Eight Sleep has unveiled the Pod 6, its latest smart mattress cover system, with more biometric sensors, faster temperature adjustments and a new option designed specifically for solo sleepers.
The company says the Pod 6 has been “rebuilt from the ground up” and is its biggest hardware launch yet. At the centre of the system is a redesigned hub that pumps temperature-controlled water through the mattress cover, allowing the sleep surface to be heated or cooled throughout the night.
Eight Sleep claims the Pod 6 can adjust temperature around 20% faster than the previous Pod 5, which should help it respond more quickly to changes such as night sweats or chills.
The bigger change, however, is underneath the cover. Pod 6 has 18 biometric sensors, compared with two in the Pod 5. These track metrics including heart rate, breathing rate, heart rate variability, snoring and sleep stages, without requiring the user to wear a separate fitness tracker or smartwatch. The collected information is available through Eight Sleep’s app.
Those sensors also feed into the system’s AI engine and Autopilot feature, which can automatically adjust the mattress cover based on factors including sleep stage and ambient temperature. Eight Sleep says the system can distinguish between two people sleeping close together and separate a human sleeper’s signals from those of a pet on the bed.
There’s also a new option for people who sleep alone. The smaller solo configuration retains the same core functionality but drops the dual-zone temperature controls used by larger versions. That makes it cheaper, although the Pod 6 remains firmly in premium smart-home territory.
The solo model starts at $2,000, while larger configurations can reach $3,000, depending on mattress size. There’s another ongoing cost to consider, too: every Pod 6 requires an Autopilot subscription, priced at $17 to $25 per month.
Despite the name, the Pod 6 isn’t a mattress. It’s a smart sleep system consisting of the redesigned hub and temperature-controlled mattress cover, with the hardware available to buy now.
That makes the Pod 6 a fairly significant step up from the Pod 5 on paper, particularly for anyone interested in automated temperature control and sleep tracking without wearing a device to bed. The catch, as with previous Eight Sleep systems, is that the technology comes with a substantial upfront price and an ongoing subscription.
