I’m solely half joking once I say that Eight Sleep’s temperature-controlling mattress cowl improved my marriage. evening’s sleep is elusive in my home. I’m at all times chilly, my partner runs scorching. We battle nightly over the thermostat. So once I first reviewed an Eight Sleep cover, it was a revelation. I may curl up and drift off right into a toasty slumber. My partner may make like a penguin and sleep on a slab of ice.
The one factor I didn’t like was the practically $1,900 value 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 difficult to return by. Eight Sleep’s entire pitch is that it helps create the proper sleep situations. The duvet comprises tubing that runs water from a management hub to individually heat or cool both sides of the mattress. It’s embedded with sleep-tracking sensors, plus haptic motors for a silent alarm, letting the mattress vibrate at a steadily 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 possibly can zip it onto your current mattress as an alternative of getting to shell out for a complete good mattress. (These can value as much as a whopping $10,000.)
The most recent 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 value inflation, however the Extremely bundle additionally provides a base. It slots into your current mattress body and allows you to regulate the mattress’s elevation and place. The duvet itself has additionally been refined so it’s quieter, 20 p.c thinner, and has twice the cooling energy. Sleep monitoring now consists of loud night breathing detection — and if you happen to shell out for the bottom, the mattress robotically lifts the pinnacle space to scale 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 cellphone.
It pains my penny-pinching soul that I like these updates.
Hear me out. I do know nobody wants a flowery $2,000 base to tweak their mattress’s elevation. In my 36 years on Earth, stacking a bunch of pillows towards the headboard has typically been ok. However the mattress elevating for you is regretfully pleasant. On lazy Sundays, I hit the studying elevation preset and morph into a cheerful little shrimp whereas watching the newest brain-rotting season of Love is Blind. Cozying up with a e book, ft and higher again elevated with my mattress already warmed up for me is now my nightly routine. (It’s additionally the comfiest approach to doomscroll.) There are two different presets for enjoyable and sleeping, and you’ll set your individual customized elevation, too.
Having the bottom additionally will get you a nifty loud night breathing mitigation characteristic. When enabled, the mattress will robotically elevate when it detects loud night breathing. It’s not good. I’ve woken up a number of occasions to a transferring mattress. Even so, I’d relatively be barely disoriented by a transferring mattress than need to grumpily get up my loud night breathing partner to get them to settle down. Particularly since I haven’t woken up each time. Typically 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 principle draw back — in addition to the associated fee — is the bottom isn’t splendid when 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 develop into public enemy primary. It strikes, he pounces, claws unsheathed. I’m afraid one in every of as of late, he’s going to poke a gap within the Pod 4 Extremely — a tool stuffed with water at any given second. Cats additionally love exploring underneath the mattress, which led to an incident the place he nearly obtained pancaked by the mattress reducing. It’s now a household rule that every one cats should be accounted for earlier than altering mattress elevation.
I requested Eight Sleep concerning the seeming lack of security options. “We have now no reported circumstances 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 reducing portion to get out of the way in which.” I nonetheless say you should be overly cautious, particularly as there are not any warnings inside 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 possibly can simply really feel them via the sheets. Double tapping raises the mattress temperature, whereas triple tapping lowers it. A quadruple faucet will allow you to cycle via mattress elevation presets (e.g., studying, leisure, sleeping, and so on.). Nevertheless 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 cellphone, 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, however 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 form of massive — concerning the measurement of a slim gaming PC, however after a whilst you overlook it’s there. The duvet itself appears the identical, however it’s now thinner and has redesigned tubing for higher consolation and environment friendly cooling. I suppose I seen after we first used the Pod 4 Extremely, however it’s not one thing that made an enormous general impression. 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 sooner 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 some of the 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 must always. (Although, you may simply repair this by shopping for a complement or product utilizing a code of their bio. How else may mouth taping take over TikTok?) That sleepmaxxing has develop into a viral pattern speaks to how a lot the typical individual desires to sleep higher. On this atmosphere, a $5,000 good mattress cowl — not even a mattress — that guarantees you the very best evening of absolutely optimized, AI-automated sleep is the most 2024 piece of wellness tech possible. 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 reality is my partner and I, each lifelong insomniacs, have been sleeping like infants.
The final time I believed this difficult a couple of 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. Nearly in a single day, the ache that had been plaguing me for years disappeared. Nobody is extra upset than I that switching from a daily 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 may cancel after a yr, as long as you’re okay with dropping each single characteristic besides handbook temperature management. Eight Sleep says it does this to develop, preserve, and enhance its good options, however subscribing to your mattress essentially feels flawed. Adjusting the temperature is a very powerful characteristic, however it’s not well worth the entry value 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 frequently solved a significant drawback my partner and I’ve with our sleep preferences. On the opposite, we nonetheless managed to sleep on a daily, 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 resolution if the Pod 4 Extremely sucked. Nevertheless it doesn’t! Now my drawback is determining how a lot an excellent evening’s sleep is basically value.
