping. They sit comfortably in your ear when you walk or run, they’re great for most things you do upright. But they still stick out of your ear. That’s why I generally go to sleep with only one in.
Another issue is that they have about four hours of battery life, so I have to invariably charge them if I wake up in the middle of the night, which I often do.
Don’t sleep on soundcore
Anker’s soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds, however, are specially designed for sleeping, especially on your side. They are flatter than most other earbuds and fit nicely into your ears and are indeed more comfortable for sleeping. Instead of using just one, as I do with my Airpods, Anker wants you to sleep with both. So, I did.
They are indeed good for side sleepers like me. Inside of one of the usual silicon tips the A20 has two, while the so-called wing that holds the earbud in your ear is made of the same soft silicon. Their profile is distinctly flat and the only hard bit is the round top of the buds. The inner surface is covered by the wing thing – of which there is a smaller and larger option, as well as an array of tip sizes.
After just one night, I’m never sleeping with any other earbuds again. This is the sleep solution I have been looking for. They are indeed soft and are comfortable to sleep in – for either ear.
Most pleasing, after the comfort of wearing them, is the 10 to 14 hours of battery life, depending on mode. After one night, I had six hours of battery left.
I also know how many hours of deep sleep I got and how many times I woke up (once) because of the useful sensors in the A20 earbuds and the nifty way the app displays it.
As useful as such metrics are, I long ago gave up on tracking my sleep. You know if you’ve had a good night of sleep or not. I don’t need to know precisely where and when I sleep my deepest or woke up. But the way these statistics are measured is impressive. There are potential applications for healthcare that I am sure we will see in the future.
Sleep mode
The A20 has two modes, I discovered. Bluetooth mode – as the old normal is now called by Anker – and “sleep” mode. This lets you listen to a range of calming sleeping sounds and meditations, through the Anker app. I chose the sounds of rain.
I don’t need the sleep soundtracks, as useful as they are. I don’t need white noise to get to sleep, or when I am sleeping. Still, it’s nice to have the option.
I have been falling asleep to Audible since March 2021, during one of my many rekindlings of my love affair with Audible, which I think is the 21st-century way of reading. I’ve been falling asleep by reading since I was a teenager. Now I am still reading, as it were, but using newer technologies: someone else reading it, while I consume it – not with my eyes but my ears.
Read more: Here is my advice on the cheapest way to buy Audible’s audiobooks
The earbuds automatically slip into Anker’s own “sleep” mode, which I turned off this morning. I found it more disturbing to have to wake up the Bluetooth on the device and restart Audible. I use the so-called action button on my new iPhone 16 Pro to reset the sleep timer in Audible.
The Anker Sleep A20 have a delightfully long 10-hour battery for Bluetooth and 14 hours in its sleep mode. If you put them back into the charging case, that goes to 80 hours. The USB-C case takes two hours to charge, and Anker says its five-minute fast charge will give you an hour of listening.
The app has a useful function for finding lost earbuds by playing a loud tone. In the past, I have generally moved the pillow to find my missing AirPod. Call me old-fashioned.
Anker soundcore Sleep A20 Verdict
It’s a wonder that it’s taken humanity so long to think of using earbuds to help us sleep. We’ve used this now ubiquitous technology to listen to music, podcasts and audiobooks but it’s taken us a long time to realise that noise-cancelling is just as usefully deployed against snoring or loud noises.
The soundcore Sleep A20 is Anker’s second attempt at sleep earbuds, and they’ve done an excellent job. I’m sold after one night.
Are they worth R2,800? Without a doubt – if, like me, you sleep with earbuds. If you are a light sleeper and struggle with noises, these are a very good option to check out.
The Anker soundcore Sleep A20 is the new gold standard in sleep earbuds.
