Smart watches! Smart bands! Smart rings! Smart-masks! There’s a seemingly never-ending plethora of products that are all aimed at slicing and dicing those hours between when you fall asleep and your alarm goes off. They promise better sleep through knowledge.
But what if, instead of wrestling with a whole category of smart wearables, you made your bed smart and achieved better sleep by actively controlling your sleep environment and gained knowledge about how well you slept. Seems a lot simpler, doesn’t it?
Eight Sleep has been making beds smarter for years. In fact, their Pod 3 was so good, it never left my bed after I reviewed it, helping me survive the Florida summer in comfort. Now, Eight Sleep has introduced the Pod 4, with next-gen technology that makes it more comfortable, quieter, and smarter, including new snore detection.
What Is It?
Like the Pod 3 before it, the Eight Sleep Pod 4 is a mattress cover with built-in active cooling and smart sensor technology. It connects to a hub that’s about the size of a desktop PC tower (maybe a little taller) and works with an app to provide you data, sleep cycle scheduling, alarm programming, cooling control, and more. Of course, those features will cost you.
That’s because the Pod 4, like just about every smart thing out there these days, also comes with an annually-charged subscription for its Autopilot functionality. This unlocks functionality like automatic temperature control, alarms, sleep reports, and snore detection and mitigation (if you opt for the Ultra). You can cancel the Autopilot subscription at any time, but without it the only thing you can do with your Pod 4 is manually adjust the temperature.
How Has It Changed?
The Pod 4 cover might look a little lumpy, but it feels perfectly smooth.
The redesigned Pod 3 cover is 20% thinner than its predecessor, meaning you can feel more of your cushy mattress underneath the cover. It also has a brand new thermal engine that’s not only more effective at maintaining temperatures (the press release boasts 55°F temps during a heat wave) it’s 40% quieter.
The Pod 4 is much slimmer (and a bit taller)
Indeed, the redesigned tower is the first thing I noticed when I unboxed the Pod 4 (thanks to Eight Sleep for sending an early release unit over so that I could test it out). The Pod 3 had two small intake vents at the rear of the hub that point at the floor. The Pod 4 has two large intake vents in the front that take advantage of the redesigned hub’s new height. The exhaust fans in the back are noticeably larger as well. Even when working its hardest, the Pod 4 operates at about 30 db and is much more pleasant. It’s no louder than an air purifier on low.
Included with your subscription, you get two filter changes per year to keep the water in your Pod 4 … [+]
As impressive as the quieter hub is, the big game changer for the Pod 4 is the redesigned cover. Despite being thinner overall, the thermal coils are much less noticeable. And the water flow is routed through the bottom of the cover rather than at the top, making it much easier to install. There’s also a new in-line filter, allowing you to ditch the distilled water or hydrogen peroxide required for the Pod 3. Just fill the water reservoir from your tap and the Eight Sleep app will let you know when to change out the filter (included with your subscription). Each refill lasts about six months and prevents growth and contaminants in the circulating water.
The Pod 4 tap zones are a huge upgrade in how you interact with your smart bed.
How you interact with your Pod 4 is brand new as well. Each side of the pod cover has “tap zones.” These raised areas allow you to adjust cooling with a couple of taps: two to cool, three to warm. You can also snooze or stop your alarm with four taps (or just pound against the side of your bed until it stops). It’s so easy and reliable, once you set your schedule in the app, you can leave your phone out of the bedroom altogether…which is what Eight Sleep is hoping you’ll do to improve your sleep sanctuary. After all, there’s nothing that breaks your sleep more than having to struggle with an app in the middle of the night.
The Pod 4 tracks the same metrics as previous models: motion, body temperature, heart rate, HRV, respiration rate, and sleep stages. But now it’s also added snore detection! This will likely provide many moments of sweet, sweet vindication for co-sleeping partners.
If you spring for the Pod 4 Ultra, that snore detection can be even more useful. The motorized base can raise the head of your bed when it detects snoring. The base is split to take advantage of split mattresses (though I’m curious how that configuration stretches the cover itself). The Ultra base also gives you access to a reading position that can be activated and dismissed with a few taps on the cover.
But Does It Improve Your Sleep?
All of that is great, but if you’re going to spend a minimum of $2,499 on a Pod 4 cover, then what you care about the most is whether or not it helps you sleep better.
And it most decidedly does.
The best thing about the cover is that you don’t really notice it at all until you change the temp. The Pod 4 is super quiet when it’s operating and is very responsive to temperature changes, both the ones you initiate and the ones that it makes on Autopilot to maintain your sound sleep. The Pod 3 would occasionally keep me up if I woke up in the middle of the night and the fan was going. The Pod 4, I have no such complaint.
The sleep metrics you get from the app are solid as well. HRV, respiration rate, heart rate, and more are consistent with the data I get from my Oura Ring and Apple Watch (which, yes, I still wear to bed despite Eight Sleep’s assurance that I can leave the tech outside the bedroom…I’m addicted to data). The snore detection is a welcome insight that nothing else I own tracks. It’s even sensitive enough that it can tell if it’s me or my wife snoring.
The only thing I wish I had visibility into was how often Autopilot adjusted my temperature in the night. This used to be part of the data served up by the app, but it was revised out at some point.
Is It Worth It?
It comes down to how much you’re willing to pay for a more comfortable, customized sleep environment. Spending thousands of dollars on various solutions that promise “heat wicking” and “passive temperature control,” only to have them fail in the heat of summer, is frustrating.
Eight Sleep is expensive, yes, but it actually works. Even better, it works in a way that doesn’t compromise some other aspect of your sleep environment. It’s comfort that’s delivered without noisy fans or whirring motors. It’s comfort that both you and your partner can tweak to your exact needs.
My only issue is that I wish Eight Sleep would offer a free trial of Autopilot rather than a mandatory annual subscription at purchase. The Pod 4 undoubtably works better with Autopilot and if you want to enjoy any of advanced tech (and get filter refills) you’ll need it enabled…but maybe let people try it out before forcing them to pay.
That aside, if you struggle to stay cool or warm and you’re looking to get deep insights into your sleep without having to resort to wearable tech, Eight Sleep is exactly what you’re looking for. With the Pod 4 Eight Sleep has made all the necessary improvements to elevate this to a world-class platform.
The Pod 4 starts at $2,499. The Pod 4 Ultra is $3,899. You can find out more on the Eight Sleep website.
