Eight Sleep Pod 5 review: Can a £3k smart mattress topper really help me get a better night's sleep?

I haven’t invented a hot water bottle, controlled by my phone (just yet), but I have been trialling the newest smart mattress topper from Eight Sleep.

It's Sleep Pod 5, which sits on top of your mattress, delivers full-body temperature control, cooling down to 13°C or warming as needed, adapting throughout the night as your body moves through sleep cycles.

The smart technology also learns your sleep patterns, adjusts automatically with AI-powered Autopilot, while tracking patterns across cycles, stress, and lifestyle.

As someone who is obsessed with her sleep (in my opinion, you can never get enough), it definitely piqued my interest — but with the cost of the mattress topper starting at £2,699, it's not exactly a budget buy.

Over the years, I’ve invested in and sought out the best pillows, mattresses and even the best sleep trackers to get a good night's sleep.

But can a smart mattress topper really be the key piece I’m missing and worth spending a month's salary on?

I tried it out for two months to really put it through its paces — and to see if it made a difference to my sleep.

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I’m a health and fitness journalist who has spent the last five years writing about getting better sleep.

I’ve interviewed the world's leading experts on topics including how to cure insomnia and how to sleep through a heatwave.

I’m pretty obsessed with tracking and optimising my sleep — and have tested sleep trackers including the Whoop and Apple watch in the past.

I hate making my bed at the best of times.

It’s one of those adult tasks that always feel so boring.

But this topper goes underneath your bottom sheet, fitting as a sheet would, so I’ll have to, begrudgingly, remake my bed afterwards.

Thankfully, the design is stretchy and easy to put on, but with the lead (where the water will be piped in) at the top end, I found it tricky to lay it flat, then loop it round to the side, where it connects to the hub.

I wouldn’t start the set-up process just before you go to bed either, as it takes at least an hour to take it out of the box and get it sleep-ready.

The packages are huge too; I had to get a neighbour to lug the boxes up the stairs for me.

The water tank, also known as the hub, is quite hefty, tall and chunky.

I placed it to the right of my bed, but it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I’ve tripped over it more than once.

The adjoining Eight Sleep app took me through the setup, adding water to the hub and helping me programme temperature settings via the app.

The water is pumped around the topper via small tubes, which I was worried I’d be able to feel as I slept, but thankfully I didn’t even notice them.

If anything, it just made my bed feel more comfortable.

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As well as warming my bed remotely, it will also change temperature (as you’ve programmed it to do), throughout the night.

You’ve also got the option to turn on the Autopilot, which allows the bed's temperature to change as your body temperature changes.

I’m a hot sleeper anyway, and normally snooze with the window open or a fan on, so I’d already programmed the bed to go cooler as I slept.

Overnight, the Autopilot made small adjustments, sometimes up to 30 times, to make sure I was sleeping at the best temperature.

There were a couple of times when I woke up feeling cold, so while the tech isn’t spot on, it's easy to change the temperature either on the app, or via the button on the side of the pod.

Fluctuating hormones can mean more wake-ups and less deep sleep.

During my time of the month, like many women, I overheat in bed — and the Autopilot detected this, adjusting things towards the cooler end of the scale.

The Eight Sleep pod is pretty much designed to help balance these hormone changes, or anyone going through the menopause.

The brand's latest research shows that the pod can help to reduce night-time hot flushes by up to 55 per cent.

It even comes with a ‘Hot Flush Mode’ — which delivers instant cooling when you press a button.

Clever.

One of the smartest features is its dual-zone temperature control, which allows you and your partner to have two sides of the bed at different temperatures — probably fewer arguments about duvet hogging or keeping windows open.

I’m also looking forward to using the manual temperature controls when the weather changes — especially when it's boiling outside, and I can slip into an ice-cool bed.

I’m used to analysing my sleep data, as I’ve been wearing a fitness and sleep tracker, Whoop, for the best part of a year.

Every morning, I delve into the metrics to see why I’ve slept well or badly.

The data on the Eight Sleep app is similar — it gives you a sleep fitness score between 0 and 100, which looks at three metrics — quality, quantity and consistency of sleep.

It’s the first stat I checked every morning over the two months I trialled it, and even on a bad night, it never went below 85 out of 100.

It measures these factors against biometrics such as resting heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) — two key stats which show how well your body recovers as you sleep.

The lower your HR and the higher your HRV, the better you’ve slept.

During the two-month trial, both metrics improved, with my HRV actually climbing to 50 (from 40), which is above average for my age (I’m 44).

Similar to fitness trackers, it also gave me a breakdown of my sleeping patterns, with graphs for different sleep stages and even when my sleep was interrupted.

I compared this data with my Whoop data, and on some days, REM sleep was lower, but overall, it was accurate.

Other health metrics they measure include any irregular heart rate patterns and breathing disturbances.

Thankfully, nothing concerning showed up for me.

Although these statistics aren’t designed to replace a doctor, it’s reassuring to have this kind of data to hand if you’re worried that something might not be quite right with your health.

One metric that surprised me was the one which told me I snored.

Apparently, only very lightly, and for not any longer than around 10 minutes every night.

I never even knew I snored, but as the saying goes, you learn something new every day.

When you wake up, the app, depending on how well you’ve slept, also gives you a window of time for both focus and fitness.

This was a really key insight for me, and it helped me shift when I’d do my deep writing work, which was always in the morning for me.

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In a word, yes.

Sleep is always underestimated — but, like diet and exercise, it’s a key foundation for good health.

I find that when my sleep is spot on, I eat better, have more focus at work, and perform better at the gym.

There were a few things which I didn’t like about the sleep pod, though.

I’d love to see a smaller hub created and less chunky wires — at the moment, it’s an eyesore, and I would have loved to have tucked it away under my ottoman bed.

I wasn’t a massive fan of the alarm either; the vibration is supposed to be gentler than an actual alarm, but I really didn’t enjoy the sensation of it.

All that said, my sleep has improved over the last couple of months.

My sleep fitness score was regularly in the high 90s, and my HRV and HR were the best they’ve been in ages.

I loved that I could get into a warm bed, but when I fell asleep, the temperature would adjust automatically to around minus 2 to complement my body temperature.

It’s the sleep technology I didn’t even know I needed, and now something I definitely won’t be able to live (or sleep!) without.