Eight Sleep Pod 4 Extremely evaluation: on the market, good night time’s sleep, simply $4,700

I’m solely half joking once I say that Eight Sleep’s temperature-controlling mattress cowl improved my marriage. A superb night time’s sleep is elusive in my home. I’m at all times chilly, my partner runs sizzling. We battle nightly over the thermostat. So once I first reviewed an Eight Sleep cowl, 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 tough to return by. Eight Sleep’s entire pitch is that it helps create the proper sleep circumstances. The quilt accommodates tubing that runs water from a management hub to individually heat or cool either side of the mattress. It’s embedded with sleep-tracking sensors, plus haptic motors for a silent alarm, letting the mattress vibrate at a progressively 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 night time’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 whole good mattress. (These can price 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 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 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 robotically lifts the pinnacle space to cut back mentioned loud night breathing. Eight Sleep additionally added contact controls through 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 really 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 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 contented 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 technique 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 carry when it detects loud night breathing. It’s not excellent. I’ve woken up a couple of occasions to a shifting mattress. Even so, I’d quite be barely disoriented by a shifting mattress than should grumpily get up my loud night breathing partner to get them to cool 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 price — is the bottom isn’t perfect if in case you have small wily pets. My cat Petey by no means seen the mattress as a foe earlier than, however now that it strikes, it’s grow to be public enemy primary. It strikes, he pounces, claws unsheathed. I’m afraid one among lately, 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 beneath the mattress, which led to an incident the place he nearly received pancaked by the mattress reducing. It’s now a household rule that each one cats should be accounted for earlier than altering mattress elevation.

I requested Eight Sleep concerning the seeming lack of security options. “We’ve got 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 which may be beneath the reducing portion to get out of the best way.” I nonetheless say you must be overly cautious, particularly as there aren’t any warnings inside the app.

Mattress elevation is cool, however the improve I really like most is the contact controls. The faucet zones, situated 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 many others.). But it surely’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 should 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 further Zzzs.

The opposite updates are much less flashy however enhance the general expertise. The hub, for example, is unquestionably quieter. With the Pod 2 Professional, it might 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 sort of huge — concerning the dimension of a slim gaming PC, however after a when you neglect it’s there. The quilt itself seems to be the identical, however it’s now thinner and has redesigned tubing for higher consolation and environment friendly cooling. I believe I seen once we first used the Pod 4 Extremely, however it’s not one thing that made an enormous total affect. It’s laborious 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 comfortable place so that you can sleep. Including tech to it overcomplicates probably the most 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 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 grow to be a viral development speaks to how a lot the common individual desires to sleep higher. On this surroundings, a $5,000 good mattress cowl — not even a mattress — that guarantees you one of the best night time of totally optimized, AI-automated sleep is essentially 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 assumed this difficult a couple of mattress was in my early 20s. After seven years of sleeping on paper-thin, rock-hard futons, I’d collected 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 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 wrestle 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 yr, as long as you’re okay with dropping each single characteristic besides guide 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 really like this mattress. On the one hand, it’s regularly solved a serious downside my partner and I’ve with our sleep preferences. On the opposite, we nonetheless managed to sleep on a daily, not-so-smart mattress prior to now and will achieve this once more. Even when we’d have to return to battling over the thermostat. It’d be a lot simpler to make this determination if the Pod 4 Extremely sucked. But it surely doesn’t! Now my downside is determining how a lot night time’s sleep is admittedly price.