Eight Sleep Pod 4 Review 2024

I started testing the Eight Sleep Pod 4 — a fancy water-powered mattress cover — as part of a project to try out different bed-cooling systems that go beyond what a cooling mattress or percale sheets can do. And temperature control is probably the product’s main feature, making it similar to the (significantly cheaper) Chilipad Dock Pro I tested earlier this summer: The Eight Sleep is essentially a sturdy fitted sheet with thin tubes running the length of its surface. Those tubes connect to a “Hub,” a reservoir that looks like a slimmer version of my family’s 2006 desktop computer. You fill the Hub with water, plug it in, make a few settings in the Eight Sleep app, and let the system pump water through the tubes to control the surface temperature of the mattress.

But what sets Eight Sleep apart is that its app is equipped with artificial intelligence. It’s called Autopilot, and the idea is that you give it some information about yourself and how you sleep, and Autopilot will track your sleep using sensors in the mattress AND make automatic changes to improve your sleep. For example, if Autopilot detects that your room is colder than usual, it can warm your bed so you can sleep more comfortably. When you set up your account, you’ll enter your age, gender, whether you share a bed, your preferred bed temperature, and your sleep schedule, and then Autopilot will track your other stats (I hope Autopilot uses this information kindly once the AI ​​takes over). It’s a paid subscription that costs $17 per month, and Eight Sleep requires you to subscribe for the first year of Pod ownership. You can cancel after that, but you’ll lose access to some key features.

Eight Pod provides clear, easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions via the app. To “install” the system, I removed the Eight Sleep Pod 4 from the bed (except for the waterproof mattress protector, just in case) and pulled the cover over the mattress. I placed the tube at the head of the bed so I could place the Hub next to my nightstand. Although I don’t have a headboard, the tube is thin and flexible enough that I think it would work with it; you may have to put in some extra effort to manage the wires and tubing.

The tube goes directly into the Hub, which holds about two liters of water. I filled the tank halfway, and the system “primed” for about ten minutes to push air bubbles out of the tubes. Then the app asked me to add more water and let it prime for another ten minutes. To complete the setup, my partner Sam and I set up Autopilot accounts so we could control our sides of the bed and track our sleep individually.

In the app, you can choose to display “actual temperatures” in Fahrenheit or Celsius, or you can use a simpler one-to-ten scale in either direction, going up to +10 for the warmest temperatures or down to -10 for the coldest. The actual-temperature scale lets you increase or decrease the temperature by one degree at a time; with the numeric scale, each of the 20 settings represents a temperature range. An Eight Sleep representative told me that -2 to -1 means 76 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit, while +1 to +2 means 83 to 88 degrees. No matter how you set it, the highest possible temperature is 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and the lowest is 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

The easiest way to set the temperature is through the app, but there’s also a place on either side of the bed where you can tap the cover to change the temperature. Neither Sam nor I found the tap method to be very effective, but in theory it’s a cool feature that saves you from having to use your phone if you can get it to work.

The first night we tested the Eight Sleep Pod 4, I set my side to -2 and Sam’s to -10, since I tend to get cold and he tends to get warm. Lowering the temperature by two degrees was actually too cold; at one point during the night I turned it up to +1. Sam, who was really excited to try out the cooling feature on the Pod, reported the next morning that the temperature had dropped to -10. way too cold, and at night he had to raise the temperature additionally.

After overdoing it with the cooling that first night and spending the next few nights experimenting, we both realized that we actually like to keep the temperature slightly warm, at +1 or +2 (between 83 and 88 degrees Fahrenheit), but keep a fan on in the room. At one point I tried turning the heat up to max just to see how warm I could get, and it definitely is warm—it’s definitely a winter-only setting. I doubt either extreme is good for most people, but the amount of swing you can get between -2 and +2 is really nice and easy to change depending on the weather that day.

Another cool feature unique to Eight Sleep is the vibrating alarm. If you set your desired wake-up time in the app, the pad itself will physically vibrate to wake you up in the morning. It’s a good alternative to an audible alarm for people who don’t easily wake up with a sunrise alarm. The vibration is strong enough to be noticeable without physically shaking me—like I’m lying on a giant iPhone that’s vibrating with an incoming call. To turn off the alarm, you can either use the app or double-tap the side of the pad in the same place you use the temperature control. Fortunately, the tapping function is more efficient at controlling the alarm; just double-tap to stop it, or once to snooze it.

I’m a bit skeptical of sleep trackers, especially AI-based ones, because I’ve never felt like I needed data to prove I slept well or badly — I can usually tell by how I feel in the morning. But I was intrigued by Eight Sleep’s claim that Autopilot could respond in real time to help me sleep better overall.

Each morning, the app’s Autopilot section gives you a report with a “sleep efficiency score” from zero to 100. You can also see stats on the three factors that make up your score: a percentage out of 100 that rates the “quality” of your sleep, a percentage out of 100 that rates your sleep “routine,” or how consistent your sleep is from night to night, and how many hours and minutes you slept. Some of these factors are specific to a single night, while others (like your routine score) take into account the previous three days, so it’ll take some time for the app to be as accurate as possible.

According to Autopilot, I sleep great — I’ve scored 100 on my Sleep Efficiency Score twice in the past month, and 99 multiple times. There’s some variability, though, and I’ve gotten scores as low as 68. Autopilot categorizes a score of 80 or higher as “good,” a score between 79 and 60 as “average,” and a score below 60 as “pay attention.” (I appreciate the prompt to “pay attention,” not the label that says I slept poorly, so I don’t feel like I failed some test.)

Those who want more information than just a numerical score (and most people who buy a mattress with enhanced sleep-tracking AI do) can also view stats on time spent in different sleep stages; health metrics like heart rate, heart rate variability, and breathing rate; time spent snoring; and sleep latency, or how long it takes you to actually fall asleep after you “go to bed.”

The Autopilot system not only tells you how you sleep, but also uses the data it collects to make subtle changes to help you improve the quality of your sleep. your sleep — reminiscent of the way the popular Snoo Baby cradle soothes restless babies when they wake up at night. As I write this, the app tells me that it increased my REM sleep time by 23 percent last night by simply adjusting the temperature. I often get these kinds of notifications in the morning, telling me what the app did to help me sleep longer or stop me from snoring. I can’t honestly say whether these tweaks really helped or not — the only way to verify Eight Sleep’s many claims would be to have an actual sleep study with a doctor. I don’t think I slept noticeably better Or worse since I started using this system in early August, but hey, maybe there is a slight improvement.

Yes, the temperature control on the Eight Sleep is great, and the vibrating alarm is really cool. But honestly, I could give or take the Autopilot membership, especially considering it costs $17 per month. That’s an additional $204 per year for the Autopilot subscription on top of the $2,500 price of the Pod itself.

If you decide to cancel after your first year of Eight Sleep, you’ll only be able to use the temperature controls; you’ll no longer be able to schedule specific temperature changes, use vibrating alerts, or have the system make automatic adjustments to improve your sleep. Eight Sleep gave me a free trial of Autopilot so I could fully test out the Pod 4, and while Sam and I enjoyed using many of the Autopilot features, I probably won’t be paying for a membership once my trial period expires.

Ultimately, the Eight Sleep’s temperature-control features can easily be found elsewhere for less money. But if you were to buy both a sleep tracker and a temperature-control system anyway, it would certainly be convenient to have them in one package.

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