I tried an AI-powered headband that uses weird sounds to unblock your nose, and it actually worked

The SONU headband promises relief from congestion and allergy symptoms (Image credit: Future)

For nearly all of my 30 years traveling around the sun, I’ve suffered from debilitating allergies of some sort. As a young child, I was often laid up by hay fever, as well as by allergies to things like dog hair and house dust mites. Couple that with chronic rhinitis (inflammation of the lining of the nose), and it’s safe to say that my childhood was pretty torrid.

Even today, I still suffer from severe allergic reactions for no apparent reason, and my nose is blocked as often as it’s clear. So you can imagine my excitement when an email popped up in my inbox from a company called SONU, promising congestion and allergy relief in minutes without the hassle of medication.

The SONU Band is a wearable headband that uses vibrational sound therapy to help clear nasal allergies and congestion. It sounds weird, but the tech is FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) approved, and backed by science. In 2021, a study found that resonant vibration of the sinonasal cavities (playing sound against your face, to you and me) reduced symptoms such as nasal congestion, sneezing, itching, and rhinorrhea (runny nose) in 90% of subjects after just two treatment cycles, with no adverse side effects.

Similarly, a 2023 study revealed that acoustic resonance therapy produced significant improvements in subjects, concluding that ART “is a safe and effective non-pharmacologic alternative for the treatment of nasal congestion.”

To find out for myself, I went hands-on with SONU’s headband to see what all the fuss was about – and the results were staggering.

Hands-on with SONU

Out of the box, SONU is an incredibly simple concept. You get a headband and a charging cable. The material is comfortable, and there’s an adjustable velcro strap to ensure a nice fit. The plastic speaker modules that make up the acoustic resonance module aren’t exactly snuggly, but it’s not painful or uncomfortable to wear. To use SONU, you need to download the company’s free iOS app (Android availability is coming this year). The SONU app uses your iPhone’s camera to scan your facial geometry, which helps tailor the sound waves emitted. This works with any iPhone newer than an iPhone 10, so you don’t even need the best iPhone on the market to get involved.

The other key analysis is SONUCheck, an AI-powered voice analysis tool that listens to your speech to give you a real-time indicator of how clear your nasal passages are. This works best with the band on your head, and you can input your own congestion level manually using a slider to help give it better insight into how blocked your nose actually feels.

Analysis done, it’s time for the voodoo. With the band on your head, you simply tap to begin your treatment.

What follows is hard to describe. The band begins to emit strange, ethereal noises much like you’d hear during a spa massage or in a Tibetan monastery (I'm assuming; I've never visited one). Nasal cavity benefits aside, it’s a very relaxing sound, if a little repetitive, but you get used to it quickly. The sound is designed to gently vibrate your sinus and nasal cavities in order to calm allergy symptoms, inflammation, and congestion.

The treatment lasts 15 minutes, and SONU says doing it twice a day should reap benefits. So does it actually work?

SONU: Does it actually work?

I’ve used SONU for a couple of weeks, and I've been fortunate in that time to not have been suffering from any allergies or significant nasal congestion. However, I can heartily attest that every time I use this band my nose feels immediately clear and less blocked. The relief isn’t instant, but over the course of the 15-minute treatment the therapy seriously works. I can’t recall using the band and not feeling some kind of immediate relief in terms of nasal congestion and pressure.

Given how strange the technology is, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I was definitely surprised by how comprehensive and effective the results were. I’ve been using the SONU band in bed, but, if you can work with the distraction of the noise, you can use it at your desk or while reading, so it’s not all that inconvenient. Battery life is good for five sessions, although I’ve actually found the performance to be better than that, which is nice.

At $299 the SONU Band isn’t cheap. However, if you know what it's like to have your life occasionally (or regularly) ruined by allergies and congestion, then it’s hard to put a price on the promise of relief from those symptoms. Crucially, there’s also no subscription, so the one-off payment is definitely a draw over repeat prescriptions of steroid and nasal sprays, medication, and more. I’d also be keen to see how effective it is when my symptoms are more acute, such as during an allergic reaction or in the pollen-infested months of the British summer. Naturally, however, I have no plans to induce a reaction in order to put the SONU through its paces.

There’s no guarantee it’ll work for everyone, but SONU offers a 30-day trial period on purchases, so you should be able to try it risk-free. For its part, SONU says patients tend to show double the improvement in nasal congestion compared to placebo trials, with 81% of patients experiencing a “clinically significant reduction” in nasal congestion symptoms, and an average improvement in symptoms of around 40%.

Right now the SONU is limited to the US, and I had to use the app via TestFlight in the UK, but SONU says a rollout beyond US shores, and Android availability, are coming in summer (in the US and UK) of this year.