You Might Be Wondering How I Got Here…
By here, I mean down $2,000+ and up one high-tech mattress cover. You might now be wondering, how can a mattress cover even be high-tech? Or maybe: you spent how much money on what?
All valid questions. We’ll start at the beginning. Last summer I started seeing all these tweets about a “sleep fitness” brand called Eight Sleep—even Chief Twit Elon Musk himself shouted it out. Apparently the magic was in a temperature regulating mattress cover leveling up people’s sleep game like this:
The thing is, I’ve been chillin’ with my Amazon mattress for years and have been sleeping just fine (or so I thought). What use did I have spending over two grand on something called “sleep fitness technology?” But then I thought, you know what? F*** it. These people are out here showing biometric evidence that they’re falling asleep faster, waking up less, and improving their sleep quality. I decided to make it an experiment.
I did the 30 day trial of Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover. It didn’t take long for it to stop being just a trial.
The Lowdown on Eight Sleep
Eight Sleep, named after those fabled eight hours, has been specializing in “smart mattresses” since 2014. Since then, they’ve racked up some serious firepower—with everyone from professional athletes to neuroscientists utilizing their products for peak performance. Newsweek even called their Pod system the “mattress of the future.”
They have their own mattress, but according to the Twitter pundits the Pod Cover is their bread and butter. You just put it on top of your current mattress, like a bedsheet, and get instant access to features like temperature control, a gently-vibrating bed alarm (no more piercing iPhone sirens), and an app that tracks all your sleep data.
It tracks some crazy granular stuff too, like your Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or the number of breaths you take a minute—but basically the cover just makes it easier to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up without an alarm. Then it shows you in real time how it’s doing that.
From cave floors to biometric, temperature-regulating sleep-spaceships, this is human evolution at its finest.
Sleeping Outside the Box
The shipment came through in a surprisingly small box, and quickly. Given all these tech claims, I was expecting to take out what looked like the contents of a supercomputer, but nah: the setup was absurdly simple and took me five minutes. And this coming from a guy who’s never successfully put an Ikea dresser together.
All I did was unroll the mattress cover, throw it on the bed, fill the wifi-connected hub with water, and plug it in. The water is the secret behind the cooling tech—as the mattress monitors your biometrics, the water flows in and out of the grid to heat and cool it as needed.
It kind of had an Apple vibe to it: crazy high-tech on the inside, simple and approachable on the outside. No bells, whistles, or wearable fitness trackers required…which makes sense given that it’s a bed. Probably wouldn’t help your sleep if you felt like you had to hook up to the Matrix first.
My First Thoughts and My First Goals
I usually wake up around 7, but my bedtime is all over the place—somewhere between 11 PM and 2 AM. I had pretty high hopes for this thing right away (like, expected to wake up feeling like superman type of high hopes), but I didn’t notice much difference the first night.
What did jump out to me right away though was the cooling aspect—it felt like the whole bed was the cool side of the pillow. Which, my fellow hot sleepers can understand, is a pretty big deal (especially in the summertime). Ultimately, what I really wanted to see is if I could get better sleep overall and feel more rested and recovered after workouts.
But all great things take time. And this may be tough to hear, but this thing ended up being worth every bit of the 2 bands it costs.
3 Months In… I Actually Do Feel Like Superman
Or close to it, at least. The crazy thing is, I thought I was sleeping perfectly fine before—and wow was I wrong. After 3 months of using the Eight Sleep, I wake up every morning without feeling groggy and sleeping through the night is a given. And the kicker? I have data-backed proof of better sleep.
Just check out some of the data the app spit back at me:
- My average deep sleep jumped up to almost 2 hours a night.
- It scored my sleep routine, basically telling me how consistent I was at going to sleep and waking up around the same time. And lemme tell you, when that sleep routine score is good, I can feel it.
- My REM sleep increased by 30 minutes a night.
And now when I don’t feel rested, I can see why in the app. The difference in my sleep scores on a night out and on a night when I’m consistent with my schedule is crazy. It’s really helped me build better habits when I can actually see my sleep quality change based on decisions I make over time.
Now I carpe the diem and the night. I can add notes and tags to hold myself accountable, and make sure I’m prioritizing my sleep and my health. When the gentle-rise vibrating alarm wakes me up each morning in a warm bed, I’m f***ing ready to go.
And though I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Pod Cover saved my relationship, I will say that the dual-temperature zone feature ended our thermostat battle. My side of the bed cruises around 65º while my partner’s coasts at a toasty 74º—so both of us get to sleep at the perfect temperature every night.
If You’d Told Me Last Year I’d Drop $2,000+ on a Mattress…
Then I would’ve assumed you were smoking something crazy. Now it’s not only my most prized possession, but I’m texting all my friends about it, too. How the times change.
I wasn’t even in the market for a new mattress, but I was definitely in need of Eight Sleep. And look—there’s nothing about the Pod Cover itself that I regret spending so much money on. My only regret is that I didn’t buy this thing sooner. You can’t put a price on feeling this good.
If you’re in the market for a science-backed, temperature-regulating mattress cover that drastically improves your sleep, Eight Sleep is your only choice. If you’re not in the market, try it out anyway. Trust me, you don’t know what you’re missing.