Find the right one the temperature in bed can be tricky. Being too hot or too cold makes it difficult to let go and can wake you up prematurely. Since our mental and physical health depends on sleep, this is a problem. Eight Sleep has the answer. The Eight Sleep Pod 4 is a temperature-regulating mattress cover that follows your body as you sleep, with a hub that pumps cooled or warmed water into the cover to help you stay in the land of nodding longer. head.
When I tested its predecessor, the Eight Sleep Pod 3 (7/10, WIRED recommends), I was wary of the billionaire biohacking buzz, but it won me over. In addition to increased comfort, the best sleep trackers all told the same story: my wife and I slept longer and had more deep sleep and REM sleep with the Eight Sleep Pod than without. The Eight Sleep Pod 4 brings welcome improvements, including greater comfort, quieter operation and convenient touch controls, so you don’t have to fumble for your phone at night.
Photography: Simon Hill
Unfortunately, better sleep doesn’t come cheap. A Pod 4 blanket and hub for a queen-size bed costs $2,599, but you also have to pick up a one-year subscription to Autopilot for $199 more. If you already have a subscription, you can transfer it to a new Pod, but you can no longer purchase an Eight Sleep Pod without purchasing the Autopilot subscription. The UK Super King I tested costs £2,699, with a year of autopilot at £199. It’s a real investment, but sleeping deeply can be transformative.
Hit the hay
The Eight Sleep Pod 4 Lid and Hub come in two large boxes. The mattress cover has a rubber tube inside and a soft, fluffy, dark material on top. It is elasticated for a snug fit on your mattress, and the tube should be routed through the top to connect to the hub. The hub is about the size of a desktop computer, with a fabric front and a large 8 logo. The hub is the brains of the operation, it cools or heats the water and pumps it around the lid.
The setup with Pod 4 was similar but much faster than Pod 3. You remove the cylinder from the top of the hub and pour water up to the fill line. The boot process is down to around 10 minutes compared to a few hours for the previous version. You connect the hub to your Wi-Fi using the mobile app. The Pod 4 cover is much more comfortable than the Pod 3 and the hub is much quieter. It never exceeded 30 decibels during measurement. It emits a subtle buzzing sound, like a white noise, sleep noise.
