Soundcore Sleep A30 Review: The perfect remedy for disturbed sleep

Design

• Compact, comfortable design
• Can be fiddly to put in
• Charging case has sleep-friendly soft LED lights

The Soundcore Sleep A30 are, quite simply, the smallest earbuds I’ve ever used – and that includes both sleep-focused and regular wireless buds. They almost disappear once they’re in your ears, which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to drift off.

A big part of that is down to the unusual tipped design. Rather than relying on a bulky shell, the A30 uses a compact body with a more pronounced, angled wing tip that helps lock them into place. 

In two weeks of testing, they’ve only fallen out once, and that’s a far better track record than any other sleep solution I’ve tried, whether it’s earbuds like the over-ear-hooked Kokoon/Philips earbuds or speaker-touting blindfolds. 

As usual, you’ll get a selection of different-sized trips in the box, and it’s worth spending a bit of time to find the combination that feels both snug and unobtrusive. That aids not only the overall fit, but the effectiveness of the ANC – more on the latter a little later.

There is a bit of a learning curve to putting them in though. The ‘push down and twist’ method feels a bit fiddly to begin with, and even now, it’s not quite as effortless as dropping in a pair of standard earbuds. The trade-off is that once they’re in, they’re properly in – you’re not waking up at 3am to adjust them or spend the first minutes of your morning searching for them among your bedsheets.

Controls are handled via a small touch surface on each bud. It’s intentionally compact so you’re not brushing a large panel every time you shift on the pillow, and there’s no single-tap action at all. Instead, Soundcore sticks to double and triple taps to avoid accidental presses while you’re half-asleep.

In practice, it works well; it registered my inputs around 80% of the time, though I did have to minimise the time between each tap. Too slow, and it simply wouldn’t recognise the input. Again, that’s likely down to avoiding mispresses, and it feels like a clever compromise.

Each earbud has its own control scheme out of the box – for example, two taps on the left switches connectivity mode, while two taps on the right toggles ANC. Triple taps on each bud take care of the volume. If that sounds a bit unintuitive, you can tweak all of it in the Soundcore app – but more on that shortly. 

Comfort is where the A30s really pull ahead of the pack. I’ve tried a lot of sleep earbuds over the past eight years thanks to persistent tinnitus, and these are comfortably the best I’ve used to date – particularly as a side sleeper. Once they’re seated, I barely feel them pressing against the pillow, and most of the time I forget they’re there at all. 

That said, sleeping with anything in your ears is an adjustment – I’m just an old hand at this kind of thing by now. Our Audio Editor, Kob, for instance, struggled to get on with them overnight, so there is an element of personal tolerance here. 

The charging case also feels like it has been designed with a bedside table in mind. It’s a compact circular puck with a row of LEDs on the front to show the remaining battery, and additional LEDs inside glow softly when you open it. The internal lighting is genuinely handy for fishing buds out or putting them away in the dark without firing up your phone’s torch, while being dim enough not to fully wake you up.

Features

• Standalone and Bluetooth modes
• Soundcore app massively expands features
• 6.5 to 9 hours of battery life, 45 hours with case

While you can technically use the Soundcore Sleep A30s like regular wireless earbuds, they really come into their own when you lean into the app experience. Unlike most true wireless sets where the companion app is a nice-to-have, the Soundcore app feels essential to getting the most out of the buds. 

The buds support two key modes; a regular Bluetooth and a standalone mode. In Bluetooth mode, they behave like normal ANC earbuds, piping in whatever you’re playing from your phone. Standalone mode, on the other hand, uses audio stored on the buds themselves, freeing you from a persistent Bluetooth connection while you sleep. 

You can switch between the two with a tap, though the buds are smart enough to handle the transition as you nod off, automatically shifting from power-hungry Bluetooth to standalone or disabling features like ANC to save battery life. Again, it’s all customisable via the app. 

Soundcore’s app offers a wide range of white noise and soundscapes that you can preview. Only a single sound can be stored locally on the buds at any one time, and it takes around 40 seconds to upload your chosen audio – but there’s also nothing stopping you from streaming audio from the app via Bluetooth if you like to switch things up.

You’re not just stuck with the defaults either; the app allows you to layer sounds on top of each other to create your own custom soundscape to fall asleep to. It’s far more fine-tuned than the usual “rain vs ocean waves” choice you get from basic sleep apps anyway.

The A30 package also includes a few more advanced sleep-focused tricks, like the case’s ability to monitor for snoring and then adjust ANC or volume levels intelligently in response. 

The idea is to subtly respond to spikes in noise, whether that’s your partner’s snoring or the drone of traffic outside your bedroom, without blasting you awake – and it works like a dream. I’ve not been woken up by my partner’s snoring once over the past few weeks, and I’ll even sleep through her (much earlier) alarms without as much as a stir.

The buds can also track your sleep and feed that data back into the app as a daily sleep report – though I wouldn’t put much weight behind the results. It’s seemingly based solely on motion, rather than elements like heart rate as you’ll find on sleep trackers like smartwatches, and it differs wildly from the results from my Oura ring. I know which I’d trust. 

Battery life is comfortably enough for overnight use, but your mileage depends on how you use them. With Bluetooth and ANC enabled, you’re looking at around 6.5 hours on a charge – just about enough to get you through a typical night if you’re not a particularly long sleeper like me.

Switch to standalone mode with ANC and that jumps to around 9 hours, which is much more reassuring if you regularly sleep a bit longer. The case adds a further 45 hours on top, so you’re only reaching for the USB-C cable every few days, even with regular overnight use.

It’s the combination of the Soundcore app and the A30’s feature set that helps them stand out as a complete sleep system, rather than just another pair of wireless earbuds that happen to be small enough to wear in bed. 

Sound Quality

• Crisp, clear audio is ideal for sleep
• Lack of bass isn’t ideal for daytime use

With most earbuds, sound quality is the headline act, but the Sleep A30s take more of a supporting role. You’re not sitting there critically listening as you drift off to sleep, and given how tiny these buds are, I’d almost be willing to forgive them if they sounded a bit thin.

As it turns out, they don’t really need that excuse. For the most part, the A30s sound pretty decent. There’s solid clarity, with clean, present vocals in podcasts, and plenty of detail in my go-to shower soundscape that I use to nod off. 

The soundstage is wide and immersive enough that it’s easy to get lost in the noise and mentally check out, and there’s enough volume headroom to comfortably drown out your own thoughts when you need to.

Bass is where the physical limitations show. There isn’t a huge amount of low-end weight, especially if you switch to music rather than white noise or podcasts, and tracks that rely on a chunky bassline don’t hit as hard as they would on a more conventional pair of buds. 

In the context of sleep, though, that’s arguably not a major problem – a big, thumping low-end is more likely to keep you awake than help you relax.

Where it does hurt is if you’re hoping to use the A30 as a genuine all-day pair of TWS buds as well as sleep companions. The tuning is perfectly pleasant, but the reduced bass presence means they’re not well-suited to general daytime use. At this price, that’s a bit of a shame.

Noise Cancellation

• Impressive ANC quietens the world around you

ANC is where the A30s feel much more special. Noise cancellation is commonplace on regular true wireless earbuds now, but it’s still rare in sleep-focused options – and for good reason. 

Typically, when you lie on a bud, the ANC mics can pick up sound from the driver itself and re-amplify it, creating an unpleasant high-pitched whine that changes as you move. It’s exactly the kind of thing you don’t want waking you at 3am.

Somehow, that’s not an issue here. Whatever Soundcore has done with the ANC setup, the A30s manage to avoid that feedback loop, even when you’re lying directly on the bud. The result is a surprisingly effective level of quiet as you drift off, without the usual side effects.

In practice, the active noise cancellation does a commendable job of dealing with the kind of noises that typically ruin a night’s sleep – snoring from a partner, distant road noise, and the odd car door slam outside. 

In standalone mode, it even went as far as blocking out the sound of my alarm one Sunday morning, which is both impressive and slightly alarming in its own right. The overall effect turns previously jarring sounds into a distant murmur, and that’s true even with no audio playing at all.

Even with lacklustre bass, the Soundcore Sleep A30s are one of the most compelling – and technically impressive – sleep earbud options you can buy right now.

Should you buy it?