It Solved a Huge Issue in My Marriage

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How We Tested the Eight Sleep Pod 5

I installed the Pod 5 on our primary bed and treated it like part of daily life. I tested different temperatures throughout different seasons and made note of how well the Pod 5 adjusted. I went hotter and cooler than I would typically sleep just to see how it felt. I also have the Oura Ring, so I was able to compare the sleep tracking data against that from my Oura Ring to analyze accuracy.

It’s worth noting that I have personally tested over 10 different sleep trackers, forming a solid base to judge off during Eight Sleep Pod 5 testing. Additionally, experts including our Fitness and Commerce Editor Charles Thorp, NASM, Fitness Director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., Grooming Editor Sean Zucker, and Senior Fitness Editor Brett Williams, NASM gave their input for this review and have collectively put countless sleep trackers through the gauntlet and evaluated models—including the Eight Sleep Pod 5—on comfort, accuracy, design, durability, ease of use, and price.

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What We Like About the Eight Sleep Pod 5

Metrics

The Pod 5 has sensors throughout the mattress cover that track sleep without asking you to wear anything. That also means no charging routine, no forgetting to put your tracker on before bed, and no straps that feel annoying after midnight. The sensors inside the mattress cover track heart rate, breathing patterns, movement, and sleep stages. The system collects that information quietly in the background and gives you a sleep score (and text message with your main data points) each morning.

Since I also sleep with the Oura Ring, I was able to compare metrics across both trackers. What I love about the Pod 5 is how in depth the metrics go: It tracks everything the Oura Ring tracks—sleep stages, time slept, resting heart rate, HRV—and tacks on snoring and breath rate. I unfortunately was alarmed to find that I do snore on (a rare) occasion. I had previously been convinced by both myself and past and present partners that I was a peaceful and silent sleeper, but Pod 5 did occasionally track snoring in about 1% of my night’s sleep.

The app gives a comprehensive nightly view.

The app is organized and explains these patterns in clear language. You can even check your partner’s metrics if you’re feeling competitive. My favorite metric to follow is HRV as it shows how well your body is recovering over time and varies with each night’s sleep. For example, on nights I was sick or maybe indulged in a few too many glasses of wine, my HRV noticeably dropped. But nights when I got a healthy 8-9 hours of sleep and was well hydrated, my HRV skyrocketed.

It’s worth noting that the metrics between the Pod 5 and my Oura Ring did vary a little, with Pod 5 tracking longer time slept than Oura most nights. But at only around a 30 minute difference, the variance isn’t super significant.

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Temperature Control

The temperature control feature is the highlight of the entire Eight Sleep Pod 5 system for me. The Pod 5 heats and cools using water in a tank beside your bed that runs through the cover at set temperatures via two hoses.

The Pod 5 mattress cover adjusts the bed’s surface temperature as your body moves through the night. It cools when you settle in, stays steady when sleep deepens, and warms slightly as morning approaches. Of course, if you don’t want it to adjust for you, you can set the temperatures for bedtime, night, and dawn yourself.

I really appreciate that you can schedule the bed to warm or cool before you even get into it. By the time you’re crawling into bed, your side is already your ideal temperature to help you nod off even quicker.

During the winter, I found myself setting the temperatures +2 degrees above baseline for when I got into bed. And by morning, the bed would be +3 degrees as the bedroom cooled overnight. My husband, on the other hand, sets his temp to -2-3 degrees below baseline no matter the weather outside (a little psycho, I know).

You can feel the difference yourself when you reach across to the other side of the bed. A one or two degree difference is subtle, but a gap of five degrees is quite noticeable to the touch. And no longer having to duke it out over who gets to control the room temp overnight has truly been a game-changer for our partnership.

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Alarm

My husband wakes up at 4:50 a.m. everyday for work, while my dog and I like to snooze until 7:30 a.m. My husband is a deep sleeper, so usually his blaring alarm would jolt me awake so aggressively it took me a full hour to be able to fall back asleep. But the Pod 5 alarm is so gentle, I barely notice it—yet, he definitely can’t ignore it.

Around 4:50 everyday (the alarm picks a time within a 30-minute range of the time you want to wake up when you are in your lightest sleep), my husband’s side of the bed vibrates softly. The movement is noticeable enough to wake a deep sleeper, but it’s not loud at all. I’m a fairly light sleeper, so I hear it, but it’s not enough to fully wake me. In fact, I fall right back to sleep after he leaves until my own 7:30 alarm.

You can set different alarms for different days of the week too, which is a plus. But it’s also worth noting that you need to remember to turn the “daily” alarm off on the weekend if you have it set, unless you want a vibration pushing you out of bed at 4:50am Saturday morning (not that we’ve been there).

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What to Watch Out for

Set-Up

Set-up was a bit more difficult than your average wearable sleep tracker. But honestly, it wasn’t too much of a lift and probably took a total of about 30-40 minutes. The product comes in two boxes (mattress cover and bedside tank for the water that cools and heats the bed).

The first step is to download the app. After you’re signed up and connected to your Pod, the app instructs you through the rest of the set-up process. Strip the bed, put the cover on (it is similar to a fitted sheet), then hook it up to the water tank with the provided hoses. The tricky part is ensuring the hoses are in a position where they don’t pinch or kink as the water won’t be able to flow properly if they do.

Once you’re hooked up cleanly, re-make your bed and fill the water tank with distilled water (this will help keep cleaning to a minimum, and the app is helpful about notifying when that needs to happen). From there, the cover needs to go through a priming process for 10 minutes, and you can’t sit or lay on the bed during that time. Once the system is done priming, you fill the tank one more time (distilled water again), and you’re good to start setting your preferences in the app. Also keep in mind that the water tank will eventually run out of water. Editors who have tested Sleep Eight Pods have noted anywhere from three to six months, and this can vary depending on your temperature selections.

It may sound like a lot written out like that, but trust me, if I can set this product up, anyone reading this article can.

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Tracking Discrepancies

I’ve noticed a couple small tracking errors that are worth noting, though neither are terribly serious flaws in the system. First, if you like to get in bed early and read or watch a show before you fall asleep, sometimes the Pod 5 picks that up as “time to fall asleep” which means the app may flag that it took you 90 minutes to nod off rather than the 15 minutes it actually took you once your head hit your pillow.

The writer’s German Shepard eyeing up the bed.

Second, we have a big 80-pound german shepherd who sleeps in the bed with us. When my husband leaves in the morning at 5 a.m., our dog likes to curl up on my husband’s side of the bed rather than at the foot of the bed. Since he’s big, the Pod 5 often picks up his extra sleep as my husband’s and gives my husband a higher sleep score than he deserves. I can’t say if this would remain the same with a smaller dog or cat though, to be fair.

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Value

The Eight Sleep Pod 5 does have a pretty steep price tag, there’s no way around it. For a king bed, you’re paying over $3,000 for the Pod 5 system, plus $17 a month for the standard subscription to access all the features.

Luckily, Eight Sleep provides a couple of financing options. The first is actually pretty unique: You can rent the system for $249 a month (and that includes the subscription to unlock the features). But if you know you’re going to want this product long-term, the second financing option allows you to pay off the full price with installments as low as $91 a month.

For us, the value is there. This product solved a huge issue in my marriage, allowing me to sleep without multiple layers on and my husband to ditch his bedside fan. If you’re a single person who doesn’t typically have issues falling or staying asleep because of temperature, you can surely find a cheaper sleep tracker to provide metrics without the intense heating/cooling system you’re paying for here. But if you’re in a partnership like mine and also wouldn’t mind a little sleep data, this product really is a great solution.

So yes, $3,250 is a lot to drop in one go. But you have options, and overall, that $3,250 (whichever way you choose to spend it) will be money well spent, in my humble opinion.

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Final Verdict: Should You Buy the Eight Sleep Pod 5?

The Eight Sleep Pod 5 is a great fit for comfort- and metric-obsessed sleepers. It’s also a great solution for partners who thrive in opposing sleep environments—she likes hot and you like cold, or vice versa.

It’s a sleep tracker you don’t have to wear, a temperature control system you don’t have to pay a monthly utility bill to use, and honestly, just a really cool product (no pun intended).

Should you buy it? It’s hard for me to say if you’re the right person for it. But if you have the money, want to sleep at the ideal temperature for your body no matter the season, and love digging into sleep data, I truly think the Eight Sleep Pod 5 was one of my best recent finds.

Features at a Glance

Metrics	Sleep stages, heart rate, breathing rate, HRV, temperature trends, sleep consistency, breaths per minute
Type of Tracker	Mattress cover
Connectivity	iOS and Android
Subscription	Required for advanced features

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Lauren Keary is a NASM-certified nutrition coach and fitness/nutrition writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is an ex-collegiate rower, and received her M.A. in magazine journalism and B.A. in literary journalism. She has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and has covered topics all across the wellness and lifestyles spaces. 

Her bylines include Fortune, BarBend, Outside Magazine, Evening Standard, BuzzFeed, Modern Luxury, Women’s Running Magazine, TripSavvy, San Diego Magazine, Orange Coast Magazine, Fitt and FoodBeast. 

When she’s not writing or editing, you can catch her walking with her dog and an iced vanilla latte (half sweet) beachside or catching a flight.

Charles Thorp is the Fitness and Commerce Editor at Men’s Health, where he shares the best product recommendations in gym equipment, recovery tools, supplements, and more. Following an early life in athletics, Charles became a NASM-certified trainer and began writing programs alongside the most respected coaches in the world.  

Since entering the world of fitness content, Charles has had the opportunity to learn from and train alongside high performance individuals from the NFL, UFC, NBA, Formula 1, CrossFit, US Olympics, and Navy SEALs. When he’s not writing about training programs or gear, he can be seen at the gym or in the wild, putting them to the test.