Faced with lots of new products: televisions (Ambilight, I love it), sound bars and speakers, one product particularly caught my attention during the press conference for the new Philips 2023 range: the N7808 sleep buds.
Presented by Philips as an innovation, the result of long research, this product has existed and has been marketed for years by the Kokoon brand, an English company launched in 2013 which developed the headphones and the application. During an interview with a Philips marketing representative, I pointed out to him that this product was not developed by them, but rather, that Philips simply acquired the rights to use it. He replied that the information from Philips is not very clear on this subject before adding that the sleep buds have been “improved” by Philips and that they therefore participated in their own way in the final design of the product.
I continued my teasing by asking if the headphones were going to be made with Philips components, he told me the construction was going to be the same as it is now (so not Philips), BUT adding the changes suggested by the developers of the Dutch brand. Bad faith, when you hold us.
Sleep buds are intended improve your sleep by broadcasting either music (broadcast via low-consumption Bluetooth by your smartphone), or white noise (provided by the Kokoon application), or any audio source connected via Bluetooth. The sleep buds will detect, thanks to the atrial heartbeat sensor, that you are sleeping, and will lower the intensity of the sound to finally cut it off during your sleep.
The ultra-flat headphones have been designed to be worn all night, without discomfort, regardless of the position in which you sleep (implied, even on the side). In order to make them so thin, the battery and electronics have been inserted into a case that fits on the back of the skull.
The application will provide statistics on the quality of your sleep by analyzing, among other things, the different phases. After a few days of use, the app will also offer tips to improve your sleep routine. Tim Antos, founder and brand manager of Kokoon, insists the app was developed by sleep specialists, and continues to be improved.
To have access to these analyses, it will be necessary to subscribe to an application which should cost around 3€ / month. Without this subscription, these headphones only serve as Bluetooth headphones.
Negotiations between Philips and Kokoon are ongoing, but this product (sold under the Philips brand) is available for pre-order (https://eu.sleepheadphone.com/products/philips-sleep-headphones) at the price of 174,99€ for shipment in August. After this date, the sleep buds will be sold at the price of 249,99€.
At the end of the presentation, I had the chance to speak with Tim Antos. For 20 minutes, this elegant Londoner with an impeccable British style answered all our questions with stars in his eyes.
Faced with this passion as touching as it is sincere, I asked him if he was not saddened to see the fruit of 10 years of work resumed and marketed under the Philips brand. Without thinking, with legendary British phlegm, he replied that no matter who sells these headphones, what matters to him is improving the quality of sleep for the world’s population. Before adding, that the management of production, storage and delivery is not what excites him in his project, unlike the improvement of the sleep analysis application.
Faced with these convincing words, I can’t wait to be able to test this product and give you a more concrete opinion.
