Note that I bought a Pod earlier on and have been upgraded to Pod 4 from warranty due to leak. It was obnoxiously cloud controlled from the start, but originally was much cheaper than now and it included a mattress and there was no mandatory monthly fee to just use the damn thing. I will give them credit that the Pod 4 is quite comfortable, the cooling/heating is nice, and the device is nice and quiet. For the most part the hardware design hits it out of the park, except for their aversion to local controls, which seems mostly driven by their software bullshit.
So first, that hardware control they added isn’t exactly awesome. People kept demanding buttons on the base or a remote or something. They smugly declared that modeling the earbud ‘tap N times to do an operation’ was the “correct” way because remotes are too easy to lose and no one would want to touch the base. Earbuds have to settle for that crap because of lack of surface area to control, your whole ass bed doesn’t have to make concessions to crappy hardware UI. So now I have double tap, or triple tap that has different meanings based on context, and even then only if the bed is ‘on’ which you can only do from the app and it turns itself ‘off’ automatically, so you can’t just ‘cheat’ and use the local hardware controls because those only are enabled at the behest of their bullshit cloud service.
For the software side, it’s trying to force you to go to their servers for no damn reason for the consumer. It will only deign to talk to a smartphone long enough to get connected to their cloud presence, and only toward that function. It also wants to “auto-control” your temperature and will frequently decide it knows better than you how you want the temperature to be and auto-adjust. It general the whole thing reeks of “we are smarter than you, and we will be all weird about all sorts of facets of this thing”.
And of course, it shows in their pricing. They got rid of the mattress and raised the price to $3,000 for just the cover and also now mandate a $17/month subscription plan on top of that for new customers (we grandfathered into the old situation, no monthly plan as well as what was a more reasonably priced product).
No way in hell would I buy it as it stands now, but if they at least enabled local control, ditched the monthly payment requirement bullshit and cut the price back, then I would be an unambiguous fan.
Frankly, I was super reluctant even back then, but I’m not the only one in the household so my vote is not the only one that counts.
In terms of water based temperature controlled bed, there were two options at the time I could see, Chilipad and Eight Sleep. I favored the local controls of Chilipad, but reviewers really seemed to prefer the Eight Sleep for noise and comfort of the pad, and at the time they were fairly competitive price wise with the cloud based control at the time being a nuisance, but not enough to overcome the review advantage Eight Sleep had. Also Eight Sleep had mattress included back then and that was a plus for them, since we needed a new mattress anyway.
I will say the comfort of the temperature control is fantastic, after trying a lot of solutions to try to get it done, water actually got it there. I am a big fan of the general product category. If one is into sleep tracking, I suppose this is the most comfortable way to do it, though I don’t understand the general value of that use case personally.
Now, I’m still not happy about the cloud control facet, but I’m tolerating it so long as it is free. If they shut down my grandfathered status, then I’m going to FreeSleep up my device. If it should stop working, then I’ll probably go ChiliPad if they haven’t gone as badly. I can’t imagine selecting Eight Sleep at it’s price point and subscription model at this point in time, but back then it seemed a competitive choice.
I had to Google this… I hate this shit. How brain dead do you have to be to buy a bed with a subscription service!? This is some cybertruck level bullshit
Agreed, I’ve got a normal-assed king size bed with a regular dumb heated blanket and different sheets for summer and winter. I’m sure as fuck not gonna pay some company a monthly fee to dictate the capabilities of my bed.
One was a guy that picked up a used cover without the base station and hooked it up to an aquarium temperature controller, replacing all the brains. No biometrics, but who cares.
Another is https://github.com/throwaway31265/free-sleep Though no idea if, for example, Pod 5 implemented signed firmware or a future product will to block it, and it requires some disassembly and extra equipment to replace the firmware.
Note that I bought a Pod earlier on and have been upgraded to Pod 4 from warranty due to leak. It was obnoxiously cloud controlled from the start, but originally was much cheaper than now and it included a mattress and there was no mandatory monthly fee to just use the damn thing. I will give them credit that the Pod 4 is quite comfortable, the cooling/heating is nice, and the device is nice and quiet. For the most part the hardware design hits it out of the park, except for their aversion to local controls, which seems mostly driven by their software bullshit.
So first, that hardware control they added isn’t exactly awesome. People kept demanding buttons on the base or a remote or something. They smugly declared that modeling the earbud ‘tap N times to do an operation’ was the “correct” way because remotes are too easy to lose and no one would want to touch the base. Earbuds have to settle for that crap because of lack of surface area to control, your whole ass bed doesn’t have to make concessions to crappy hardware UI. So now I have double tap, or triple tap that has different meanings based on context, and even then only if the bed is ‘on’ which you can only do from the app and it turns itself ‘off’ automatically, so you can’t just ‘cheat’ and use the local hardware controls because those only are enabled at the behest of their bullshit cloud service.
For the software side, it’s trying to force you to go to their servers for no damn reason for the consumer. It will only deign to talk to a smartphone long enough to get connected to their cloud presence, and only toward that function. It also wants to “auto-control” your temperature and will frequently decide it knows better than you how you want the temperature to be and auto-adjust. It general the whole thing reeks of “we are smarter than you, and we will be all weird about all sorts of facets of this thing”.
And of course, it shows in their pricing. They got rid of the mattress and raised the price to $3,000 for just the cover and also now mandate a $17/month subscription plan on top of that for new customers (we grandfathered into the old situation, no monthly plan as well as what was a more reasonably priced product).
No way in hell would I buy it as it stands now, but if they at least enabled local control, ditched the monthly payment requirement bullshit and cut the price back, then I would be an unambiguous fan.
Why the fuck would anyone buy this?
I hate that there is (apparently) an actual market for this product. We live in a society of idiots.
Uhh no offense to you since I kind of included you in the idiots category there.
Frankly, I was super reluctant even back then, but I’m not the only one in the household so my vote is not the only one that counts.
In terms of water based temperature controlled bed, there were two options at the time I could see, Chilipad and Eight Sleep. I favored the local controls of Chilipad, but reviewers really seemed to prefer the Eight Sleep for noise and comfort of the pad, and at the time they were fairly competitive price wise with the cloud based control at the time being a nuisance, but not enough to overcome the review advantage Eight Sleep had. Also Eight Sleep had mattress included back then and that was a plus for them, since we needed a new mattress anyway.
I will say the comfort of the temperature control is fantastic, after trying a lot of solutions to try to get it done, water actually got it there. I am a big fan of the general product category. If one is into sleep tracking, I suppose this is the most comfortable way to do it, though I don’t understand the general value of that use case personally.
Now, I’m still not happy about the cloud control facet, but I’m tolerating it so long as it is free. If they shut down my grandfathered status, then I’m going to FreeSleep up my device. If it should stop working, then I’ll probably go ChiliPad if they haven’t gone as badly. I can’t imagine selecting Eight Sleep at it’s price point and subscription model at this point in time, but back then it seemed a competitive choice.
I had to Google this… I hate this shit. How brain dead do you have to be to buy a bed with a subscription service!? This is some cybertruck level bullshit
Agreed, I’ve got a normal-assed king size bed with a regular dumb heated blanket and different sheets for summer and winter. I’m sure as fuck not gonna pay some company a monthly fee to dictate the capabilities of my bed.
begrudgingly updating controls forcing server/auth AI temperature modifications
Sounds like they are circling the drain IMO.
Wonder If I can pick up a mattress/pad on the cheap after they go under and DIY a solution.
I’ve seen two things.
One was a guy that picked up a used cover without the base station and hooked it up to an aquarium temperature controller, replacing all the brains. No biometrics, but who cares.
Another is https://github.com/throwaway31265/free-sleep Though no idea if, for example, Pod 5 implemented signed firmware or a future product will to block it, and it requires some disassembly and extra equipment to replace the firmware.