A Year Ago, I Tested $3,400 Worth of Sleep Tech—Here’s What I’m Still Using

My love affair with a temperature-controlled mattress started when I had the chance to test the Eight Sleep Pod Pro in early 2020.

With it, I tried a slew of other tech-savvy sleep products—like a set of Casper Casper Glow Lights ($299) that dim and brighten along with my circadian rhythm (aka mimic the sunlight), the Muse S Meditation Headband ($350), and the sleep-tracking Oura Ring ($399)—for an episode of the Well+Good Youtube series Zoë Tries It All. While every device that I tested had an unequivocally positive impact, a year later Eight Sleep is the only one that I use every single night.

It’s hard to talk about how great it is without getting hyperbolic, but trust me when I say that this mattress changed my life—or at the very least, my sleep routine.

The Pod Pro Mattress — $2,995.00

Here’s the deal: Before the Eight Sleep came into the picture, I spent most of my nights dealing with unexplained hot flashes and sweating spells that made it impossible to fall—let alone stay—asleep. And apparently, I’m not alone in experiencing this particular type of hell, because according to the brand, “80 percent of Americans suffer from temperature issues during sleep.” To keep you comfortable (read: not sweating or shivering through your pajamas) all night long, the mattress employs cooling and heating technology that adjusts its temperature between 55°F and 110°F as you snooze. Essentially, you fill up a “pod” with water, and the mattress uses thermoregulation to send hot or cold water through a series of tubes within the mattress, like a fancy, temperature-controlled waterbed.

You can set the temperature based on your personal temperature preferences, but IMHO what’s really cool is that the more you use the mattress, the more personalized your experience is. After a year-plus together, my mattress knows me better than most of my friends. It connects to an app that analyzes your sleep patterns, and puts together the best nightly temperature experience for your individual body—in my case, that means falling asleep in the arctic tundra and waking up to slightly balmier temps. The app also collects data around how long and how well you slept on a given night to deliver a “sleep fitness score,” and over time, the idea is that the mattress will help to improve your score until you’re regularly clocking a solid night’s sleep.

The Pod Pro Cover — $1,745.00

Since I got my hands on the original Eight Sleep Pod, the brand has come out with a more-affordable and accessible version of its cooling mattress technology. Now you can now reap the same benefits by way of The Pod Pro Cover ($1,745), which you simply layer on over any standard mattress. Then, like the original, it uses thermoregulation technology to heat or cool itself based on your preferences.

What’s made me fall so deeply in love with the Eight Sleep’s technology is that it’s got everything I need to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up more easily. Before I get into bed each night, the temperature drops to an extra cold setting per my preference, then warms slightly throughout the night based on what the mattress has determined about my sleep patterns. Then, in the morning, it warms slightly to help me rise naturally and without the help of an alarm clock. While I loved the Oura Ring, which tracked my sleep, and the Casper Glow Lights, which made it easier for me to fall asleep and wake up naturally, the Eight Sleep bundles all of those benefits into a single device.

I’m sorry to my boyfriend, but the relationship I have with my mattress is far and away the most important one in my life. The good news is that at least now he gets to benefit from it, too.

Learn more about the sleep technology I’ve tried:

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