Bose has confirmed it is ending sales of its noise-masking Sleepbuds, offering owners of the hearable a full refund.
In a post on its website, John Roselli, general manager at Bose Corp detailed why it had taken the decision to discontinue the device it only launched in 2018.
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"You’ve reported issues with your not charging fully, powering down unexpectedly, or both. And you’ve let us know. We’ve heard you. We’ve read your posts. We’ve documented your calls. We’ve torn down returned products you’ve sent us, and replaced them with new ones, sometimes more than once. We’ve also relentlessly researched the root cause with a team dedicated to nothing else."
"Based on what we knew, we believed that software and firmware updates could fix the issues. But the failures have continued, and recently, they’ve increased. That led us to look more closely at each piece of hardware. And we learned that while the battery we chose functions safely, it doesn’t work as consistently or predictably as it should to meet our standards."
Roselli also stated that Sleepbuds owners can take up the option to return their devices for a full refund anytime before 31 December. You can start that process here. We should clarify that this is not a recall, so if you're happy with these buds and how they operate, you are safe to keep hold of them.
First announced back in June 2018, the earbuds essentially worked as a noise filter to help you get to sleep. It did that by masking noises in your environment and replacing them with more soothing sounds. Other than pumping those sounds into your ears, you could to normal earphones things like stream your music.
Bose decided to make the hearable available on Indiegogo where it sold out and started shipping not long after that campaign ended.
When we first got to try them out, we were surprisingly impressed with the tech. While a little on the pricey side, they tapped into an issue that many people have problems with in a really elegant way.
While Bose is putting its Sleepbuds to bed for now, it revealed in a forum post that it's still, "committed to developing innovative solutions to help the millions of people who struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep." So maybe will still see another iteration that resolves those battery issues.
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