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For almost all of my 30 years traveling around the sun, I have suffered from debilitating allergies of some kind. As a young child, I often suffered from hay fever, as well as allergies to things like dog hair and house dust mites. Couple that with chronic rhinitis (inflammation of the nose), and it’s safe to say that my childhood was pretty torrid.
Even today, I suffer from severe allergic reactions for no apparent reason, and my nose is blocked as much as it is clear. So you can imagine my excitement when an email appeared in my inbox from a company called SONU, promising congestion and allergies in minutes without the hassle of medication.
The SONU Band is a portable headband that uses vibrational sound therapy to help relieve nasal allergies and congestion. It sounds strange, but the technology is approved by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and backed by science. In 2021, a study found that the resonant vibration of the sinonasal cavities (playing the sound against your face, you and me) reduced symptoms such as nasal congestion, sneezing, runny nose, and rhinorrhea (runny nose) in 90% of subjects after only two cycles of treatment , without adverse side effects.
In the same way, a study 2023 revealed that acoustic resonance therapy produced significant improvements in subjects, concluding that ART “is a safe and effective non-pharmacological alternative for the treatment of nasal congestion”.
To find out for myself, I got my hands on SONU’s headband to see what all the fuss was about – and the results were staggering.
Practice with SONU
Out of the box, SONU is an incredibly simple concept. You have a headband and a charging cable. The material is comfortable, and there is an adjustable velcro strap to ensure a good 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 adapt the emitted sound waves. This works with any iPhone newer than an iPhone 10, so you don’t even need the better iPhone on the market to participate.
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 enter your own level of congestion manually using a slider to help give you a better insight into how blocked your nose feels.
Analysis done, it’s time for voodoo. With the band on your head, just touch it to start your treatment.
What follows is difficult to describe. The band begins to emit strange, ethereal noises very similar to those you’d hear during a spa massage or in a Tibetan monastery (which I’m sure I’ve never visited). Nasal cavity benefits aside, it’s a very relaxing sound, if a bit repetitive, but you get used to it quickly. The sound is designed to gently vibrate your sinuses and nasal cavities to soothe allergy symptoms, inflammation and congestion.
The treatment takes 15 minutes, and SONU says doing it twice a day should reap benefits. So does it really work?
SONU: Does it really work?
I’ve been using SONU for a couple of weeks, and I’ve been lucky in that time to not suffer from any allergies or significant nasal congestion. However, I can heartily attest that every time I use this band my nose immediately feels clear and less blocked. The relief is not instantaneous, but in the course of the 15-minute treatment, the therapy works seriously. I can’t remember using the band and not feeling any sort 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 used the SONU band in bed, but, if you can work with the distraction of noise, you can use it at your desk or while reading, so it’s not that inconvenient. Battery life is good for five sessions, although I actually found performance to be better than that, which is nice.
At $299 the SONU Band is not cheap. However, if you know what it’s like to have your life occasionally (or regularly) ruined by allergies and congestion, it’s hard to put a price on the promise of relief from those symptoms. Crucially, there is also no subscription, so the one-time payment is definitely an attraction over repeat prescriptions of steroid and nasal sprays, medications, and more. I’d also like 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, though, I’m not planning on inducing a reaction to put SONU through its paces.
There is no guarantee that it will 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 that patients tend to show double the improvement in nasal congestion compared to placebo trials, with 81% of patients having a “clinically significant reduction” in nasal congestion symptoms , and an average improvement in symptoms of about 40%.
Right now SONU is limited to the US, and I’ve been using the app via TestFlight in the UK, but SONU says a rollout beyond the US costs, and Android availability, is coming in the summer ( in the United States and the United Kingdom) this year. .
