Product Review: Eight Sleep Pod 3 Cover

Looking for some great, luxurious sleep? This temperature-controlled smart mattress cover might be what you and your family need.

Improve your sleep with what has been labeled as "the most powerful Pod yet," providing up to 34 percent more deep sleep, 32 percent improved sleep quality and a 19 percent increase in recovery. No, it isn't magic, yet it truly feels like it, as they say.

Techradar rates it with four stars out of five, stating, "After eight weeks of testing, we can safely say that the Eight Sleep Pod 3 cover is a great sleep aid with some brilliant smart functionality for heating and cooling. The tracking is topnotch, but the Pod 3 does come with some caveats. It's very expensive and you'll definitely want to add a monthly 8+ Pro subscription for the Autopilot functionality."

Exceptional features

Named the "sci-fi future of heated mattress toppers," the Eight Sleep Pod 3 Cover was created to upgrade your mattress instead of having to purchase the Eight Sleep mattress itself.

The Eight Sleep company was said to have worked through various generations of their pod cover to provide the kind of sleep everyone dreams of.

It is way ahead of the best cooling mattresses today as the product proved to do more than switch between hot or cold depending on the season. The Pod 3 Cover utilizes water from a Nespresso machine-sized base unit rather than using electric elements. This means it can heat and cool between 12C and 43C when connected to its app. It is dual-sided, which means both preferences of the sleepers are satisfied.

Being able to set bedtime on the Eight Sleep app means that the Pod 3 will begin warming up your mattress an hour before. This ensures that its temperature is perfect when you climb on your bed, like sinking into a warm bath every night.

The Pod 3 cover fits over your existing mattress like all other best mattress toppers. However, unlike them, it is exceptional in tracking sleep. Its biometric sensors track not just the heart rate and the number of tosses and trunks but also the length of time that it took you to get to sleep, the length of time that you were dozing off, and even the length of time you dragged yourself out of bed after waking up.

More than that, it also uses the sensors for its Autopilot function, a feature where the cover changes the temperature to ensure that you are actively kept sleeping. Since there are different temperatures required for every stage of sleep, as Sleepstation stated, the Pod 3 cover is equipped to adjust to your sleep stage accordingly once your microclimate has been set.

5 steps to an awesome sleep

All of these exceptional features, though, come with a price, and at a prohibitive cost at that. This is one of the "cons" of this product. Aside from purchasing the product, you must pay for the app's monthly subscription, as autopilot will only be available with it. The 8+ Pro Membership costs $19 in the U.S. and £14 in the U.K.

Other gentle downfalls seen were that the base units would require floor space and bed temperature changes when turned off.

Moreover, Techradar emphasized that Pod 3 takes one whole week to "learn" and adjust temperature preferences. Thus, expect it will be stressful at those times, with the testers waking up sweltering and having to grab their phones to turn things down.

Yet, they cannot stress enough how worth it and amazing the product is once all is set.

With the Pod 3 cover, Eight Sleep promises that your sleep can transform from ordinary to simply amazing in just five steps:

1. Simply add the Pod Cover to your existing mattress.
2. Climb into a bed pre-set to your perfect temperature.
3. Sleep deeper while the Pod actively and continually adjusts the temperature to keep you asleep.
4. Monitor and learn from your sleep and health metrics with no uncomfortable wearables required.
5. Wake up with "GentleRise's" gradual temperature change and subtle, chest-level vibration without disturbing the other sleeper.