20 Pairs of Howard Leight Laser Lite Ear Plugs

I live in Newcastle's City Centre, in a lovely flat that sits in an unfortunate location by the bottle bins of 5 busy pubs which stay open until 3am every night. I was at my wits end when after 3 years I had failed to have a complete nights sleep.

Each pub sends their empty glass bottles crashing into the metal containers at different times of the night, starting from about 11pm until about 3 or 4 in the morning. Then at about 5am the first of 4 recycling trucks would come to collect the glass empties and send them cascading into the back of their growling trucks, before reversing out the road to a constant beep, beep, beep, beep, beep...

The noise was ruining my life. Lack of sleep was affecting me at work and the council seemed unable to enforce any laws or do anything about the racket; even though the pubs were in clear violation of their licenses. I spent months keeping noise logs for the toothless paper tigers on the noise team, yet still, after years of non-stop nightly noise, I was still unable to get a peaceful nights sleep on even one occasion.

That was until I discovered these. These little foam beauties literally saved my sanity (which was ebbing away due to severe sleep deprivation) and stopped me going on a Michael-Douglas-in-Falling-Down-Columbine-High-School-Massacre-David-Bird-style-gun-rampage or killing frenzy around the local Whether spoons pubs.

All you do is give the small foam ear plugs a twist and a squeeze and then bung them in your lug holes. Then, as they expand to find their natural shape again they form and airtight seal in your ear canal, thus blocking out all the noise. And they really are very effective when it comes to doing their job.

If you're worried about them getting stuck in your ears, you needn't be. The T-shape design ensures they stay locked in place in your ear and don't slip deep into your ear holes, becoming lodged - this little deviation in design is what, in my opinion, makes them better than other foam earplugs, which are mostly just a circular in shape.

If you've ever witnessed the din of glass bottles being emptied into metal containers, you'll know how loud and piercing the crashing glass is, yet with these in I don't hear a thing and I'm sleeping like a baby. The bar managers in my local area don't know how close they came to death. It's a fact that their lives were saved by a steady supply of little pink and yellow foam ear plugs... as was the life of that stupid seagull too.

I have been using ear plugs for a few years due to my husbands snoring (you can here him snoring from outside the house) I would spend £5 for 3 pairs of super ear plugs but I have found these ones as comforable and as effective. I will by again.

I get by on ear plugs. I don't get on with my flatmate, she's in the room next to me with thin walls so I can hear every time she moves in her bed, and to make matters worse, she plays her music like nothing matters. Earplugs keep me sane!

I would buy the quies mousse comfort ear plugs (the 3 pack in different colours) over this product. Both quies and the howard leight ones you have to roll into your ear to get the full effect. The negatives of buying the Howard Leight - they're half as effective as the quies earplugs. They don't block out sound. They're luminant yellow at the back, so can't really wear them out in public. They're also hard to squeeze into your ear compared with quies. However, I wear these ones to sleep; because the quies ear plugs hurt after an hour, whereas Howard Leight ones are soft and can be worn until the next morning. In sum you get more for your money (come in a pack of 20) and can sleep all night with comfort, they're so soft. But they don't block out sound effectively. I'm used to the quies ones which are much better.

However, with the quies every bit of sound is blocked out because they're much more firmly fitted in the ear which can feel sort of 'spacey', these ones muffle sound instead of get rid of it.