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For the New Year, to solve my daughter's sleep problem, I decided to test headphones for sleep. These are headbands that have built-in wireless headphones with flat speakers and a central base unit. This allows you to lie on your side, and the speakers do not interfere. What is the function of the headphones? When falling asleep, play various sleep melodies (I have a considerable collection of them).

It turned out that there are two such solutions on the market, in addition to outright Chinese products: SleepPhones Wireless from AudioSheep and HoomBand from LivLab. I bought both because we have a queue of people who want to use them. Additionally, a little later, I bought "in-ears" with an ear hook and noise cancellation (more for use on the street/in a store), namely the SoundCore Sport X20 from Anker. Here, I am mainly comparing the headbands, since SoundCore is a different solution.

SleepPhones has a nice fleece headband that is one-piece (put on by stretching). LivLab's HoomBand has a stiffer fabric headband that is fastened with Velcro and is thus adjustable; putting it on without unfastening is not very convenient, since the edges of the fabric headband are trimmed with even stiffer material.

In SleepPhones, you can pull out the speakers and the base. In Hoomband, the speakers only move along the headband for adjustment, and they cannot be pulled out (how to wash them, if anything, is unclear).

SleepPhones has Bluetooth 4, it seems (one paired device, at least at a time), and a base with a micro-USB port for charging. The slot for pulling out the base is in the center of the headband, and the base is on the forehead. HoomBand has Bluetooth 5.1 and supposedly supports multiple pairings (although not simultaneously). The base has USB-C for charging. But the base is located behind the right ear, which means turning your head to the right or lying on your right side won't really work (although, probably, not for everyone).

The battery in both devices lasts for 7–8 hours, but I've never needed that much: the maximum amount of sound I've heard is one sleep cycle (one and a half hours) per night.

The sound is objectively better in the HoomBand, but in both it's noticeably worse than in high-quality headphones like the Sony WH1000-XM4. And there's no noise cancellation in the headbands (but it's difficult to implement there, since the speakers don't fit snugly against your ears). That is, if you have quiet nights and extraneous sounds don't bother you, then the sound from the headbands is enough. At the same time, other means are needed to solve the noise problem. Perhaps "in-ears" with noise cancellation will work for you.

SleepHones has volume control buttons (convenient), HoomBand doesn't, and you have to turn the volume on your phone, which is not always convenient. FWIW, Soundcore also do not have volume adjustment.

It's difficult to give advice here. I haven't seen an ideal solution yet. For myself, I settled on SleepPhones, but I suspect they won't last long, since there are thin wires in the headband that break pretty quickly. But the headband sits comfortably on my head.

Then I used SoundCore for the night. I must say that I am very satisfied - they didn't fall out of my ears, didn't interfere with falling asleep or staying asleep (though I sleep mostly on my back) and muffled the sounds from the dog (since they have noise cancellation). The sound is weaker than the big Sony ones (which is not surprising), but better than the headbands, plus the noise cancellation works. I will try them for a couple more nights and, perhaps, I will completely switch to them. At the same time, the headband is more convenient to remove, while two separate headphones have to be removed and folded into a box, which is inconvenient when you're sleeping at night.