Eight Sleep Review: 730 Days of Data, Sweat, and Surprisingly Fewer Fights

Picture this: It’s 2 a.m. You’re half-baked under a mountain of sweaty sheets while your partner is wrapped up like a human burrito, shivering. Sound familiar? Yeah, that was us—until we got the Eight Sleep Pod Mattress Cover.

Two years later, we’ve got stories to tell. Some good. Some… a little less good. If you’re wondering “Is the Eight Sleep Pod Cover actually worth it, or is it just another overhyped, overpriced tech toy?” — we’re about to spill every last sleepy bean. Grab a cup of coffee (or chamomile tea if you’re feeling on brand) and let’s dive into our brutally honest Eight Sleep review.

Eight Sleep Review: What is the 8 Sleep Pod Mattress Cover?

Imagine your bed got a Ph.D. in Thermodynamics and a minor in Health Tracking—that’s basically the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. It’s a smart mattress topper that actively heats and cools your bed, tracks your sleep patterns, wakes you up gently with a smart alarm, and syncs with your favorite health apps.

Let’s keep it simple: the Eight Sleep Pod Mattress Cover is a high-tech mattress topper that turns any bed into a smart, climate-controlled, sleep-optimized cocoon.

Here’s what it actually does:

• Cools or heats each side of the bed independently, between 55°–110°F.
• Tracks your sleep, including heart rate, sleep stages, tosses and turns, and more—automatically, no wearable needed.
• Wakes you up gently with a vibrating smart alarm and gradual temperature change.
• Connects to your phone via the Eight Sleep app, where you can adjust settings, view sleep scores, and get insights.

It works by pumping temperature-controlled water through a thin layer of tubing inside the mattress cover, all powered by a small unit next to your bed called “The Hub.” You don’t feel the tubes at all—it just feels like a normal (but magically temperature-perfect) mattress.

So no, it’s not a new mattress—it’s an upgrade to the one you already own. One that learns your habits, adjusts automatically, and helps you get the most out of your sleep.

Why We Bought It (And What We Expected)

Before we invested in the Eight Sleep Pod Cover, our nighttime routine was a tragicomedy of errors. I’d be roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey while my spouse was shivering like she’d been banished to the Arctic Circle. Cue the endless thermostat battles and the passive-aggressive blanket tug-of-war.

Plus, we’re both a little bit obsessive about optimizing things—workouts, diets, sleep—you name it. So when we heard about a mattress cover that could not only keep us both comfortable but also track our sleep stats like a sleep-obsessed NASA engineer? We were intrigued.

Our wildest dream? To finally stop waking up in the middle of the night feeling like a baked potato wrapped in foil—and maybe even feel good in the morning for once. A crazy dream, sure. But crazier things have happened… like paying $2K for a mattress cover.

2 Years Later: The Good Stuff

To give you our honest Eight Sleep Pod Review, we wanted to make sure we weren’t just giving you a knee-jerk reaction.

Temperature Control

If the Eight Sleep Pod Cover has a magic trick up its sleeve, it’s the temperature control. Before this thing entered our lives, we spent half the night flipping the covers on and off like a pair of caffeinated fish out of water.

Now? Total game-changer. The Pod lets each side of the bed pick its own temperature, so my side can feel like a chilled wine cellar while my spouse’s side is a few degrees away from “toasty campfire nap.”

Summer Nights: When the bedroom feels like a scene from a Florida swamp documentary, the Pod’s cooling settings kick in and actually make a noticeable difference. Not “it’s slightly cooler if you squint” — genuinely cooler.

Winter Mornings: When it’s 12°F outside and our heating system is acting like it’s on strike, the Pod’s warming mode feels like sliding into a preheated oven—but in the cozy “cookies baking” kind of way, not the “roast beef” way.

Dual Temperatures, for the win!

And yes, we fought over the settings for about a week until we figured out our perfect personal “thermal signatures.” Now we barely notice—except that we actually sleep through the night without rage-kicking the blankets off.

Big picture: If you’re constantly too hot, too cold, or in a relationship where no one can agree on a “reasonable” sleeping temp, the Eight Sleep Pod’s temperature control alone might be worth the ticket price.

Sleep Tracking

Look, anyone can slap a “sleep tracking” sticker on their product these days—but Eight Sleep actually delivers data that feels legit. Not just “you slept” but things like:

• How long you spent in each sleep stage (light, deep, REM)
• Your heart rate variability (HRV)
• Respiratory rate

After two years, we’ve noticed that the sleep data trends pretty accurately with how we feel the next morning. Bad sleep scores almost always line up with mornings where we wake up feeling like we’ve been hit by a philosophical crisis and a truck.

Useful insights for our Eight Sleep Review:

• Identifying nights when alcohol wrecked our sleep (spoiler: it’s almost every time)
• Learning what bedtime routines actually help (chamomile tea = good, TikTok doomscrolling = bad)
• Seeing the impact of exercise on recovery

Overall, it’s like having a slightly judgmental but well-meaning personal trainer living inside your mattress—minus the shouting.

Sleep Insights + Autopilot

Another game changing feature is Autopilot. This takes your sleep analytics and makes changes to the temperature based on many different variables.

Take a look at a recent night sleeping on the Mattress Cover:

It made a whopping 32 adjustments in just one night. Since I’ve owned it, it’s made over 15,000 changes! Nuts!

These adjustments actually make a big different – especially when it comes to the adjusting based on the room temperature. Especially in Colorado, where you can have the Air Conditioner on in the evening and need your heater on in the morning.

Smart Alarm

Alright, let’s talk about the Smart Alarm—the feature we were the most skeptical about, but also secretly the most excited for.

Here’s how it works: instead of setting a harsh alarm that jolts you awake at exactly 6:30 a.m. (whether you’re dreaming about winning the lottery or running from a bear), the Eight Sleep Pod monitors your sleep cycle. Then, it gently starts waking you during your lightest phase of sleep within a 30-minute window you set.

Translation: It tries to catch you when you’re already halfway to being awake, not mid-deep sleep where your brain is basically running on Windows 95.

And guess what? It actually works. It’s like getting a firm but polite nudge instead of a bucket of cold water to the face.

We’ve noticed:

• Mornings feel a lot less brutal.
• No more feeling “punched in the soul” when the alarm goes off.
• It’s sneakily made us morning people—well, almost.

Bottom line: if you’ve ever wanted to wake up like a Disney princess gently summoned by woodland creatures (instead of an angry foghorn), the Smart Alarm is going to feel like a dream.

App and Integration

The Eight Sleep app is basically the remote control to your sleep spaceship. And thankfully, it’s way easier to use than some of the smart home apps out there that look like they were designed in 2003.

Ease of Use:

• Setting temperatures and schedules is stupidly simple.
• The sleep tracking data is easy to read without needing a Ph.D. in Biostatistics.
• You can tweak everything—bed temperature, wake-up times, and even automatic cooling/warming routines—with just a few taps.

App Updates:

• Over the past two years, the app has gotten faster and cleaner.
• They’ve added new features like “Health Insights” and “Coach Recommendations.”
• Occasionally a bug pops up (usually after a big update), but they’ve been good about squashing them quickly.

Integrations:

• Connects seamlessly with Apple Health, Google Fit, Fitbit, and even Oura Ring data.

If you like seeing charts, graphs, and little gold stars for sleeping well (who doesn’t?), the Eight Sleep app will probably become your new obsession.

2 Years Later: The Not-So-Great Stuff

Maintenance & Upkeep

Alright, let’s talk about the part nobody brags about on Instagram: keeping this fancy mattress cover running like a well-oiled sleep machine.

Water Refilling:

First off, yes—you have to fill the Pod with water. No, it’s not as annoying as it sounds. In two years, we’ve had to refill it maybe three times. That’s it. However, when you do refill it, it’s like trying to get ketchup out of a glass bottle—you need some patience to re-prime the system and get the water flowing properly. Also, heads up: when you first turn the heat back on after a refill, it feels cold at first because the water needs to fully circulate.

Slightly noticeable under the sheets… sometimes

Mrs. We Tried It notices the tubing under the sheets, very slightly. She also notices when the device turns on at first. While her side of the bed is set to warm, mine is sent to typically cool (depending on season).

When the device first starts circulating water, you can feel it being “cool.” However, that goes away in about 10-15 minutes. While not a giant deal, something to at least note. You can always have the bed scheduled to turn on earlier, to avoid the cold – so it heats up before you even get in bed.

Bottom Line:
Maintenance has been surprisingly low-effort. It’s almost “set it and forget it” forever, but it’s a lot closer to that than you’d expect for something that basically turns your bed into a high-tech climate-controlled spaceship.

Durability

After two years of nightly use, dragging ourselves in and out of bed like caffeinated zombies, and occasionally letting our kids treat it like a trampoline (whoops), the Eight Sleep Pod Cover is still holding up impressively well.

Visible Wear and Tear?
Almost none. The cover itself hasn’t frayed, torn, or pilled. It still fits snugly over our mattress like the day we first set it up. No sagging. No weird bubbles. No sad, stretched-out fabric.

Internal Hardware Issues?
Nada. The heating and cooling functions work just as well as they did on day one. The water pump is still humming along quietly, doing its thing without sounding like it’s about to launch into orbit.

Sleep Tracking Accuracy?
Still feels spot-on. If anything, the sensors have gotten better thanks to firmware updates over time.

Bottom line: The Eight Sleep Pod Cover doesn’t just survive—it thrives. It’s more like that one friend who somehow still looks exactly the same at your 10-year high school reunion while everyone else is Googling “best anti-aging creams.”

If you’re worried about dropping a good chunk of change on something that’ll give out after a year, don’t be. This thing was clearly built to go the distance.

Subscription Costs: Worth It?!

Oh, you thought you were just buying a mattress cover? How adorable.

In addition to the upfront cost, Eight Sleep encourages you to sign up for their “Eight Sleep Membership” — basically the VIP pass to all the cool features. It’s about $15 to $20 per month, depending on how long you commit.

What You Get With the Subscription:

• Full sleep tracking: stages, HRV, respiratory rate, tosses, turns, bedtime trends, and recovery scores.
• Smart temperature automations based on your sleep stages and environment.
• Smart alarm functionality (the magical nudge we talked about).
• Health insights and personalized tips to “optimize” your sleep (and your life, if you believe the marketing).
• Firmware updates and new features as they’re released.

What You Don’t Get Without the Subscription:

• No detailed sleep tracking data.
• No smart alarm.
• No fancy temperature automations that adjust throughout the night based on your sleep phases.
• Limited control over some “smart” features—you can still manually set the bed temperature, but that’s about it.

In short: Without the membership, your high-tech mattress cover turns into a glorified heated blanket. A very nice, very expensive heated blanket.

You are also required to pay for 1 year of Autopilot (which covers two logins – one for each side) upfront. After that, you don’t need to purchase Autopilot.

Is the Subscription Worth It?

If you love seeing your sleep stats, being woken up like royalty, and having your bed proactively react to your body like it’s auditioning for “Westworld,” it’s absolutely worth it.

If you’re just here for “cold bed, good sleep” and don’t care about all the nerdy data, you might be fine skipping the subscription—but you’ll definitely be missing out on a lot of what makes Eight Sleep special.

Is the Eight Sleep Pod Cover Worth It?

Alright, let’s bottom-line this thing.

If you’re the type of person who:

• Wakes up sweaty and angry every night,
• Has a partner who thinks “room temperature” means “frozen tundra,”
• Nerds out over sleep tracking and wants every advantage to squeeze 5% more energy out of your day,
• Or just wants to finally stop losing thermostat wars at 2 a.m.,

The Eight Sleep Pod Cover is going to feel like a straight-up life upgrade.

It’s like giving your bed the ability to think, adapt, and *actually* make your nights better instead of just being a lump you flop onto.

BUT — if you’re someone who:

• Thinks paying for a subscription to your mattress sounds like a dystopian joke,
• Doesn’t care about tracking heart rate variability unless you’re running a marathon,
• Doesn’t get hot or cold at night,
• Or wants zero maintenance, zero tech drama, and zero water refills ever…

Then honestly? You might be better off with a really good mattress and a cheap sleep tracker.

Our Honest Verdict

If you have the budget, love smart home gadgets, and take sleep seriously, the Eight Sleep Pod Cover is absolutely worth it.

It’s always funny to me when people want a “cheap” mattress. You literally spend the most time in bed over any other single place. So, make it the best!

If you just want a better mattress without all the bells, whistles, and app updates… you might want to keep it simple.

If you want to turn your bed into a tech-powered sleep oasis and are cool with a little maintenance (and a subscription fee), the Eight Sleep Pod Cover is absolutely worth it.

If you’re more “let’s just throw a fan on and call it a night,” you might want to swipe left and keep things simple.

Looking for something a little more simple and a lot less expensive? Check our our SleepMe Review.