Sound Therapy Eye Mask
The Brookstone Sound Therapy Eye Mask looks like a good idea at first glance. Not only does it block out the light in the room when you are sleeping but your partner isn’t, it will block out the noise for you by playing nature sounds or connecting to your MP3 player and playing music. The 30-minute automatic shut off ensures that you won’t be startled awake when your music player finishes playing the soothing sounds of Brahms and moves on to your Metallica collection.
Usually when it comes to items from Brookstone, it’s the price that sends me packing, but at $40, I’ve paid more for headphones before, so the price didn’t scare me away. What scared me away was this phrase:
Uses an AC adapter (included) or 3 AAA batteries (not included).
I forgot that there would be circuitry in there. Sure, that’s essential when you’re talking about nature sounds or headphone jacks. The question that came to my mind was, “How am I going to wash that thing?†Anyone who has owned an eye mask knows that they start to smell a little funky after awhile and need a good washing frequently. With all that circuitry, I fear that I would eventually stop using this very expensive and plush eye mask because it would start to smell.
That’s a shame because I was actually excited about this product. Maybe the next version will have a REMOVEABLE soft velour covering.
The fact that the “Brookstone Sound Therapy Eye Mask” turns off automatically makes this product totally useless to me. There’s no way to keep it on for over 30 minutes! For me, the whole point of white noise is to keep me sleeping by drowning out other noises. I’ve been looking for comfortable headphones to sleep in for YEARS, so this “additional feature” was a huge disappointment.
What a stupid design!
Comment by Ed Howell — April 16, 2008 @ 3:43 pm