I’m solely half joking after I say that Eight Sleep’s temperature-controlling mattress cowl improved my marriage. evening’s sleep is elusive in my home. I’m all the time chilly, my partner runs scorching. We battle nightly over the thermostat. So after I first reviewed an Eight Sleep cowl, it was a revelation. I might curl up and drift off right into a toasty slumber. My partner might make like a penguin and sleep on a slab of ice.
The one factor I didn’t like was the practically $1,900 worth and the $19 month-to-month subscription. Quick-forward two years, and alas, I’m in the identical pickle with Eight Sleep’s newest ludicrously costly mattress cowl: the Pod 4 Extremely, which begins at slightly below $4,700 for a Queen. Not together with the necessary annual membership, which begins at $199.
I can hear my mother’s ghost screeching. $4,700!? Are you insane?! Sleep is free! It’s a good criticism, however good sleep is tough to come back by. Eight Sleep’s complete pitch is that it helps create the right sleep circumstances. The quilt accommodates tubing that runs water from a management hub to individually heat or cool all sides of the mattress. It’s embedded with sleep-tracking sensors, plus haptic motors for a silent alarm, letting the mattress vibrate at a step by step rising depth to softly wake you up. Lastly, there’s an AI-powered Autopilot characteristic that adjusts the temperature as you sleep so that you theoretically get a greater evening’s relaxation. Because it’s a canopy, you may zip it onto your present mattress as an alternative of getting to shell out for a complete sensible mattress. (These can value as much as a whopping $10,000.)
The newest Pod 4 Extremely does all of that, too — and it’s fairly good at it. So why is it a lot costlier? A few of that’s good ole worth inflation, however the Extremely bundle additionally provides a base. It slots into your present mattress body and allows you to regulate the mattress’s elevation and place. The quilt itself has additionally been refined so it’s quieter, 20 p.c thinner, and has twice the cooling energy. Sleep monitoring now contains loud night breathing detection — and in case you shell out for the bottom, the mattress mechanically lifts the pinnacle space to cut back mentioned loud night breathing. Eight Sleep additionally added contact controls by way of two “faucet zones” on both aspect of the mattress that allow you to regulate temperature, dismiss alarms, and regulate mattress place without having your telephone.
It pains my penny-pinching soul that I like these updates.
Hear me out. I do know nobody wants a elaborate $2,000 base to tweak their mattress’s elevation. In my 36 years on Earth, stacking a bunch of pillows in opposition to the headboard has typically been adequate. However the mattress elevating for you is regretfully pleasant. On lazy Sundays, I hit the studying elevation preset and morph into a contented little shrimp whereas watching the most recent brain-rotting season of Love is Blind. Cozying up with a guide, toes and higher again elevated with my mattress already warmed up for me is now my nightly routine. (It’s additionally the comfiest option to doomscroll.) There are two different presets for enjoyable and sleeping, and you may set your personal customized elevation, too.
Having the bottom additionally will get you a nifty loud night breathing mitigation characteristic. When enabled, the mattress will mechanically elevate when it detects loud night breathing. It’s not excellent. I’ve woken up just a few occasions to a shifting mattress. Even so, I’d moderately be barely disoriented by a shifting mattress than need to grumpily get up my loud night breathing partner to get them to cool down. Particularly since I haven’t woken up each time. Generally I solely know an adjustment occurs as a result of it pops up in Eight Sleep’s morning sleep report. Both manner, I now have definitive proof that I snore a lot, a lot lower than my partner.
The primary draw back — in addition to the fee — is the bottom isn’t best if in case you have small wily pets. My cat Petey by no means considered the mattress as a foe earlier than, however now that it strikes, it’s turn out to be public enemy primary. It strikes, he pounces, claws unsheathed. I’m afraid one in every of today, he’s going to poke a gap within the Pod 4 Extremely — a tool filled with water at any given second. Cats additionally love exploring below the mattress, which led to an incident the place he nearly bought pancaked by the mattress decreasing. It’s now a household rule that every one cats should be accounted for earlier than altering mattress elevation.
I requested Eight Sleep in regards to the seeming lack of security options. “We’ve no reported instances of individuals or small pets being harmed by the Pod 4 Extremely Base,” says Sam Kang, Eight Sleep’s VP of {hardware}. “We additionally transfer the bottom very slowly to permit time for something that could be beneath the decreasing portion to get out of the way in which.” I nonetheless say you should be overly cautious, particularly as there are not any warnings throughout the app.
Mattress elevation is cool, however the improve I like most is the contact controls. The faucet zones, positioned on both aspect of the mattress, are textured so you may simply really feel them by the sheets. Double tapping raises the mattress temperature, whereas triple tapping lowers it. A quadruple faucet will allow you to cycle by mattress elevation presets (e.g., studying, rest, sleeping, and many others.). However it’s most useful in snoozing or dismissing the silent alarm. Mine vibrates my aspect of the mattress at 5:45AM so I can prepare for my cursed morning exercise. All I’ve to do is roll over, pat the mattress twice, and I don’t disturb my partner. Beforehand, I’d need to blindly seek for my telephone, launch the Eight Sleep app, and dismiss the alarm that manner. I used to be by no means fast sufficient, and the “silent” alarm is definitely fairly loud the longer you let it go. (The vibrations are fairly highly effective.) Including the contact controls lets me use the silent alarm extra confidently — and lets my partner get some additional Zzzs.
The opposite updates are much less flashy however enhance the general expertise. The hub, as an example, is unquestionably quieter. With the Pod 2 Professional, it could often whirr whereas filling the mattress with water. It wasn’t too noisy, nevertheless it was loud sufficient that my partner would remark. We don’t actually discover the Pod 4’s hub, besides when it’s time to refill the tank. It’s nonetheless type of large — in regards to the dimension of a slim gaming PC, however after a whilst you neglect it’s there. The quilt itself seems to be the identical, nevertheless it’s now thinner and has redesigned tubing for higher consolation and environment friendly cooling. I assume I observed after we first used the Pod 4 Extremely, nevertheless it’s not one thing that made an enormous general influence. It’s onerous to say whether or not the cooling can be two occasions extra highly effective, although I do really feel prefer it’s ever so barely quicker at reaching the specified temperature.
Costly mattress tech is inherently ridiculous. A mattress has one job: to be a snug place so that you can sleep. Including tech to it overcomplicates one of the vital pure issues a human can do. However that is the age of optimization, and wellness influencers would have you ever consider that none of us sleep in addition to we should always. (Although, you might simply repair this by shopping for a complement or product utilizing a code of their bio. How else might mouth taping take over TikTok?) That sleepmaxxing has turn out to be a viral pattern speaks to how a lot the typical particular person needs to sleep higher. On this setting, a $5,000 sensible mattress cowl — not even a mattress — that guarantees you the most effective evening of absolutely optimized, AI-automated sleep is the most 2024 piece of wellness tech conceivable. It drives me bonkers that I can’t even argue with the outcomes! Sure, it may be finicky at first, and it took months to actually discover how a lot my sleep had improved. However the truth is my partner and I, each lifelong insomniacs, have been sleeping like infants.
The final time I assumed this difficult a few mattress was in my early 20s. After seven years of sleeping on paper-thin, rock-hard futons, I’d accrued sufficient bodily pains that my physician demanded I purchase a correct mattress. Virtually in a single day, the ache that had been plaguing me for years disappeared. Nobody is extra upset than I that switching from an everyday mattress to an Eight Sleep product had related, albeit much less dramatic, outcomes. Not as soon as, however twice.
Even so, I nonetheless battle with this price ticket. Notably since options like Autopilot, silent alarms, and sleep insights, are locked behind a compulsory $199 annual subscription that you just pay for upfront. You’ll be able to cancel after a 12 months, as long as you’re okay with dropping each single characteristic besides guide temperature management. Eight Sleep says it does this to develop, keep, and enhance its sensible options, however subscribing to your mattress basically feels fallacious. Adjusting the temperature is crucial characteristic, nevertheless it’s not definitely worth the entry worth if that’s all you’re getting.
And but, I stay tempted. It’s why I hate that I like this mattress. On the one hand, it’s regularly solved a significant downside my partner and I’ve with our sleep preferences. On the opposite, we nonetheless managed to sleep on an everyday, not-so-smart mattress up to now and will accomplish that once more. Even when we’d have to return to battling over the thermostat. It’d be so a lot simpler to make this choice if the Pod 4 Extremely sucked. However it doesn’t! Now my downside is determining how a lot evening’s sleep is actually value.
