Noise-blocking headphones adapt to your body’s rhythm to give you a restful night’s sleep

The second-generation For Me Buds are thinner, quieter, and better at storing your sleep data.

Sleep technology has become one of the busiest corners of the wearable market. Rings, watches, and even sleep bracelets, like Garmin’s Index Sleep Monitor, now track your every move and turn, while dedicated sleep headphones, like the battery-free SomniBuds, focus on drowning out the world around you. But most of these devices share the same drawback: they can only tell you how poorly 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 throughout the night and using sound to prompt you into deeper rest. Now dbbeats, a sleep tech startup spun off from LG Electronics in 2024, is back with a following built on feedback from more than 3,000 backers and first-generation users.

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

The biggest physical change is the profile. Each earbud is just 10.4mm thick and weighs less than 4 grams, with soft ear tips and wing tips designed to keep you secure without digging into your ear when lying on your side, which is one of the most common complaints when using headphones in bed.

Noise is addressed in three layers: hybrid active noise cancellation up to 35 dB, passive internal seal isolation, and adaptive sound masking to cover anything that escapes, whether it’s traffic, household noise, or a snoring partner.

Inside, a built-in PPG sensor monitors heart rate throughout the night, and locally processed algorithms use that data to adjust sleep sounds on the fly. dbbeats says this biometric data is processed on the device rather than on its servers, and no account login is required for core sleep functions.

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 launched on Kickstarter to raise funds and spark online conversation, and surpassed their modest goal of $5,000 in one day. Super Early Bird pledges start at $99, against an expected retail price of $199, and mass production is estimated to begin in December.

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

Crowdfunding campaigns always carry an element of risk, although dbbeats has already put a generation in the ears of over 3,000 people. More interesting is the direction it is taking. As sleep trackers accumulate increasingly intimate biometric data, keeping that processing local and using it to change what happens during the night rather than simply reporting on it feels like a smart turn.

If the headphones are up to par, the For Me Buds 2 could be an attractive option for light sleepers who want more than just a white noise machine strapped to their ears.

Sources: dbbeats, Kickstarter

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