We Tried Eight Sleep And Sleep Number. Here's What Happened

Nothing beats a solid eight hours, but these days, that can be hard to achieve. Our editors have been searching for the best cooling mattress in hope of getting the quality rest we desperately need. We finally narrowed it down to two options based on key criteria: comfort, smart features, and cooling abilities.

Running hot at night is a huge obstacle to getting a good night's rest and finding a mattress that doesn't retain heat and can cool you down is so important. Spending to get the comfort you need seems like an easy choice, but mattresses aren't an everyday expense so pricing is still a major factor.

We kept coming across two mattresses: Eight Sleep's Pod Pro and Sleep Number's m7 Smart Bed. Thanks to 100-night trials, we decided to try both to see which was best.

Here's what we found out.

Key Similarities

• Both have 100-night trials so you can test them from the comfort of your home.
• Both are premium high-quality mattresses with similar price points.
• Both have apps to track sleep.

Key Differences

• The Pod Pro allows you to control the temperature which ranges from 55F to 110F while the m7 Smart Bed has cooling memory foam which doesn't cool down below body temperature.
• The Pod Pro has dual-zone cooling and heating, meaning you can set different temperatures on either side of the bed. Whereas with the m7 Smart Bed you can't set temperature since it's just one piece of gel across the bed.
• The Pod Pro has GentleRise Wake-Up Technology.
• The m7 Smart Bed has adjustable firmness on each side of the bed.

Eight Sleep

The Pod Pro mattress knocked it out of the park for us.

The stand-out feature is its dual-zone cooling and heating capabilities. This allows you to set your side of the bed to a cool 55F while your partner can stay warm at 70F (and could go up to 110F if they wanted). Finally, there's no more need to blast the AC or fight over the covers.

We also love the comfort provided by the five layers of premium foam. The top layer, called the Comfort Blend, combines with the other four others to create amazing contouring support. The relief on all the right pressure points is heavenly.

GentleRise Technology is a bonus that we love. By setting a time in the Eight Sleep app, the mattress then uses vibrations at chest level to give you the best wake-up. It also gradually cools or warms the bed minutes before waking you up.

The Eight Sleep app also monitors sleep fitness via sensors in the mattress that track Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Resting Heart Rate, Sleep Stages, and Sleep Time. This gives both sleepers individual metrics for their side of the bed. You can know your sleep fitness in a whole new way with Eight Sleep.

The Pod Pro hit all of our mattress goals and more. Plus, you can finance a queen size for $84 a month and still keep your original bed frame.

Sleep Number

We were really excited to try the m7 Smart Bed. Like all Sleep Numbers, it can control the firmness of either side of the bed. While it was nice customizing the firmness, it didn't exactly go as planned.

When two people prefer relatively different levels of firmness, the middle of the mattress begins to sag and leaves one person rolling into it. It also feels like two completely different mattresses side by side and puts a damper on intimacy. We found the Pod Pro's firmness to be a happy medium and keeps all bedfellows on the same level.

We were most interested in the mattress' cooling abilities. The memory foam absorbs body heat, but you couldn't feel much of a difference. We preferred cooling the mattress precisely on the Pod Pro as opposed to the m7 because it's significantly cooler and drops in temperature.

Similar to the Pod Pro, the m7 Smart Bed gives sleep insights on their app by assigning a Sleep IQ score. While this was helpful, Eight Sleep's app won us over with its fresher look and the way they broke down the information.

The m7 Smart Bed in queen size is available to finance at $130 a month, but the bases are a significant extra cost. They do provide additional comforts such as raising the back for reading and tv-watching positions. At $2,000 the FlexFit Base did not seem worth it to us and it would've brought the total to $175 a month - we would rather sit up on our own and save some money.

Final Notes

At the end of the day, Eight Sleep's Pod Pro mattress outdid Sleep Number's m7 Smart Bed for us. The m7 Smart Bed claims to be a cooling mattress but it just absorbs body heat while the Pod Pro actually cools down to as low as 55F. There isn't an aspect of the Pod Pro that didn't elevate the experience and is definitely worth the cost. Finally, our editors can get a good night's sleep thanks to the Pod Pro and its dual cooling capabilities.

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