Eight Sleep Tracker Review

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• Specs
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In each of our reviews, we make it our goal to help you translate how well products do in areas such as cooling and minimizing tossing and turning. However, unless you set up surveillance and had eight hours available to analyze the footage every day, you probably don’t know if you do toss and turn, let alone sleep too hot.

There is a tool that can help you unlock key indicators about your own sleep habits that can be beneficial in more effectively selecting the right mattress on the online market. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the Eight Sleep tracking device. Beneath its white polyester cover are wires placed strategically to allow the device to track your heart rate, breathing, and movements at chest-level. Let’s take a look at the many capabilities offered by this innovative product and discuss how it can help you more successfully identify the right sleep products.

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Video Review

Don’t want to read the full review? Watch our video review instead.

Cover Setup

When you sit down to get everything setup, be ready with your wifi password. When you put the cover on, keep in mind that it’s kind of big to accommodate thicker mattresses, so it makes it easier to lift the corners up so you can fit the sheet on correctly. Failure to fit the sheet as tightly as possible can cause inaccurate results as well as folding and bunching when you use the heating function.

Safety Tip– The heating functions can be dangerous for infants and immobile people. You should also avoid tucking the white section containing the wiring. This should only be an issue if you’re using a very thin mattress.

Connecting the App With Hubspot

Getting the app set up on your Apple or Android device only takes around five minutes. Once you have it loaded, connecting with the hubspot is pretty easy.

• Open the app and click Login.
• Fill out general personal information.
• Establish your password.
• Indicate if you’re using the sleep tracker with the Eight Sleep mattress or another product
• Read about the unboxing and assembly process.
• Briefly leave the 8 Smart app, go to settings, and click WiFi. You’ll see an option that says Eight followed by a combination of four letters and numbers. Click this to connect to the hubspot.
• Select your wifi information from those available. If you don’t see yours listed, keep in mind that Eight doesn’t connect to 5g or WEP networks. You also must be within range.
• Device will complete the connection

Now that you’re connected, it’s time to personalize. You’ll answer whether you’ll be using the product alone or with a partner. Don’t worry. If your relationship status changes, you can also go in and change this setting to add a sleep partner at a later time. You can also delete the sleep partner if things don’t work out.

You then come to the question asking where you’ll be sleeping. The side you choose is the side that will track your data, so remember what you select. Again, this can be referenced and changed later if you forget or need to make adjustments. You aren’t dedicating yourself to one side of the mattress forever. You can then read some general usage tips as you complete setup.

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How It Works

The Eight sleep tracker gathers data at the chest level with a sensor strip. It’s easiest for it to track if you sleep on your stomach or side as you come into closer contact. I sleep mostly on my back, however, but I was still able to get seemingly accurate results.

Keep in mind that, if you sleep with a pet, they could interfere with the accuracy of your results. It’s best to keep them near the foot of the bed or somewhere else for optimal results. If you sleep with a restless partner, however, there’s another option aside from making them sleep on the couch. Over time, Eight is able to pick up on your individual routine and provide more accurate data despite a partner who tosses and turns.

The app offers an alarm clock; a seven day deep-sleep meditation series to listen to as you sleep; relaxing sounds like beach waves, crackling campfire, night critters, and wind chimes; and the ability to hook up with smart products in your home like the coffee pot.

A Look at the Dashboard

Let’s take a moment to familiarize with the dashboard. After using it for a few days, you’ll get more comfortable, but I’ll show you the basics to get you started. The three vertical lines in the top left corner take you to your administrative options. Here, you can change settings as well as access setup information, frequently asked questions, and troubleshooting.

Let’s draw our attention to the icons you’ll see across the top of your screen. The moon allows you to look at data from specific nights. You’ll see a legend that shows you the dark purple line which means you’re awake, light purple indicating you’re asleep, and red showing deep REM sleep.

Interpreting Sleep Cycles

You can clearly watch your sleep cycles using the nightly results. A typical sleep cycle includes five stages, and the cycles typically last around 90 minutes each. The first four stages are known as non-rapid eye movement sleep with the sleeper falling deeper and deeper into sleep as they progress from step one to four. The fourth stage is rapid eye moment. It’s during this time that the eyes begin to dart back and forth and most dreaming occurs.

If you’ve ever woken up with recollections of a variety of dreams, that’s because you likely had them through a series of sleep cycles. The amount of time we spend in a particular stage of sleep begins to shift through the night. The Eight tracker detects the stages based on motion, heart rate, and breathing rate. You can see that I go in and out of REM sleep through the night. I noticed that I typically wake up after six cycles. For 90 minute cycles, my results following a period of nine hours of sleep was on target. The average healthy range for deep sleep is 18-25 percent, and your percentages will be automatically referenced on a daily basis.

Interpreting Hourly Data

You’ll notice a number of small icons with hourly calculations within the moon icon’s nightly results. You can find their meanings within the app, but they are as follows:

• Thermometer measures room temperature
• Small bed and thermometer measures bed temperature
• Lungs measure breaths per minute
• Heart measures beats per minute
• Average breaths per minute is between 10 and 22. Normal sleeping heart rate is between 40 and 50 beats per minute.

Warming Feature

If you want to use the smart cover warming feature, you can command it to start heating up with your phone. If it’s the middle of winter and you want your bed warmed when you home from work, you can simply tell the bed from your app to start warming.

It takes up to 30 minutes for it to fully warm up. If you want to fall asleep warm but not get too hot later on, the warming feature does deactivate automatically, so you should expect whatever a normal bed temperature is for your mattress by the time you wake up.

If you tend to sleep hot, I’d recommend you consider the Jupiter+ mattress. Designed by Eight Sleep, its layer composition is designed specifically to allow the sleeper to engage with the layers while using the cover.

Assessing Tosses and Turns

You’ll notice a swirly icon pop up sporadically throughout your nightly sleep results. These indicate moments where you tossed and turned. There are a variety of factors that figure into a need to move through the night. Things like stress and anxiety, for example, can lead to bad dreams that cause you to move.

You can see on my tracker a period when I was having a nightmare. There were numerous tosses and turns at the point where you see the indicated REM sleep during that period. Only you know your stress levels. However, on a normal night, movement is often indicative of discomfort.

The right mattress should minimize this discomfort, and the sleep tracker provides you a nightly sleep score that’s calculated by multiplying total time slept by tosses and turns. Tosses and turns are significant movements that last at least five seconds. A score of 50-66 indicates a mediocre night’s rest of around 4 1/2 with 52 tosses and turns. Yellow indicates a score of 67-83 with around 23 movements. A great night’s rest is indicated in green and notes around 8 hours of sleep with around seven turns.

It’s important to understand that, the longer you use the app, the better idea you’ll be able to get of your sleep patterns as you can compare the great sleep with the not-so-great. I’d also make notes of stressors that may be on your mind as you drift off to see how this impacts your results when compared with a non-eventful night.

You can even take a look at a graph that shows your weekly and monthly averages. When you analyze your time slept graph, you get a good look at just how much sleep you’re getting. Using this information along with your in and out of bed times, you can create a more consistent bedtime routine.

Sleep Experiments

If you want to do a detailed experiment considering mood, the Sleep Lab allows you to conduct an experiment based on your sleep data to discover how much sleep gives you the most energy. This is the experiment available on my app at the moment, and it indicates that they do have new experiments in the pipeline.

This particular experiment lasts seven days, and I just recently completed mine. For seven days, you’ll answer questions about your current energy level and mood at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. At the end, the app provides you with detailed information that helps you learn how much sleep best maintains optimal energy levels.

Connecting to Smart Devices in the Home

I don’t have any smart products to connect to my device. If you do, though, you’re going to want to connect to IFTTT. This allows you to set your alarm as a trigger to start your coffee maker or turn on the lights to help you wake up. The night/day mode will dim the lights and play relaxing music. You can also set a nice, cool temperature for your bed at the press of a button.

Easy Cleaning and Maintenance

When the times comes to clean your tracker, keep in mind that only the top layer of the cover can be machine or hand-washed and dried in the dryer. Unzip the top layer from the rest of the cover and use the washing instructions provided. Don’t put it back on until it’s completely dry. The top layer of the Eight cover has received a hydrophobic treatment, so you can use a damp cloth for spills and spots as needed.

A Look at the Setbacks

I think the Eight Sleep’s sleep tracker can offer a lot in terms of helping you better understand how you sleep and what keeps you from enjoying a great night’s rest. There are a couple of small things I noticed as I’ve been using mine.

• App didn’t consistently track my sleep if I went back to bed after getting the kids off to school. It works best for solid sleep session without interruption.
• Without the use of a sheet, the material can be a little uncomfortable.
• After using the product for several weeks now, I am starting to be able to feel the wires in the unit just slightly. It doesn’t keep me from sleeping, but I do have long-term concerns. It might be best to use your sleep tracker for segments out of the year rather than consistent, daily use in long-term stints.

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Conclusion

Since I’ve received the 8 Sleep Tracker, I’ve learned a lot about my own sleeping patterns. This device is effective in measuring sleep data that can help you make the most out of bedtime and more effectively understand your own sleeping habits. I think this could be a great investment for you if:

• You just aren’t sure how you feel about your sleep and need more information to gauge the performance of your mattress.
• You want to play with sleep studies to learn interesting data regarding your sleep and its application to your waking hours.
• You want the ability to control smart devices with your app.
• You enjoy warming features like heating pads and blankets.
  

  Eight Smart Tracker Specs

  Material	Machine Washable	Sizes	Warranty	Cost
  100 percent polyester	Yes	• Full- 54 in x 75 in (137cm x 191cm) • Queen- 60 in × 80 in (152 cm × 203 cm) • King- 76 in × 80 in (193 cm × 203 cm) • California King- 72 in x 84 in (183 cm x 213 cm)	10 Year Limited	• Full- $299 • Queen- $299 • King- $319 • California King- $319 • Payment plans available to qualified buyers