SONU Band Review
No More Sinus Issues?
Retail Price: $299.00
Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional nor is this review providing medical advice. I am merely a consumer who purchased this product with my own funds for my personal use in order to review how the product works.Like a lot of folks out there, I have some gnarly sinus congestion due to a variety of things. When someone has a cold and they feel terribly congested and then they get better and move on with their lives I feel happy for them. I on the other hand always sound and look exhausted thanks to the never-ending congestion I’m stuck with For years, the consumer tech approach to better sleep and breathing has involved strapping a smartwatch to your wrist to tell you how poorly you slept, or plugging in a moist humidifier to blast your face while you sleep. But what if a wearable could actively clear your sinuses using artificial intelligence and bone conduction?
That’s exactly what the SONU Band by SoundHealth strives to do. It’s an FDA-approved headband that brings acoustic resonance therapy to a consumer electronics level. It’s a bit pricey to get into this piece of tech that may or may not work for everyone, but that’s why I’m here to give you my experience after a couple of months of treatment from the SONU.
What is acoustic resonance?
You may have heard of bone conduction in the consumer electronics space. In fact we’ve reviewed a handful of bone conduction earphones over the years. It’s essentially a method of pushing sound to the bones of the skull. For music-based products like earphones, the sound attempts to ride the bone of the skull to the inner ear, skipping past the eardrum like a traditional in-ear earbud would do.
So take that fundamental execution of audio vibration and paste it to your forehead where the nasal tunnel runs through. The theory of this treatment is that these vibrations can loosen the mucus, reduce the swelling, and also drain the nasal cavities. It sounds crazy, but this is FDA-approved and if you really want to trace functional human use of similar ideology, the Chinese have been incorporating pressure point treatment for relief of symptoms for way longer than the existence of the United States of America. There are huge benefits in getting FDA clearance, especially for a consumer product that claims to have no side effects and is also drug-free.
SONU does provide sources and has funded a research on the efficacy of the band which I will provide the link here for you to read yourself. I’ve read through them, but I have not come across an independent trial of the SONU band not associated with the company (Sound Health Systems) itself. If one is out there, I haven’t yet read it. What I’m trying to allude to though is that the SONU band is a legitimate item that has medical backing and a strong reputation. Whether it works for me or you is a different story, but this isn’t a product that should be approached with caution.
Age Range
SONU is safe to use for people ages 12 and Up
How it works
Out of the box, the SONU Band looks like a high-tech athletic sweatband. It’s available in Black or Gray and is surprisingly lightweight. The core of the hardware relies on dual precision bone conduction transducers built into the front of the band, which sit snugly against your forehead.
The SONU band only has a single button that powers the unit on or off. It also only has a single USB-C port solely used to recharge the device. With no interface on the hardware to control anything, the band completely relies on the companion app to operate. It’s available on both iOS and Android and I do find the app to be easy to use and well designed. It’s straightforward and everything functions in an orderly manner which if you’ve tried apps for products that aren’t necessarily mainstream items, you’ll know that it's kind of uncommon to see a well designed app.
Dual precision bone conduction transducers
The SONU app starts off by doing a 3D topographic map through a facial scan of your face to determine specific craniofacial and sinus anatomy. Every company in the world says they incorporate AI to their work. What it actually does is a mystery to me as I’ve attempted to analyze and figure out what exact algorithm or formula it uses to be considered as AI to conduct this scan to evaluate how congested I am and I still have no clue what it's basing its results on. The three lines on the band are used as a marker point to align and center the band to your nasal area. The SONU app then prompts you to recite a saying “Man simmers on the moon” to analyze and determine your current level of congestion. I won’t say I completely understand the mechanical engineering behind the band and its attempt at using AI to calculate the proper resonant frequency of every individual, but it does spit out a digit score. After that, the user can press the start session button and bone conducting frequency sound waves will begin pushing directly into the sinus cavities.
The sound waves are low-frequency, but they’re also directly controlled by hardware the app is on. For example, I use an Android phone to run the app and the SONU band reads as a Bluetooth peripheral. Android identifies it as a Bluetooth speaker akin to how it sees a wireless earbud. It will project all of the audio coming from the Android device through the SONU band unless you customize your Android settings to strictly handle audio through an individual function.
The default soundtrack the SONU app emits is a peaceful track that reminds me of a prototypical meditation session. It’s soothing and the vibrations coming from the track are easy to follow along to in its range. Just imagine bumping up a speaker and feeling the pulse from the bass on your skin. That’s basically what this is except that it is targeted at the nasal area where mucus builds up. It isn’t painful and there should be no possible reason for any side effects.
Since the band acts as a Bluetooth device, the volume levels need to be controlled by the volume rockers of the app host. There’s no way to control the volume levels, and by extension the vibration strength directly on the SONU band. The first couple of times I had attempted to use this, I didn’t realize that my phone’s Bluetooth volume levels were set quite low and that was the reason why the SONU frequencies felt so weak. They were nearly non-existent. Once I increased the volume levels, I instantly felt the tremors on my forehead.
Each session lasts for 15 minutes and the company recommends two sessions a day equaling to a total investment time of 30 minutes per day. That’s quite reasonable as there isn’t downtime required when using the SONU band. You can turn on a session and work on your computer at the same time. It’s unobtrusive to your daily routines and works in the background.
Does it actually work?
The million dollar question you’re here to learn about is if this thing really works. I want to preface this by introducing all the variables I had involved with the SONU Band as each user may experience different results. While SoundHealth advertises that the SONU band is a product that helps a user eliminate reliance on intranasal steroids, decongestants, and oral medicine, I absolutely continued to take all three of these. The SONU band was a supplement I added to my ever growing lineup of products in my battle against nasal congestion.
I am also severely allergic to living. I’m literally allergic to anything green. When my doctor got my blood results back from testing, he joked that he was shocked I was able to go outside without a bubble. I also have a really bad deviated septum that was confirmed via a CT Scan. If you’re here for this review, you’re likely desperate for some reprieve from the never ending suffering your nose is forcing upon you. Whether you’re tired because your quality of sleep is poor, you’re suffering from clogged ears, headaches, feeling pulsing in your face, or constantly blowing your nose, you’re not alone. It sucks, I get it.
Unfortunately, I can’t earnestly tell you that the SONU Band was a magical solution to end your suffering. It didn’t for me. To be clear, I don’t personally see a change in my everyday suffering. I’ve used the band daily for two months now and I’ve maintained about a similar outcome in how I feel pre-SONU. I can’t make up my mind whether the band is at least preventing me from feeling worse by “sonicating” dense mucus or if it's literally doing nothing. That’s where I’m at right now. In the past, some days were insufferable. The effects of the congestion wears heavily on my day to day activities. I haven’t had a day like that since using the SONU. However, it's hard to determine if the correlation is direct or a cause of other variables such as weather and air quality. In my specific medical case, I have both a structural and an environmental cause affecting my nasal airway. It also doesn’t help that my house is smack dab in the vortex of the San Bernardino mountains trap that produces the worst air quality in the nation. To sum it up, no I don’t feel better being treated by the SONU Band.
I also found myself falling into a deep analysis of my own judgment in how I feel when I see my congestion score. I have to ask myself, do I really feel that congested today like my score says I am? Actually, am I less congested because my score is higher? I feel pretty much the same, but is it because I’m just not paying attention to my body because I’m busy and distracted?
Those are things that make this a hard product to distinguish the efficacy of when there isn’t a substantial amount of anecdotal evidence that I can point to that I can say made it so that I felt better.
Final Thoughts
If you’re desperate for any reprieve to your symptoms and the traditional treatments that Allergists, ENTs, and doctors constantly loop to patients don’t truly give you the peace you desire, then you really have nothing to lose in giving the SONU Band a try. It’s safe and easy to use. At worst you’re out $300 and you have a low quality bone-conducting audio player for your music strapped to your head. The best case scenario is that the vibrations truly do influence your specific sinus cavities, in which this will then be an invaluable item for you.
While I hold the SONU Band in that latter regard, I’m also not saying I don’t believe in acoustic resonance therapy itself. For one reason or another, the SONU Band was not able to relieve my respiratory health issues, but the science shows that acoustic resonance therapy does show promising potential as treatment for nasal congestion issues. As with most things in the medical industry, there’s no guarantees of success. It’s a game of odds and sometimes you’re in the statistical minority. Whatever the case is, I’m at least optimistic enough to be grateful there are consumer electronic options readily accessible to the general public that at the very least tries to address these needs like the SONU Band does… even if I did not find relief from it.
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