Eight Sleep Pod 3 review: The high price of great sleep

S. Rutherford@samrutherfordNovember 11, 2022 8:00 AMIn this report: equipment, mattress, 8 rest, mattress, Rest, intelligent dwelling, evaluation, snooze tech, Evaluation

• The Eight Rest program
• Set up
• The tech
• Convenience
• Wrap-up

I’ve normally tried out to get as a great deal snooze as probable, but now that I have a one-calendar year-outdated to look right after, just about anything that can help maximize what small rest I do get is priceless. So when I listened to that Eight Snooze was coming out with a new model of its good mattress topper that presents superior rest monitoring and temperature controls, I was curious to see how effectively it worked. And although the Pod 3 Protect is dear, just after a couple months of tests, I in no way want to go back again to a standard standalone mattress.

The Eight Rest system

The firm’s main offerings consist of two key components: The Pod 3 Mattress and the Pod 3 Protect. The mattress alone is reasonably clear-cut. Its capabilities a medium firmness which is a bit stiffer than anything like the original Leesa mattress and it consists of various supplemental levels for better heat distribution.

8 Rest

8 Slumber Pod 3

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Execs

• Additional sensitive slumber monitoring
• WiFi now supports 5Ghz networks
• highly effective heating and cooli ng
• Effortless-to-use app

Drawbacks

• Expensive
• Autopilot and Knowledge Perception options involve 8+ Pro membership

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Then there’s the Eight Snooze Pod 3 address, which is equally the coronary heart and the brains of the company’s two-pronged tactic. In get to deliver your excellent sleep temperature, the deal with capabilities what 8 Snooze calls an Active Grid, which is in essence embedded tubing that carries awesome or heat h2o to your side of the bed. There are also sensors designed into the Lively Grid that can watch factors like your coronary heart charge, sleeping respiratory charge, how considerably you toss and transform and a lot more, with 8 Snooze proclaiming that the Pod 3 delivers significantly much more accurate tracking than its prior choices. And then attached to the Lively Grid is the Hub, which serves equally as a reservoir for the water in the Pod Include and as a position to house important tech like WiFi, which compared with preceding designs now supports 5GHz networks.

Setup

When the thought of possessing to plug wires and hoses into your bed may well feel like a little bit substantially, finding every thing doing work is basically quite straightforward. Like a lot of foam mattresses, Eight Sleep’s solution arrived compressed in a box — all you have to do is eliminate the plastic wrapper and give it a few minutes when it expands. The awesome point is that you don’t want to get one from Eight Rest at all, as the Pod Cover is designed to do the job rather significantly any mattress up to 16 inches thick.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

That is mainly because whilst the typical Pod Deal with arrives with zippers that line up with matching enamel on the company’s mattress, you can also get the Pod Deal with with PerfectFit, which includes an encasement that accommodates third-get together beds. So if you by now like your current mattress, you really don’t will need to toss it to install the Pod Go over. Not only does this lessen the value of entry, it really is also a welcome shift towards normal versatility. Which is great simply because beginning at $2,045 (for a whole), this issue certainly ain’t affordable.

At the time the Pod Include is attached to your mattress, 8 Sleep’s application presents very simple move-by-phase guidance on how to connect the hose, fill the reservoir and ability it up. Admittedly, you can find not a lot to mess up (aside from maybe not leaving enough home behind your bed to stop the hose from kinking), but the manual eliminates all the guesswork. And when the hub alone does acquire up a little space, the hose is lengthy plenty of that it truly is not much too tricky to uncover a place for it. From there, you can set up or indicator into your account, enter your WiFi info and that’s it. All instructed, it took me less than 20 minutes to set anything together after unboxing it.

The tech

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Even though the Pod 3 Protect is not a big departure from prior products, it does fairly much every little thing actually effectively. The sensors manufactured easy operate of monitoring my sleeping coronary heart and respiratory fees. And thanks to charts and graphs that are accessible within the app, it truly is quick to see how a variety of variables influence your rest. You even have the skill to incorporate tags for factors like stretching, caffeine intake and other folks to much better correlate your daytime functions with the quantity of rest you get. And each day, the app spits out a snooze score to tell you how you did.

The other massive aspect of the Pod Cover’s kit is its heating and cooling tech. The protect supports dual-zone controls, so you can set the temp for each half of the mattress independently. That is definitely awesome due to the fact although I normally choose items on the amazing aspect, my wife is typically chilly at night and has her aspect established to heat. Actually, even without having all the rest monitoring, the Pod Deal with is worth it for its cooling and heating on your own.

In the Eight Snooze app, you can change the Pod Cover’s temperature configurations manually or allow the Autopilot attribute make suggestions routinely, even though regrettably you can require to pay for the firm’s $19-a-month subscription for the latter. Sam Rutherford/Engadget

At this point, the science is rather clear, your thermal environment has a massive effects on how very well you sleep. Much too warm or way too cold and you are pretty much unquestionably likely to wake up sensation less rested. But with the Pod Cover, you can pick out your fantastic temp and set a plan for managing heating and cooling stages all over the night time. For me, it can be like laying on the awesome aspect of the pillow, besides all the time and throughout the whole mattress, which will make a big difference in both equally how quickly I fall asleep and how I truly feel the upcoming morning.

Of study course, you can adjust matters as wanted, which actually arrived in useful when I started out working a fever. So instead of having my aspect chilly as ordinary, I was able to pump up the heat to support beat the chills — some thing that manufactured remaining unwell just a bit extra tolerable. In a lot less serious conditions, the adjustability also signifies you can tailor your temps relying on the season, as I uncovered I like items a bit colder in the summer and a little bit hotter in the drop and winter.

On leading of that, Eight Rest takes its temperature manage and rest tracking tech a couple measures even further with its Autopilot and Slumber Insight options. Autopilot uses details collected by its sensors to quickly make your bed hotter or colder as required. In my situation, right after noticing in the summer time I was tossing and turning extra usually, it recommended a marginally cooler temperature agenda, which later on resulted in bigger slumber scores.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

But what may possibly be even a lot more strong is Slumber Insights, which are observations dependent on your metrics that convey to you how perfectly (or badly) you slept. It is really form of like a robo-coach that sorts via your details to provide ideas so you don’t have to. Whilst studies commonly amount of money to notifications about your sleeping coronary heart rate staying bigger or lower than ordinary, I respect that it phone calls awareness to points like taking in late or acquiring a drink or two before mattress which can negatively effects your rest. Annoyingly, equally Autopilot and Rest Perception are locked driving the firm’s optional 8+ Pro subscription that costs $19 a thirty day period, which is frankly just also much. I know organizations these times are hunting for continuous earnings streams, but these characteristics genuinely should to be totally free.

Ease and comfort

Of system, all the extravagant tech in the entire world would not suggest substantially if this issue is awkward, and fortunately it is really not. It is in fact rather the opposite. One of my gripes about the authentic Pod Go over is that you could feel the tubing inside. But on the Pod 3, you can only explain to that it is extra than a dumb mattress topper when you contact it with your arms laying on it, the tubing is virtually unachievable to discern. Admittedly, the topper will make your mattress really feel a contact firmer than it would or else, but apart from that, it feels a lot like a mattress with a slender foam egg crate pad – just a little bit pillowy.

Wrap-up

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The point that produced me realize what a substantial effect the Pod 3 Deal with experienced on my slumber was how a lot I missed it even though traveling. Even the softest, coziest lodge mattress could not make up for the lack of temperature controls. Other additions like the Pod Cover’s upgraded WiFi make the wise topper even easier to established up while much more specific sleep tracking can help you better figure how perfectly you’re sleeping and what you can do to enhance.

The only true draw back (and it is really sort of a big 1) is that with a beginning price tag of over $2,100, it is out of the get to of most men and women. And that does not even involve the optional 8+ Pro membership, which feels like an needless tax essential to unlock all of its characteristics. That stated, even with no Autopilot and Slumber Insights, the Pod 3 Protect has sent some of the ideal slumber I have at any time had.

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