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You probably already know that improving the quality of your sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health. Unfortunately, the length or duration of each night’s sleep is only one factor amongst many others (like ‘depth,’ regularity, and consistency of sleep) that plays into our overall ‘sleep hygiene,’ as it’s commonly referred to these days. For example, the quality of your sleep is apparently equally as important as the duration.
There are a slew of lifestyle factors, over-the-counter or prescription treatments, and products like white noise machines, ergonomic pillows, and even split bedding for sharing a bed with a partner to help you get better shut-eye. But Eight Sleep’s bougie Sleep Pod 3 has been the biggest game-changer for improving the quality of my sleep—especially as a bona fide human furnace, especially while sleeping. But even if you’re not a ‘hot sleeper’ like me, I know your sleep hygiene could use a good boost from one or more of the Sleep Pod 3’s laundry list of sleep-enhancing features.
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What Is the Eight Sleep Sleep Pod 3?
At the risk of oversimplifying it, the Eight Sleep’s Sleep Pod 3 is basically a smart mattress cover on steroids. The Sleep Pod comes with an “intelligent” mattress cover engineered with health sensors that h, along with the Pod itself (the brain of the system), the water tubes, USB connector, and the power cord needed to operate them in tandem.
The mattress cover description of the Cover is a bit of a misnomer—it’s really a very sleek, very tight-fitting whole mattress wrap—you can easily fit your favorite sheets right over them without detaching the cover underneath. The cover features an Active Grid with embedded tubing that circulates cool or warm water to your side of the bed, making it great for partners who sleep together but have different sleep preferences temperature-wise. It also has embedded sensors that monitor vital signs like heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep movements. In the most basic language, the Cover is the set of sensors, vibrating bits, monitors, and tubes that cover your traditional mattress.
This new model has improved sleep tracking accuracy compared to the previous model, the Sleep Pod 2 and compares favorably in accuracy to my Oura Ring, Apple Watch, and RingConn devices and my husband’s Pixel Watch 2 devices in terms of sleep tracking (to the degree we can tell anecdotally).The Hub attaches to the Active Grid, which houses essential tech, fed back to the Pod itself and through your home router and the app installed on your mobile device using WiFi (now supporting 5GHz networks), which makes setup even more straightforward than many digital setups you would anticipate requiring less effort or skill. The Pod Cover works with most mattresses up to 16 inches thick.
Set-Up and “Priming”
The initial setup was super easy and quick—it’s literally just a matter of downloading the app (and adding a sleeping partner, if you’d like), pressing a button, and putting the cover over your mattress and simple ‘plug-and-play’ style insertion of the three cords included. This portion of active setup time only took us about fifteen minutes.
The ‘Priming’ portion of the setup can take up to two to three hours and involves the Hub distributing the water to the coils in the mattress cover to activate the temperature-regulating properties. While we only had to do this once for it to work properly, other reviews have mentioned having to repeat the first priming process up to three times to get it to work. You will need to prime every time you refill the water tank, which takes about an hour on average and is necessary, on average, about every 4-8 weeks. My first required ‘priming’ came just about 5 weeks into our use.
Sleep Pod 3 Features
Using a single fused set of various tubes and pumping heated or cooled water throughout, the Eight Sleep Pod 3 system can use Autopilot mode to cool or warm your bed in anticipation of your bedtime and even through your sleep to help you maximize it as you sleep. The Pod 3 System can even activate a thermal and vibration-based alarm on your designated schedule—personally, my favorite feature of the Sleep Pod 3. While I absolutely love this feature, one idea for future models might be if it were to sync with your phone’s native Clock app to create and sync with your phone’s alarms automatically. Nevertheless, this is simply the best wake-up and go-to-sleep system I’ve used—whether technical, mechanical, pharmaceutical or otherwise.
However, it’s all not silver linings on this sleepy cloud: The Eight Sleep Pod 3 Cover comes with a high starting price. Additionally, the best features, Autopilot and Data Insight features require a Pro subscription, which starts at $15 a month.
However, it’s all not silver linings on this cloud: The Eight Sleep Pod 3 Cover comes with a high starting price. Additionally, the best features, Autopilot and Data Insight features require a Pro subscription, which starts at $15 a month.
Pros
- Thermal and vibration alarm functionality, which can be set with the app using your smartphone (the most gentle yet effective alarm system I’ve ever used.
- Individualized temperature control (you can set it to as low as 55 degrees and as high as 110 degrees): settings can be controlled for each side of the bed, making it great for couples who share a bed.
- Highly accurate and informative vital signs, sleep, and wellness tracking—on par with my Oura Ring and smartwatch.
- The Eight Sleep app is very easy to use.
- The water tank (which supports the cooling feature) only needs to be refilled about every three weeks when used nightly.
- Autopilot system will automatically adjust settings to your body’s preferences based on the data, though it takes a couple of weeks to “get to know you.”
- Solid five-year warranty.
- Sleek design: the pod is as small as your average air purifier and actually looks nice next to your bed, while the mattress cover is completely undetectable under your favorite sheets (the model I reviewed fits mattresses up to 16 inches thick with ease).
- Accurate and insightful vital signs data and sleep tracking that was on par with my other wearables.
Cons
- The price is the biggest drawback
- It can be slightly noisy when filling coils with water, as reported in other reviews, but I personally only noticed any sound whatsoever once.
- You need to buy a subscription to use the system, and it costs about $15 a month.
Overall Thoughts
The Eight Sleep system offers advanced features, personalized comfort, and precise sleep tracking. More than mere novelties, these features combine in ‘autopilot’ mode to basically magically transform your existing mattress and bed setup into a fully customizable, highly accurate sleep tracking and maximization tool. The data on sleep often surpasses that of Fitbit, Google Fit, or other wearable health or sleep tracking apps—the app gives me a holistic sleep quality score and a number of various data points and various metrics and factors contributing to my overall sleep hygiene.
For me, the gradual temperature and vibrating alarm feature has been a godsend—I’ve tried almost every alarm system, and this is the only one that truly works every single time without being overly aggressive or waking up my partner (and my neighbors, for that matter!). Secondly, the ability to control the temperature of my side of the bed has also been life-changing and has almost completely eliminated my heat-induced middle-of-the-night wakeups. While the price may be steep, those seeking optimal sleep quality may find it worth the heavy, up-front investment.
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