Noise-blocking earbuds adapt to your body's rhythm for restful slumber

The second-generation For Me Buds are slimmer, quieter, and better at keeping your sleep data to themselves.

Sleep tech has become one of the busiest corners of the wearables market. Rings, watches, and even bedtime armbands like Garmin's Index Sleep Monitor now log every toss and turn, while dedicated sleep earbuds like the battery-less SomniBuds focus on drowning out the world around you. But most of these gadgets share the same shortcoming: they can only tell you how badly you slept once you've woken up.

When we first looked at the original For Me Buds, they were trying to change that by reading your body's signals overnight and using sound to coax you toward deeper rest. Now dbbeats, a sleep tech startup spun off from LG Electronics in 2024, is back with a follow-up shaped by feedback from more than 3,000 first-gen backers and users.

The For Me Buds 2 are built to react while you're still asleep, adapting their audio to what your body is doing in real time, all wrapped in a fit designed to play nicer with your pillow.

The biggest physical change is the profile. Each bud is just 10.4 mm thick and weighs under 4 grams, with soft ear tips and wing tips intended to keep it secure without digging into your ear when you lie on your side, which is one of the most common gripes with wearing earbuds to bed.

Noise is tackled in three layers: hybrid active noise cancellation rated at up to 35 dB, passive isolation from the in-ear seal, and adaptive sound masking to cover whatever slips through, whether that's traffic, household clatter, or a snoring partner.

Inside, a built-in PPG sensor keeps tabs on your heart rhythm through the night, and locally processed algorithms use that data to adjust your sleep sounds on the fly. dbbeats says this biometric data is crunched on-device rather than on its servers, and no account login is required for the core sleep features.

You still get a morning breakdown in the companion app, covering sleep stages, total sleep time, snoring events, heart rate, and HRV. A new AI Sleep Chat feature also lets you ask questions about your own sleep data in plain language.

The For Me Buds 2 has launched on Kickstarter to raise funds and generate online chatter, and cleared its modest US$5,000 goal within a day. Super Early Bird pledges start at $99, against an expected retail price of $199, with mass production estimated to start in December.

That puts them well below some of the category's better-known names. Ozlo's Sleepbuds 2, for example, sells for $279 and skip active noise cancellation altogether.

Crowdfunding campaigns always carry an element of risk, though dbbeats has already put one generation into the ears of more than 3,000 people. More interesting is the direction it's taking. As sleep trackers pile up ever more intimate biometric data, keeping that processing local, and actually using it to change what happens during the night instead of just reporting on it, feels like a smart pivot.

If the buds live up to the pitch, the For Me Buds 2 could be a compelling option for light sleepers who want more than a white noise machine strapped to their ears.

Sources: dbbeats, Kickstarter

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