Eight Sleep Pod Mattress Review

• Review
• Specs
• Comments

This Mattress Could be for You If:

• You have trouble maintaining the right temperature through the night
• You have a sleep partner and need something that isolates motion well
• You appreciate the feel of memory foam but don’t want to feel stuck
• You’re a student, veteran, or EMT/first responder
• You are an athlete
• You enjoy the use of technology and its ability to help you better understand your body

If you’ve been browsing for a new mattress for more than 10 minutes, you’ve probably seen efforts made to keep sleep products cool. Even if you don’t tend to sleep excessively hot, your body temperature does have to decrease slightly in order to enter the deepest stages of REM sleep. Eight takes things to a whole new level with special technology that not only keeps you sleeping cool but also helps you better understand your own sleep patterns. Let’s take a look inside and out at the Eight Sleep Pod to see if it could be a good purchase for you.

Eight Sleep: An Innovator in the Industry

Eight Sleep was founded in 2014, adopting the name just a little later in 2015. This was the time when the bed-in-a-box industry was really starting to take off. They’ve made strides in helping their customers get a better understanding of their own bodies in order to make the most of every hour of sleep.

I’ve had the chance to take a look at several other products from Eight Sleep:

Mars+ – This product ran with the AI-Powered Sleep Coach and provided great motion transfer reduction. It’s very similar in feel to the Eight Pod mattress in terms of layer lineup and firmness.

Eight Smart Jupiter+ – Great mattress for those of you who struggle with finding the right firmness with the ability to customize.

AI-Powered Sleep Coach – Cover you zip onto the mattress that measures multiple data points including:

• The average time you lie in bed before falling asleep
• How often you toss and turn at night
• Time spent in REM sleep

Overall, I’ve had a great experience with Eight Sleep, and this seems to be the case with the majority of customers. Seventy percent of owners have reported a positive overall customer service experience regardless of how they felt about the product they purchased. They’ve maintained an A+ rating with the BBB, and you can even visit their brick-and-mortar showroom in New York City unlike many companies that are 100% online.

Eight’s mission is to “fuel human potential through optimal sleep”. That’s why they put so much effort into designing products, content, and tools to maximize sleep performance and achieve sleep fitness. The Eight Pod is their latest and greatest creation, so let’s dive in and see what they came up with.

The Eight Sleep Pod Mattress: What is It?

With the Pod, Eight has developed the first mattress that learns the perfect temperature for the individual and dynamically warms or cools the sleep surface according to those needs. Eight’s technology layer:

• Provides dual-zone heating and cooling
• Learns your sleep patterns to wake you up right on time every morning
• Connects to other smart devices in your home
• Monitors multiple data points including:
  • Time slept
  • The time it took to fall asleep
  • The time it took to wake up
  • Respiratory rate
  • Heart rate
  • Heart rate variability
  • Temperature in bed
  • Sleep breaks
  • Light, deep, and REM sleep

The Mattresses: How’s It Feel?

Before we delve into the technology, let’s first talk about the mattress, what it feels like, and what’s inside. Being perfectly honest, you can feel the hoses that run throughout the Active Grid cover that zips on the mattress. It’s most notable when your knees or elbows sit on top of a tube. If you’re very sensitive, you may not like the way it feels. 

With that being said, if you value well-balanced temperature regulation, I think you’ll be able to overlook the feel of the water tubes. I don’t want to give the wrong impression… they’re not super obvious, but you can feel them. Aside from that, I do enjoy the layer lineup. (Keep reading to see what’s inside).

I’m a longtime fan of the memory foam feel, and, despite being placed beneath the Active Grid and two-inch polyfoam layer, you can definitely pick up on that pressure relief. The adaptive foam in layer one adds a little bit of bounce, and this is typically a great companion of memory foam.

Note for Mattress Topper Users

Keep in mind, if you use a topper, you won’t be able to use it with the Eight Pod as this will interfere with thermoregulation. If you want to minimize the feel of the tubes, I’d suggest using a fitted sheet along with a mattress protector, neither of which should have a negative impact on the thermal technology.

Eight Pod Firmness & Contour

In terms of firmness, the Eight Pod is advertised as being a medium-firm mattress, and this means it’s geared to meet the needs of the average person. This typically covers weight ranges of between around 120 to 250 pounds. To put it to the test, we used our proprietary firmness and contour testing tool to see where the Eight Pod measures up against other popular mattresses on the market. 

You can see on our graph that it does lie in that medium range. Let’s break it down:

• The small blue line indicates that the top layer is a bit firmer than the memory foam, and I think this was a smart move for two reasons. For starters, many people don’t like the excessive sinkage of memory foam, but they do enjoy the contour. The firmer layer on top prevents you from feeling like you’re stuck in the mattress, but you still get to enjoy the excellent contour memory foam is famous for.
• The red line indicates the remaining four inches of the comfort zone before the support kicks in from layer four. Results like these where the red line is much longer than the blue indicate heavier areas of the body will be able to adapt to the added contour and remain properly balanced before support kicks in too early and causes pressure points.

For women, this would include pear and apple-shaped bodies, and, in men, triangle, rhomboid, and inverted triangle body shapes will be best supported.

The Eight Pod Layer Lineup

The mattress is made of four layers encased in a soft, custom-designed, hand-sewn cover. You can see it’s very flexible, and the fabric does a great job wicking moisture.

The Comfort Zone

• The layer lineup kicks off with 2 inches of Luracor, a polyfoam designed to provide the initial cushioning you need for comfort as well as a little extra bounce to aid in mobility.

• It’s followed by another 2-inch layer of memory foam. If you enjoy the contour of memory foam but avoid it due to the sinky hug it’s famous for, I think you’ll appreciate this particular layer lineup. I can definitely pick up on the pressure-relieving properties of the memory foam, but that two-inch layer of polyfoam works well in offering just the right amount of buffer to keep you from feeling enveloped.
• The comfort zone begins to transition in layer three with another 2 inches of slightly firmer polyfoam.

The Support Zone

Finally, the support zone is comprised of 5 inches of high-density polyfoam built to last. All foams used in the Eight Pod are CertiPUR-US certified. This means they are made without:

• Ozone depleters
• Flame retardants
• Mercury
• Lead
• Formaldehyde

The entire mattress is 11 inches thick, making it easily compatible with standard sheets. Now that we know how the mattress works, let’s take a look inside the two smaller boxes. This is where things get interesting.

Unboxing & Setup

When your Eight Pod arrives, it’s packaged in three separate boxes. The large one, obviously, is the mattress, and the two smaller ones house the technology portion of this product. Keep in mind that the Eight Pod does replace your current mattress. You can’t purchase the technology separately to be used on the bed you may have now.

Inside one of the smaller boxes is the Polyester Eight Smart cover with a built-in sleep tracker along. The other box contains the hub unit that powers the technology. Eight offers very detailed instructions for setup, but let’s take a quick look at how everything works starting with unboxing and setup.

Zipping the Cover On

1. The smart cover zips onto the mattress, and you’ll see the zipper along the bottom of the mattress cover.

2. Before you start connecting any technology, you’ll need to download the Eight Sleep app available on Apple and Android devices.

3. You’ll also want to ensure you don’t set your mattress up near drafty areas that could be damp or wet like an open window.

Setting Up the App

1. When you go through the app setup, you have the opportunity to program the mattress for a single person or, if using the queen, king, or California king sizes, for sleep partners. Your sleep partner will be sent an invitation to set up the Eight Tracker on their device.

2. When you’re all ready, place the hub on the side of the bed you want it, and pull the water cord on the cover toward the hub.

3. Plug the water cord into the hub and listen for a single click to make sure it’s secured. You’ll then plug the USB connector into the USB port and the power cord into a nearby outlet.

4. Connect your WiFi by opening the WiFi settings on your phone and looking for the word EIGHT followed by four random characters.

5. Next, you’ll be asked what product you’re connecting. When you select the Pod, you’ll be prompted through complete instructions with videos to make it easy.

6. Select what side you and your sleep partner will be on.

7. The heating and cooling technology work using water, and you have to prime your pod before use. The app will take you through the process, and it needs to be repeated every four to six weeks. You will be notified when it’s time, so there’s no need to mark it on the calendar.

• For the initial setup, you’ll need to prime the hub twice. To start, you’ll fill the hub’s tank until it’s about an inch from the top. When prompted by the app, you’ll add two tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide isn’t included, so make sure you have some on hand. You’ll hear periodic gurgling noises inside the hub throughout the process.

8. When you’re all finished, the app will then begin personalizing your sleep technology. There are a total of 20 temperature settings with 10 on the warm side and 10 on the cool side. It will then ask you several questions such as

• How you feel when you go to bed at night
• How you feel in the middle of the night
• How you feel when you wake up
• What time you usually go to bed on weekdays and weeknights
• What kind of blanket you use
• What kind of cooling and heating methods you use in your home

9. The app will then personalize your smart temperature to just the right setting based on your answers.

To regulate temperature, water flows from the Hub into the tubing housed inside the Active Grid. The Pod technology monitors more than 12 physiological and environmental data points, and you can even take advantage of the ability to compare your sleep fitness with friends and integrate the Pod with other WiFi enabled devices like Alexa and Google Home. 

A few more app features to take note of include:

• The Thermo Alarm has been upgraded to Wake Up. Formerly known as the Thermo Alarm, the upgraded experience of Wake Up includes a variety of new and advanced features to help you achieve sleep fitness. Set the specific temperature you want your thermo alarm to wake you up at as part of your Smart Temp profile to ensure a more cohesive temperature flow from bedtime until morning. Set Wake Up temperature experiences to repeat on any day of the week to maintain consistency for a positive morning start.
• Heart Rate Variability tracking on the Pod: HRV variations can help users track their health and anticipate illness or fatigue if they see significant drops in this metric. The Pod now allows for constant monitoring of HRV, alongside other biometrics like Resting Heart Rate, Respiratory Rate, Sleep Stages, and Sleep Time.

Disassembly

When the time comes to change the water in your Eight Pod or if you ever need to move it, it’s pretty easy to disassemble. The unit comes with a small plastic draining tool with two sides. One connects to the tip of the umbilical cord, and the other to the hub.

Disconnect the umbilical cord from the hub and connect it to the small holes of the draining tool. It won’t begin to drain until you hear a click. Make sure you have a container on hand to catch the water. When finished, plug the large holes of the drain tool into the hub until you hear a click. You’ll need to tip it over to drain completely.

Common Blockages to be Aware Of

Blockages can cause issues with setup and affect the ability of the Pod to properly heat/cool. Since the system needs to be capable of circulating water, these restrictions can impact overall effectiveness, so let’s take a moment to go over the most common you may encounter:

1. Water hose not connected all the way

• You have to push the water hose into the Pod with a little bit of force, so make sure you get it connected completely.

2. Kinks in the hose

• This can often happen if you have slats on your bed frame. Just as kinks in your garden hose will prevent proper water flow, so will kinks in your Eight Pod hose.

3. Blockage at Active Grid connection

• Make sure your hose isn’t kinked at the Active Grid cover connection point. Allow some slack to prevent bunching.

4. Furniture

• Make sure your hose isn’t wrapped too tightly around furniture. This is common on the mattress foundation legs.

If you do decide to buy the Eight Pod, they offer a very thorough troubleshooting guide complete with descriptive videos and pictures to make sure you get everything set up correctly.

8PLUS Membership

As a certified personal trainer, I’m especially interested in Eight’s claims that this new technology can improve athletic recovery and performance, so let’s dive in and see how everything works.

Using the Pod, 8PLUS is able to function through a virtuous feedback loop. The data gathered using your sleep technology is used to track performance, recognize trends, and reveal progress and areas of opportunity.

Great News for Athletes

If you’re an athlete, you’ll appreciate the 8PLUS membership that comes with the purchase of the Pod. It’s free with your purchase!

You’ll enjoy:

• Enhanced temperature features
  • You’re able to customize your Smart Temp profile as well as make adjustments when things in your life change.

• Advanced analytics
  • Trends are identified on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and include data regarding sleep, diet, and activity.

• Personalized coaching
  • Coaching and personalized tips are provided based on data from your Eight Sleep app.

• Unlimited tools like relaxation content
• Challenges & Experiments
  • Challenge yourself with members of your community and even earn rewards.

Light vs. Deep vs. REM Sleep

The purpose of sleep is to allow the body to restore itself after a long day. The 8PLUS data points allow you to improve your sleep fitness similarly to the way you improve your physical fitness by balancing proper diet and exercise. Sleep fitness analyzes your ability to slip in and out of three sleep stages, each of which are important in the proper proportions:

1. Light Sleep

• Adequate for moderate recovery
• This stage makes up more than 50% of an average sleep session
• Important in metabolic regulation

2. Deep Sleep

• More intensive body repairs are made during this stage such as cell replacement, organ detox, and healing of wounds.

3. REM Sleep

• Important for brain repair to allow you to process and consolidate information from your day
• Allows you to strengthen your long-term memory

Each stage is important, but too much of one and too little of another doesn’t allow you to maximize the benefits of sleep. This is especially important for athletes who put their bodies under a lot of stress. The 8PLUS membership allows you to learn how to:

• Improve mental health
• Gain an athletic edge
• Enhance physical health
• Improve memory

For Pod Owners Only

If you want to take advantage of the many features the 8PLUS membership has to offer, you’ll have to purchase the Eight Pod. If you’ve already purchased another Eight mattress, you can call customer service. Your membership is automatically activated when you purchase your Pod. 

Heat Transfer Capability

There’s definitely something to the Eight Pod’s thermoregulating properties. It’s been used by pro skateboarders, Olympians, and even professional football players. As a NASM certified personal trainer, I was very interested to learn more about how this product’s ability to fluctuate between 55 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit is able to improve physical health and give users an athletic edge.

Sensors track your sleep phases, heart rate, respiratory rate, and more to deliver comprehensive reports and adjust temperature levels based on your needs. I was pretty impressed when I got my personalized smart temperature.

When I’m not testing mattresses, I’m usually working with my personal training clients to help them develop the right exercise plan for their goals, and I know all too well the importance of personalization when it comes to physical health and fitness.

My setting landed at a two, negative one, and two. This means my mattress will:

• Start off slightly warm
  • Encourages blood flow to the extremities to allow the heart to more easily pump blood so I can fall asleep

• Cool off as I sleep
  • Encourages REM sleep

• Warm slightly before I wake up
  • Helps compensate for the fact that, toward the latter hours of a sleep session, blood begins to flow back to the core, and this can make you feel colder

My temperature settings are very close to neutral, but it can go as high as 10 or as low -10. Based on how you answer the questions on your Eight Sleep app upon setup, your results will vary. In this picture, you can see a thermal image of the two extremes of temperature possibilities with one side set at 115 degrees Fahrenheit and the other at 55 degrees.

I think the app did a great job customizing the right temp for me, but you can always go in and make changes as needed. Ultimately, athletes need ample time to rejuvenate during sleep, and the Eight Pod creates just the right temperature needed to maintain the level of REM sleep needed to get the job done.

Mattress Testing

Edge Support

The Eight Pod is made entirely of foam. Mattresses featuring this composition often lack in edge support to a certain degree, so let’s take a look. You can see when I place myself on various areas of the edge, I do sink pretty deeply into the layer lineup. When I sit on the corner, I sink completely. However, when I lie on the edge, I am supported well enough to keep from falling out of the bed.

The Eight Pod is designed to meet the needs of the average shopper. As long as you don’t weigh more than 300 pounds, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with falling out of bed due to poor edge support. However, if you have trouble getting in and out of bed, you may want to go with a product with a strong innerspring unit.

Motion Isolation

When dealing with a mattress made entirely of foam, edge support and motion transfer reduction typically have an inverse relationship, and this is the case with the Eight Pod.

If you have a sleep partner and have struggled in the past with their movement bothering you, I’d guess there’s a good chance you were using an innerspring mattress, possibly one that incorporates a continuous coil unit. A foam mattress could be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Foam, especially memory foam, is able to absorb the motion before it reaches your side of the bed as you can see when I drop a 20 pound medicine ball next to another of equal weight in our video review above. Although edge support is lower than what you’d typically find in a spring mattress, if you have a restless sleep partner, it could be well worth the compromise.

Durability Expectations

Let’s talk durability. Mattresses aren’t cheap, so you want to make sure you’re making an investment in a product that’ll hold up over time. To make this determination, we typically look at foam density. Of the four foams that make up the Eight Pod mattress, we’re only provided the density of the support foam.

In polyfoam, a density of 1.8 pcf is acceptable, and here we find a pcf of 3.6, double the number we’re looking for. Unfortunately, we don’t have the densities of the three comfort layers, and this is too bad considering this is where most wear and tear takes place. However, Eight reports that their extensive testing indicates the Pod should last five years or longer, and they do guarantee two years under their warranty.

Maintenance, Protection, Care, and Warranty

There are always things you can do to make your mattress last longer. Let’s take a look at a few tips and tricks you can employ to make yours last as long as possible:

• Use a handheld vacuum to clean regularly.
• Avoid the use of cleaning products and harsh chemicals like bleach and ammonia as they can ruin the materials.
• Clean with a mild detergent diluted with water and a sponge.
• Dry by sprinkling baking soda on the wet area. The baking soda will absorb the moisture and clump up. Just vacuum the baking soda when moisture is absorbed.
• Blow dry any remaining moisture.

Cost

Eight has recently added full size to their inventory. If you want the ability to heat and cool each side of the mattress independently of each other, you’ll want to go with the queen, king, or California king options.

Size	Price
Full	$2,295
Queen	$2,595
King	$2,995
California King	$2,995

If you’re in the military, a veteran, or a student, you get to knock 6% off your order, so don’t forget to mention that upon checkout.

If you don’t have the money to buy now, Eight does offer financing with up to three years repayment through Affirm with 0% interest for qualified buyers. You can expect an instant decision, so no need to wait around to hear back on your status.

Who We Recommend the Eight Pod For

We’ve definitely covered a lot of ground, so let’s start summing things up. If you have a difficult time staying warm or cool when you sleep, the Eight Pod incorporates cutting edge technology to solve the problem once and for all. With 20 temperature settings and the app that considers your personal needs upon setup, it’s easy to find a temperature formula that works for your needs.

I think the Eight Pod could be a great fit if you:

• Would appreciate a thermo alarm that wakes you up from the inside out through temperature regulation
• Want to understand your sleep better through data points like sleep time, phases, and consistency
• Would like to take advantage of the targeted temperature regulation to aid in maintaining proper sleep fitness through the heating/cooling technology housed within the Hub and Active Grid
• Have a sleep partner who moves around a lot

If you need to talk to customer service, they are relatively responsive. However, I did have one instance where their chat representatives failed to get back with me. I had left my email address, but I never heard back.

I also think it’s worth pointing out that you do have to be connected to WiFi to use your Eight Pod. Wireless technology has been shown to impact brain wave patterning. If you’ve noticed disruptions in your sleep, it could have to do with technology like your cell phone being placed near your bed. I’d like to see Eight modify the Pod to allow for WiFi-free functioning. It’s also not ideal for folks with poor blood circulation.

You may want to read: Eight Pod Thermo Cover Active Grid & Hub Review

Our Final Verdict

If you decide the Eight Pod is the mattress for you, you do get a 100 night risk-free trial period. If you aren’t happy for any reason, you can return it for a full refund. Eight covers all shipping and transportation charges for returns made during the trial period. Remember, the trial is voided if the mattress leaves the contiguous United States, so if you’re planning to move to Alaska, Hawaii, or out of the country, this applies to you.

Eight also offers a 10-year limited warranty. It covers:

• Visible sagging or indentations one inch or deeper
• Manufacturing-related issues that lead to splits and/or cracks
• Manufacturing-related issues with the cover

Your warranty will not cover:

• Visible sagging or indentation less than one inch deep
• Damage not associated with manufacturing-related issues like burns, cuts, tears, and stains

The Hub and Active Grid that comes with your Eight Pod mattress are covered under a separate one year warranty.

I think the Active Grid and Hub did a great job providing an optimal temperature through the night, and there are definitely many ways in which you can use the data points generated through the app to help you optimize your sleep. If you’re an athlete or someone who struggles significantly with temperature regulation, I think the Eight Pod is a great product to put on your list of top prospects.