Consumer Report: Snoring Strap

Mark Honeychurch - 18 September 2023

For Father’s Day, my ever-loving family purchased me some interesting devices from Temu, including an anti-snoring chin strap. The strap is made from neoprene, and has velcro straps on the top and back, along with a harness that goes around your chin. The chin harness is meant to keep your mouth closed as you sleep, which apparently will stop you snoring.

I’m not the prettiest picture at the best of times, but this thing really didn’t do me any favours. The tightness of the strap does not lend itself to flattery, and tends to squish your face, as can be seen in this picture of me modelling it:

On Saturday night, in the name of “science”, I finally tried this contraption out overnight. There are a few findings from my night wearing a face-altering strap. Firstly, it morphs my face enough that I could no longer unlock my iPhone using the front facing camera, meaning I was forced to type my PIN in - first world problems!

Secondly, when I tucked my youngest daughter into bed while I was wearing it, she said “You’re going to be in my nightmares tonight”.

Thirdly, it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep when you’re wearing something on your face that you can constantly feel, and that keeps slipping out of place and needs frequent readjusting. I spent a lot of the night in a half-asleep daze.

Finally, a result that skeptics won’t find very surprising - my wife reports that it absolutely does not stop you from snoring. Apparently it changed the sound of my snores, there were strange squeaks and the kind of brrrr noise a horse makes. I think it was somewhat unnerving for her to have to listen to - my once-familiar snore turned into the alien sounds of a totally different snoring melody, like there was a stranger in her bed. To say nothing of the surprise she had when she woke up in the morning and rolled over to see my smushed face lying next to hers.

If anyone has any ideas of other cheap Temu life-hack devices I can try to see if they really work, please let me know - they can’t be much worse than this daft thing, and who knows, maybe one of them might actually work.