This was an email interview conducted on the 29/11/2016 with Alexandra from www.eightsleep.com.
If you’re thinking of buying the smart mattress from EightSleep many of the questions you may have about the mattress are answered for you in-depth below.
The Interview..
What is the Eight Sleep Smart Mattress?
The Eight Smart Mattress was created to replace traditional mattresses with an alternative that helps customers get better sleep through higher comfort and technology.
The Eight Smart Mattress is designed with four layers of responsive and high density foam, plus a technology layer that tracks sleep, warms each side of the bed individually, and connects to other smart home devices.
What is it made out of?
The Eight Smart Mattress is made of a blend of four special types of foam designed to provide the best comfort, support, breathability and durability; and one technology layer with the proprietary sleep technology developed by Eight over the past three years.
The four layers of foam include latex-like foam (a unique foam that responses like latex but provides better support, breathability, is fire retardant and hypoallergenic.); memory foam (which provides the right comfort and support and an unforgettable hug-you sleep feeling); transition foam (to equally distribute weight and let the mattress adapt better to your sleep position); and support foam (which guarantees the right support and durability of the mattress).
These four layers are wrapped in a soft, custom-designed, and hand-sewn fabric that guarantees the release of moisture and flexibility,and has fire retardant properties.
The technology layer is an additional unique feature of the Eight Smart Mattress that tracks your sleep, heats each side of the bed at a different temperature, wakes you up at the moment of lightest sleep every morning, and lets you connect your mattress to the other smart home devices in your house.
The technology layer lets you control your mattress through your smart phone (iOS and Android).
What exactly does the Eight smart mattress do, and how does it achieve this?
The Eight Smart Mattress includes features that improve the sleep experience, like sleep tracking for two people in the same bed, automatic temperature control for each side of the bed, and connectivity with other smart home devices like thermostats, lights and coffee machines.
The mattress contains multiple sensors to track sleep times, deep and light sleep, breathing rate, and measure toss and turns, bed temperature, and room temperature.
Over time, the Eight Smart Mattress uses machine learning to build patterns on sleep behaviors, and displays suggestions for sleep improvement in its mobile app. It can also share this data with health tracking apps like Apple’s Health and Google’s Fit.
Is there any dangers or health risks associated with the mattress e.g could it burn the skin etc..
Our foam layers have passed the required flame tests and contains a fire retardant barrier to comply with regulations.
The technology layer has passed the required certifications for consumer electronics products.
The fire sock functions to smother and dampen flames by causing a layer of char to form, thus preventing oxygen from feeding the fire and subsequently preventing the flames from reaching the foam and spreading.
What is your process if a customer decides to return the mattress after the 100 day trial?
The 100 Night Trial Program gives you up to 100 nights to sleep on the Eight Smart Mattress and if, for any reason, you are unhappy with the mattress, you can return it at no cost.
Once you contact us, we will send one of our partner companies to remove the mattress for free.
If the return is requested past the 100 night period, we can help the customer plan the pick up and removal of the mattress, at the customer’s expense and we would not refund the purchase.
Could a customer still return the mattress for a full refund if there is say a stain, or a tear etc in the mattress?
Yes. If this is within the 100 nights of the trial period, they can still return it.
Is this mattress suitable for lovemaking due to the components within that you would not find in a traditional mattress.
Certainly! We have over 10,000 people sleeping on Eight’s technology already and they don’t have any issues in this respect.
Is it safe to use liquid products to clean the mattress? And how would you recommend cleaning it.
You can remove the top part of the technology layer which is washable. Just unzip it, hand wash it, and zip it back.
We do not recommend removing the rest of the technology layer. If any other part of the Eight Smart Mattress other than the top unzippable layer gets dirty, we strongly recommend to spot cleaning with a lightly wet rag or dollop of club soda which should be able to remove small stains.
For any doubt, customers can contact us directly at support@eightsleep.com .
Can children use the mattress, or would you say it’s more suitable for adults only?
Children can use the mattress, but adult supervision is recommended when using the mattress features.
If the mattress smart features stop working, where can the mattress be taken to be fixed?
The technology layer has a 1-year warranty. It can be returned to us for replacement or repair.
There is no need to ship back the whole mattress, customers can just ship back the technology layer or the defective components.
If the technology presents issues beyond the 1-year warranty, the customer can contact us to assess the issue and purchase replacement parts.
What is great about this bundle system is that the technology can be fixed and replaced anytime without having to replace the whole mattress.
Is it suitable for someone who suffers with back problems?
Sure, it certainly is. The mattress is very comfortable and the technology is imperceptible.
Can any mattress covers, pillows etc be used on the smart mattress or does the customer need to buy ones that are specially designed for these types of mattresses?
You can use any other mattress protector on top of the Eight Smart Mattress. We recommend thinner ones to allow for the proper data tracking. Regular pillows and bed sheets can be used as well.
How firm is the mattress, and would you be able to feel any wires or sensors etc when sleeping on it?
The Eight Smart Mattress feels just right—meaning that it could be defined as medium firm and has been designed to provide the right comfort and firmness to everyone.
It has been developed with durability, support, breathability and comfort in mind.
All our decisions and approach to product development is driven by our sleep data of over 1.8 million hours of sleep collected through our proprietary technology.
Lastly, is there anything you would like to share about the Eight Sleep mattress, or anything happening at Eight Sleep that you would like people to know about?
We designed the Eight Smart Mattress by studying over 1.8 million hours of sleep data that have been tracked through the company’s first product — the Eight Sleep Tracker— which by the end of the year will be tracking more than 12,000 people across 67 countries.
We believe that this data driven approach to developing the most comfortable mattress makes all the difference.
It allowed us to create the perfect mattress, but smart!
Interview Over
If you have any additional questions about the EightSleep smart mattress please leave them in the comment section below. I, or a rep from EightSleep will do out best to answer them for you.
Edit: MattressTest is in no way associated with eightsleep.com. This is part of our interview series that you can find here.
