Best Pillow Speakers: A Comprehensive Buyers Guide for 2023

A good friend of mine recently asked me to recommend the best sleep pillow. She said she had tried a few different ones, and they all were, well, not so great. I won’t use her exact words…

I smiled that smart and beneficent smile I have for people who ‘need my help’ and told her I would investigate, and after a lot of lying down and listening I have to admit she was right – they are all, or almost all, well, not so great. I won’t use my exact words…

But wait, don’t touch that dial! Because while most of them are either physically uncomfortable or have terribly thin and hollow sound – or, most often, both – a couple of them are at least decent, and can be pretty easily recommended.

The others? Well, let’s just say you shouldn’t lose any sleep wondering about them, and if you get one you will definitely lose sleep.

Top Picks – The Best Sleep Pillows

• Best On-Pillow Speaker: C Crane Company PS2 SoftSpeaker Pillow Speaker
• Best Under-Pillow Speaker: Drowsie Pillow Speaker Calming Under-Pillow Speaker

Who Makes the Best Pillow Speaker?

Whether you use a pillow speaker for sleeping, for falling asleep, for meditation or relaxation, or for listening to music, movies or audio books in bed, they need to do a couple of things well:

• Be comfortable on or under your pillow
• Project clean, clear and attractive sound, even at low volumes

Unfortunately, none of them do either of these things…

No, that’s not fair – I did find two pillow speakers that were comfortable and sounded great, but really the vast majority of them are drek.

So this is undoubtedly going to end up as the shortest buyer’s guide I’ve ever written, since I can only in good conscience recommend these two.

I will say, though, that unless you absolutely must have a speaker, there are some great alternatives out there, like decent sleep headphones, and many of them really are comfortable enough for relaxing and even falling asleep. Before we get started with the best pillow speakers, let me recommend a couple of my favorite headphones for in-bed use:

HearProtek Ultra-Soft Sleep Earphones with Volume Control – almost ridiculously cheap, but with surprisingly good sound, these soft wired in-ear headphones are comfortable even when you lie on your side, and also block out outside noise very effectively.

Soundcore by Anker Life P3 Noise Cancelling Earbuds – a more premium choice, the Soundcore P3 are true wireless earbuds that are fairly flat and fit securely, making them very comfortable for in-bed use. The sound quality is fantastic, and the noise-cancelling feature can be a real blessing.

I also really like the Perytong Sleep Headband wireless headphones, which sound really good and are so comfortable, and are good in many other situations as well. And you might want to consider the Musicozy Sleep Mask with Bluetooth Headphones – I myself haven’t tried the Musicozy, but they are enormously popular and customers seem to absolutely love them, especially for meditation and calming audio programs like ASMR.

The Best Pillow Speakers in 2023: An Exhaustive List of All Two of Them!

Best On-Pillow Speaker

C Crane Company PS2 SoftSpeaker Pillow Speaker

What I Like:

• Very Comfortable
• Doesn’t Slip
• Good Sound Quality
• Well Made and Durable

Possible Downsides? 

• Could Play Louder
• No Wireless

Many pillow speakers are designed to lie under the pillow, and that is just where the problem lies – they can’t really provide any kind of decent sound quality or volume, and some of them will suddenly blare out quite loudly if you shift or move your pillow, disturbing you or your bed-mate.

But the C Crane PS2 SoftSpeaker is different. It is a very soft and quite comfortable speaker that lies on top of the pillow, and has much nicer, more open and musical sound than pretty much any other I’ve tried.

And it’s definitely comfortable enough to lay on, even for long periods, and even to fall asleep with.

There is a chance that it might slip off at some point, but it didn’t for me, and it probably depends on the individual person using it, and maybe on the type of pillow they have.

The only problem I had was that the volume was never really that high. You control volume from your phone, radio or other audio source, and can really crank it up if you want, but still the volume from the SoftSpeaker is never going to be huge. In quiet environments it is more than enough, and this is probably an  advantage for your bedmate – and anyway, most people aren’t getting a pillow speaker to pump out the jams.

So, a very nicely made, soft and comfortable on-pillow speaker that will plug into any headphone jack or audio out socket, and so will work with almost any device out there, the C Crane PS2 SoftSpeaker sounds great and is very comfortable.

Not perfect, perhaps, but for the low price this is a great find!

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Best Under-Pillow Speaker

Drowsie Pillow Speaker Calming Under-Pillow Speaker

What I Like:

• Totally Unobtrusive During Use
• Good Sound Quality
• Premium Material and Build Quality
• Good and Reliable Bluetooth Wireless

Possible Downsides? 

• No Wired Connection

The Drowsie under-pillow speaker is a remarkable product – I complained earlier that there are almost no good speakers for pillows available, but if there is even one as good as this, it’s all ok.

Extremely well made and durable, the Drowsie has three very clear and relatively strong speakers, and uses a Bluetooth wireless connection to play audio from most any device – phone, tablet, laptop or PC, stereo system, wireless bedside radio and a lot more.

The Drowsie isn’t going to blow you away with volume, and the sound coming through your pillow isn’t nearly as clear as listening to a speaker directly through empty space, but I have to say that this pillow speaker is surprisingly clear and audible, and actually sounds quite good.

And again, people aren’t typically going to buy a sleep speaker for rocking out to, and for audio books, meditation programs, videos and movies, calming music and white noise-type audio the Drowsie is just perfect.

There is a chance that if you fall asleep, and really toss and turn at night, you might uncover the speaker and bother your bedmate, but I’m somewhat of a restless sleeper and I never had this problem.

So yeah, at the end of the day there may only be two best sleep speakers, or two that I could even imagine recommending, but they are both surprisingly good and affordable, and this Drowsie pillow speaker especially is great sounding and a truly premium product in every way.