Over a year ago, I reviewed the Eight Sleep Pod Pro Max mattress that had water cooling and
heating, and I went into super detail about that and my experience using it over a few weeks. But I
thought it would be a good idea to do a follow-up over a year later, my experience with it, have
I had any problems, have I learned anything more about it, and whether I would still recommend it.
Though if you want a breakdown of the technicals and how the setup works and all the features and
the app and stuff like that, that's probably more what the old video is going to go over,
whereas this one again is more like experience and stuff like that. Also,
there's a few things I didn't cover in that previous video that people were asking,
like does it actually go down to the minimum and maximum temperatures that are advertised?
So I did another test on that. Plus there have been a couple more changes and features
in terms of software, so I can explain all those. And a big thing is there's actually
a new version of the cover, the Pod 3. So before the one I had was I guess the Pod 2,
and funny enough, as I was already planning at some point to make this video anyway,
Eight Sleep did reach out to me again and offered to send me the updated Pod 3 cover.
So I can also give my brief experience using that the past two weeks and if it makes a
difference. Now as always, I'm not trying to sneak past all that, I want to be 100%
upfront about the disclosures, so just like last year, pretty much the same stuff applies. They
sent me the Pod 3 cover for free, just like they sent me the mattress last year for free.
But they didn't give me any additional compensation or payment beyond just
sending me the product. Also, they didn't give me any conditional talking points or
things they wanted me to say. I can say whatever I want, and as always it's going
to be my genuine thoughts, otherwise I would not even call it a review.
They did provide me with an affiliate link that's in the description, so you can use
that if you found the video helpful and you want to support the channel. I'll get
a commission and you'll get a discount if you use that link. So with all that considered,
feel free to take this video with as many grains of salt as you want.
But like I mentioned, I was planning to do this video anyway, I wasn't expecting them to send me
the new one, but now I can just add that brief experience on the last two weeks with that on
top of it. Okay, so first let me go over a few software and app changes that weren't there at
the last time. One is that they added in Away Mode, which was added relatively recently.
I don't know why this wasn't in there before, but basically if you're on
vacation or you're not staying the night at your own house, something like that,
you can simply use the Away Mode and it won't run the bed. Previously,
I had to just literally unplug the thing so it wouldn't run, but finally they added that.
Also, they added in experimental settings in the Eight Sleep Labs section for seeing
the actual real temperature, instead of just the negative 10 to plus 10 number rating. So you have
the minimum at 55 degrees and the maximum at the 110. And actually switching between these display
modes reveals that each number setting changes the real temperature by about 2 to 3 degrees.
However, if you have it set to show the real temperature, you have more control
because you can control it down to the individual degree. So here's a chart I
made for how each number setting corresponds to the actual temperature. And yes, I went through
and turned the setting on and off for each one of these 20 things to figure this out.
Like I said, for most of these, the difference is 2 or 3 degrees. However, at the extremes,
it changes. So from -9 to -10, it goes from 61 degrees to 55, big jump. And for some reason,
both 9 and 10, the positive, are both 110. But hey, it does say experimental. And yes
like I said, later I'll do a test on whether it really does go down to 55 and up to 110.
Now, as for the changes between the new Pod 3 cover and the previous one that I
had for most of the year, it's definitely a small incremental change. The new cover
supports 5GHz WiFi, the previous one was only 2.4, that's definitely an improvement.
It also has an improved sensor for more accurate tracking, apparently.
And also a better CPU, though I'm not sure what difference that makes to the user. And apparently,
it has added comfort. I guess they improved how much you can feel the grid. Though, I didn't
really notice a huge difference, but I didn't even really find it a problem before anyway. They do
actually offer a discount if you want to upgrade from your current Pod cover to the new one.
Though in my opinion, it's definitely an incremental upgrade, definitely not
necessary unless you really want it. But of course, if you don't have any
of them at all and you're just buying it for the first time, yeah, you may as well
get the new one. However, I will show you the upgrade process since I did get the new one.
And basically, it's pretty simple in theory. You simply unzip the old cover
and zip the new one on. Really, the toughest part was just draining the
water from the previous one. I kind of had to hold it up a bit to make sure it all
drained out. And I kind of had to wait a while, but I think I got it all out.
And I did end up being able to test out that tool that they give you. So you basically
just stick it in there, wait for the water to come out. It really wasn't that hard. And yeah,
the upgraded cover actually does come with an entire new cooling unit, that
looks like the PC. So you get everything. Now, speaking of draining the water, interestingly,
they say that you might have to refill the water tank every two to three months due to evaporation.
However, I only had to do it once in the past year. I filled it up for the first time,
followed the instructions, and then maybe three months later in October of last year,
it had me add another tank's worth of water. And then it didn't ask
me to refill the water at all for the entire year since when I replaced it now.
So I don't know how long it would have even further lasted. It said maintenance... it
was good to go the whole time. Now, I'm sure you're curious just like I
was for what this water was going to look like after draining it. And yes,
it definitely was cloudy. However, I will say that it had no smell whatsoever.
So I'm not even sure that the cloudiness is even from bacteria growth or maybe just
from flushing out particles from the manufacturing process within
the grid or something like that. And also remember, they do have you use distilled
water and add hydrogen peroxide to it when you refill the tank and prime it.
So if anything, maybe it's just some dead bacteria that managed to get in, but obviously wasn't able
to survive. I should mention though that now, they tell you to add a lot more hydrogen peroxide
than previously. So that water that you just saw, that was from the original instructions,
which said to add two tablespoons or about 30 milliliters of hydrogen peroxide 3%, per tank.
But now when you do the instructions, it says to add way more. It says to add 16 ounces of hydrogen
peroxide per tank. That's about half a liter and a quarter of the tank. So I'm pretty sure with
that amount, you really are not going to have to worry about bacteria growth. I'm not sure if
they changed the instructions to combat bacteria growth they were seeing, or maybe they just wanted
to make sure that that amount wouldn't damage the unit and they had to wait a while to see.
But either way, I would say there's a lot less risk of bacteria growth if there was even any
before. So next, let me go over my overall experience, which I would say is positive.
Just like in the original review, I knew after two weeks that I liked it,
that still is the case. I really like this thing, I would not want to go back.
Now, my situation may be different than yours. I specifically had a problem with
overheating at night because I live in a hot climate and my AC unit is really
bad at cooling my bedroom because it's on the opposite side of the apartment
with like one little vent. And that's why I said a year ago that even before they
reached out to me to send me the mattress, I was thinking about getting one anyway.
But now I can say after going through an entire year and four seasons,
especially through the hottest parts of the summer, I have not had that problem
anymore. It has solved that problem. So I would generally say that I do get better
sleep. I do obviously still have bad nights of sleep. It's not a miracle cure all or anything.
But if I do, it's not from feeling too hot or anything like that. In terms of
the noise from the thing, I do have it on the opposite side of my nightstand. However,
it's effectively silent. The new one is just as quiet as the last one. And mostly the sound
is just from the water, the sound of the water moving through the grid, which is really quiet.
You can hear the pump sort of going when it first starts up, but I've never had it
disturb me at all. It's really quiet, it's not a problem. And also in terms of issues,
I've never had it leak or anything like that. No mechanical issues. So I can't
speak to customer service and what that would be like because I haven't needed to contact them.
Now, in terms of nitpicks and some negatives, there are a few I want to mention, but I would
say they're minor. One is that for the sleep stage tracking, generally, I would say it's OK,
it's pretty good. But it does, for some reason, sometimes seem to lose tracking
I think. This night for example, it looks like it skipped from 12:15 all the way to 2:15 a.m.
Because it doesn't show any heart rate data for that. And it said I was awake
the whole time in the stages, which I definitely wasn't awake for two hours,
I would have known that. Now that big of a gap is very rare, to be clear. Usually what
I'll see is a couple of nights a week, maybe it'll go 30 minutes between showing the data.
And I suspect what might be happening is the way I'm sleeping. I tend to toss and turn around at
night a lot. And I think I might be moving my body more towards the middle of the mattress where it
might be just simply off the sensor. And I've been trying to take note of that. I do notice
I wake up in the middle of the night and try to move back towards the end that has the cooling.
So that might be the problem. I really don't think it's a bug because there are
nights where it literally goes the whole time without skipping a beat,
no pun intended. That being said, I will say it is true that there are
several times a night where I might wake up and then go back to sleep, I remember that.
And yeah, it's possible that that happens even more often that I don't
remember consciously. So if I were to make a suggestion, I would like to see whether
that it says that I'm awake because it thinks that there's no data there,
and maybe it thinks I got up. Or whether it senses me moving a lot, and that's why it's saying that.
Still though, in any case, it'll give you at least a pretty good idea of how well you
slept. If I see that it shows no awakenings, then it probably meant I slept good in general
and I'll wake up feeling like that. If it shows that I woke up a whole bunch of times,
whether it's exactly accurate or not, it probably means that I slept poorly anyway.
So what I think I'll do is make an effort to force myself to try and not move over
as much during the middle of the night. Maybe I'll put some kind of barrier or
something. And then maybe I'll update the description after a couple months and see
if this issue with maybe lost tracking goes away, and maybe that was just the problem.
Another possible small nitpick is I notice the water doesn't constantly
circulate through the grid all night long. So what will happen is it'll cool down the water,
it'll pump it through. And then I guess it kind of waits for it to get above some kind
of threshold and then recirculates it, is what it at least feels like.
Because there are definitely times where I'll be laying there and notice,
it seems like a little more warm than it should be. And then after a little while,
I'll feel the water definitely moving through the grid again and all cool down. I assume this is for
one of two reasons. One, it might be that the pump can't run for hours on end every single night,
it might just wear it out. In which case, I wish there was maybe some kind of setting where you
could slightly increase the frequency that it sent the water through again. The alternative
is I don't know exactly how the internal of the cooling unit works. It might be that it
has some kind of reservoir tank where it holds a certain set amount of water.
And then once it cools down, it sends that into the grid and then refills that tank.
In other words, it wouldn't be able to constantly circulate because of the way
it cools down water in chunks at a time, basically. And I guess if that's the case,
it's just a limitation. But again, that's a minor nitpick.
It's just that sometimes I notice it gets maybe a little more warm than I would ideally like,
but it eventually does circulate cooler water through again. There are a couple of suggestions
I have for how they could improve the app. One is I wish the history settings for your sleep tracker
history for each day would also let you see what settings you had for temperature for that night.
Especially if you like to experiment and you want to see how each setting might affect your
sleep and you change it up a lot. It'd be nice to just be able to go back and see that. The other
thing is I really wish on the graph for where it shows the sleep stages, that it would show you
exactly what time that it switched between the two temperatures you have set for during the night.
So if you remember, you can set different parts of the night to be different temperature. So there's
before you go to sleep, then the first half of the night, and the second half of the night. I
wish you could see when it exactly differentiated between beginning and after. So that way you could
maybe see whether or not maybe you should change the temperature for the second half of the night.
If maybe you're waking up in the second half of the night,
it might just happen exactly after it changes over. That would be an obvious sign. Now,
it will actually show you this if you have autopilot enabled, and I've noticed a workaround.
Even if you didn't use autopilot that previous night, if you then go and enable autopilot,
it will still show you when it changed in the temperature for the course of that night.
And it'll just say that autopilot didn't make any adjustments, even though you didn't use autopilot.
So that's kind of a workaround I found, but I wish it would still show you regularly. All right,
so now let me get to the question that a lot of people were asking me from the previous review,
which is, does the temperature actually get as low as 55 like it says, and up to 110 as advertised.
And I didn't test the last time, so I will this time. And turns out answering that is
a lot easier said than done. So I set the temperature to the minimum 55 degrees and
then broke out the thermal camera. And once it was down at the minimum temperature,
I saw that it was showing a surface temperature of the mattress of 66 degrees Fahrenheit.
But that's not the full picture because there's some air space and fabric above
the actual liquid going through. And if you're laying on the mattress,
you're going to have more direct contact with that. So what I did is used this
extremely super high tech potato chip bag clip to push down on the grid.
So it would be less space between the top of the mattress and the actual
tube inside. So it would be more accurate for what the actual temperature of those
are. And when I did that, it was showing a minimum of [60] degrees Fahrenheit. However,
that is still not the whole story because when you're working with a thermal camera,
there's actually a few things you might not know that you have to consider.
One of them is the so-called emissivity of the surface or material that you're
looking at. The default setting, which I was using for those measurements,
was the 95 matte setting, which okay for general use. But I wanted to be as
accurate as possible. So I researched the emissivity of different fabrics.
And I found this research paper showing that synthetic fabrics like polyester
are between 77 and 80 emissivity setting, which is a lot different from the 95 that
was set at. And since the mattress tag said the encasement and the tech cover,
not exactly sure what the difference is exactly. They were both made of PVC and polyester.
I figured I'd go with the 80, which is about what it said for polyester from this paper. And
when I changed the emissivity setting in the FLIR camera, now it showed the temperature is going as
low as around 57 degrees. So considering there are so many variables going on,
I will give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the 57 degrees is the correct rating.
Close enough to the advertised rating. And it might just be because my room is really
hot. So I'm not going to worry about two degrees. So next I set the other side of
the bed to 110 degrees Fahrenheit after turning off the cold side in
case it interfered. And in that case, the surface temperature was around 101
degrees Fahrenheit when the emissivity setting on the camera was set to 80.
And when I went to push down, the reading was showing exactly 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
Literally exactly as advertised. So now I'm pretty sure that is the correct emissivity
setting. Though if you're curious anyway, when it was at the default 95 setting,
the surface temperature showed 93 degrees and a max of 105.
But again, I think the 80 rating is correct. Again, based on the fact that one,
that paper said that polyester seems to be in that range. And also when I used that setting,
the temperature went exactly to 110. And generally it's easier to heat things up
than it is to cool down. I've no doubt that it could have easily gotten to 110 if it wanted to.
So that makes sense. So yes, overall, I would say I do feel confident in saying it seems to
be able to achieve the minimum and maximum temperatures as advertised. Though still,
I don't think you would really feel comfortable setting it to that high
or that low anyway. Next, I want to mention the autopilot feature.
So how this works is, not only does it take into account the initial settings that you set,
but it will also actually change the temperature throughout the night each night as well,
based on several factors, presumably to improve your sleep. And it will
actually show you a graph the next day of what the main initial setting was set to
and then how it may have changed through autopilot over the course of the night.
Though for me personally, I have autopilot off and I just have it set how I like, and
that seems to be good enough for me. So I can't really speak to how well the autopilot works,
I haven't really used it. I should point out though that the autopilot feature and
a couple other features are now part of a subscription fee called Pro+.
So from my understanding, the other features are notifications for like higher heart rate
variability or lower heart rate variability from the previous night, it'll tell you that.
As well as the digital coaching features like the exercises and meditation and stuff like
that. Though I believe even without that, it'll still give you all the tracking data.
Like you can still look at the heart rate variability and stuff. It just won't give
you special alerts and then you don't have the autopilot. One thing to point out though
is if you had an Eight Sleep device before they implemented this feature,
which I believe was around December 2021, then your grandfathered in,
you don't have to pay for the subscription fee to get the autopilot and stuff, for now
at least. I don't know if that's going to change if they add more features,
if you'll have to pay to get the new ones, but that's how it is now. So for example,
I have the autopilot feature, even though I don't have the subscription because I had the
mattress from before they implemented. But like I said, I don't find that a huge deal.
If you really are into the tracking stuff, then you can pay for that if you find it worth it,
but it's not like you're going to miss much if you don't. So anyway,
everything being said overall, again, I am happy with the matters. It is an expensive item,
so I'd be hesitant to recommend it that everybody should get one.
If you are someone who feels like you have an issue with temperature interfering with your
sleep, like I did, I would recommend it if you can afford it in that case,
because like I said, that was my issue. I actually specifically had
an issue where I was feeling too hot at night because my room was too hot.
And this was a game changer for fixing that. But if you already feel like you
sleep perfectly fine, then there might not be a point to it. It's
all going to be personal preference and what you can afford. So anyway,
hopefully you guys found this video helpful. Let me know what you think down in the comments.
Again, I'll put the affiliate link in the description where you'll get
a discount and I'll get a commission to help support the channel. You can
use that if you want. If you want to keep watching, I'll put the link to
the previous review that I did last year. So you can see that if you haven't already.
So you can just click that right there. And thanks
so much for watching guys. And I'll see you in the next video.