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If you’ve been mattress shopping then you’ve likely come across smart beds. These mattresses have tons of features, but it can be hard to tell if they are worth buying since there isn’t much information available. Our team of expert mattress reviewers became of aware of the problem and spent countless hours conducting research. The following guide is everything you need to know about what smart beds are and how they work.
What Is a Smart Bed Mattress?
A smart bed is a type of mattress that uses sensors to collect data about your sleep. They typically give you the ability to control your sleep experience using an included app. You can customize different aspects of your mattress including firmness and temperature.
Smart beds typically have lots of sensors that collect sleep data (movement, body temperature, heartbeat) and then use that data for analysis or for real-time adjustments.
A smart bed may be able to self-adjust the firmness or temperature automatically, depending on what the owner needs for a more comfortable night’s sleep. It can send data to a smartphone and show how well you’ve slept. You may also get in-app tips on how to improve your sleep.
Some beds are not about the improvement of sleep itself but are still considered smart beds. A built-in alarm, TV, connectivity to other smart home devices, or even additional furniture attached to the bed base are some features that manufacturers might describe as smart bed features.
Today, smart technology is so popular that you can find smart mattress pads, smart bedsheets, and even smart blankets and smart pillows.
Smart mattresses and smart beds are still being developed, and many of them are much better now than they were only a few years ago – but that doesn’t mean they are there just yet. Smart beds also cost a lot, so they definitely aren’t a good choice if you’re a budget shopper.
As the development moves forward, we’ll probably witness even more integrated options and a smoother experience.
Technology That Goes into Smart Beds
Please bear in mind that every smart bed is different and that there are many that are marketed as “smart”, but that doesn’t mean they have all the features you might expect. That’s why it is crucial to read through product features carefully before making a purchase.
Here are some of the features you can find in a smart bed.
Smart features
- Tracking sleep quality. There are sensors in the top layer of a mattress that can collect data on your breathing, heart rate variability (HRV), body movements (restfulness), body temperature, and possibly more. All this information is grouped and analyzed to determine how much time you spent sleeping and how long you were in each sleep stage.
- Temperature control (climate control). Some smart beds can regulate temperature – usually warming up, but some can also actively cool you down with a water system (basically a tube grid spread out across the mattress). Some can only warm your feet to help you fall asleep faster.
- Smartphone app integration. Sleep data is updated to your phone app and you can see reports on how well you slept each night – you can see a lot of interesting details about your sleep, as well as recommendations on how to improve sleep habits.
- Alarm wake-up system. Some models have a built-in alarm system that uses gentle vibrations and/or a temperature change to wake you up, while others may have built-in speakers to play various sounds.
- Position management, anti-snoring features. Smart bases can lift up the leg or chest area – like zero-gravity beds, but automatically. For example, if the sleeper is snoring, the bed can lift up the chest area to help establish normal breathing.
- Self-adjusting firmness, air chambers. Most smart beds that change the firmness levels employ adjustable air chambers that inflate or deflate as the owner moves around. This can provide pressure relief on the shoulder when sleeping on one side or other areas depending on the sleeping position.
- Self-making. Although rare, a smart bed can have metal rails connected to the sides to stretch out the sheets. Believe it or not, this bed can make itself!
- Biometric sensors are sensors that collect data from your body and send it over to the phone where it gets analyzed.
- Additional furniture around the bed. A lot of beds that are called “smart” are actually all about the design of additional furniture pieces built around the mattress. They have a very clever design that includes table-top boards, massage chairs, speakers, large monitors, lamps, drawers, and more – all attached to the bed base.
How to choose a smart mattress? Things to Consider
First things first – the money. Before you even think about the mattress options, you should know that smart mattresses are among the most expensive ones you can find.
Since the industry is still in its infancy, if something goes wrong with the system or the app, you may have to wait (for months or years) for a new program update to fix it.
That’s why many unsatisfied customers feel like they paid thousands of dollars to beta-test an unfinished product. So be sure to understand that what you’re splurging on is risky.
That’s enough about the budget – other factors to consider when buying a smart mattress are below.
Features
Look at the features listed above and decide which ones you’d like to have in your smart mattress. Go for one which meets the most if not all of your criteria. The most popular features are regulation of temperature and pressure, sleep tracking, and app integration.
Firmness
A lot of smart mattresses have adjustable firmness, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem to find. Still, if the mattress you’re interested in doesn’t have this specific feature, check its firmness level with the manufacturer and see what online reviews say. It may be right for you just the way it is.
Support
Smart mattresses typically offer good support, but you should definitely not ignore the inside of the mattress – it should have a firm support/base layer and firm edges. Some sleepers need zoned support, but not all smart mattresses have that.
Materials
You want a mattress that’s going to last long and provide comfort. Materials play a big role there. Aside from that, they also determine motion isolation and general feel – do you like the “stuck in the mud” feel or the soft cloudy feel?
Weight limit
If you’re a big person, check the maximum weight capacity, just in case. Those sensors, water ducts, and air chambers can function properly only for the body weight they were designed for.
Foundation
If you’re buying a smart mattress without an accompanying foundation, make sure that the one you already have is a good match. If the mattress is made of memory foam, your foundation shouldn’t have slats, let alone ones that are too wide apart. This makes memory foam wear out fast. Therefore, choose a foundation that suits the mattress in shape, size, and type.
Who Is a Smart Bed For?
Think of a smart bed as something primarily for tech geeks. With such high prices and the industry still in its infancy, you don’t really need one if you’re healthy and don’t have a need for all those smart features.
Smart beds to help people with different conditions
These people would actually benefit from a smart bed:
- Those who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and need an easy way to adjust the bed position.
- Those who suffer from chronic pain, and need superior self-adjustable pressure relief (but only if they are willing to experiment).
- Extremely hot sleepers, people with serious hormonal imbalances, those with severe rheumatoid arthritis, women in menopause – basically anyone who needs a high level of temperature control and superior active cooling features.
We should also mention that smart hospital beds could become quite common in health care facilities in the next 10 years or so. They can revolutionize patient care by providing 24/7 measurements of heart rate and respiratory rate, movement, and quick alert in case of emergency.
Why would an everyday person need a smart bed?
Healthy individuals may use a smart bed for:
- Sleep improvement (temperature and pressure point regulation).
- Sleep tracking (and subsequently taking steps towards better sleep).
- Regulating different temperatures or mattress positions for each partner on each side of the bed.
- Feeding their curiosity about technology and comparing the sleep tracking of a smart bed to that of a wearable device, for example.
If you’re interested in improving your sleep, you shouldn’t put all your hopes in a smart bed. Zeitgebers (time-giving signals) are a huge factor in how you sleep. They include light exposure, your daily routines (meals, exercise), etc.
Also, learn a bit about good sleep practices and sleep environment and see how you can incorporate them into your life. Sometimes less is more and most healthy people need just a bit of initial guidance to increase their sleep consciousness and get a much better night’s sleep.
Best Smart Beds: Examples
You might be thinking – OK, you’ve explained all about them, but what are the actual smart beds that I can check out myself? Here are some of the best smart mattresses on the market at the moment.
- Sleep Number smart beds are dominating the market but they do have quite a few competitors. You can get their smart mattress with a smart base that can lift up a sleeper to alleviate or stop snoring. The firmness can be adjusted separately on each side of the bed and the top layer has cooling gel-infused memory foam. It has adjustable air chambers that inflate or deflate as you move to provide comfort and can warm up your feet. Of course, biometric sensors are there too.
- Ghost SmartBed also has gel memory foam and biometric sensors as well as five air chambers for each side. Back sleepers will get different adjustments than side sleepers and you can also set this up manually.
- The ReST bed is another one of the favorites and is pretty similar to Sleep Number and Ghost Bed. Apart from all the above mentioned, it has an innovative layer – the GelGrid and a lot more firmness levels than typical smart mattresses with air chambers.
- Eight Sleep Pod Pro mattress has a GentleRise smart alarm that vibrates in the chest area and gradually changes the temperature. The Pod Pro Max also has a special cooling layer that speeds up heat dissipation while cooling you down on top of the water cooling system. Eight Sleep mattresses don’t have air chambers, so you don’t have to worry about the bed glitching and misaligning you in the middle of the night.
We also have a much more detailed description on our best smart beds list.
Smart Bed vs Smart Mattress vs Smart Pad or Cover
Smart beds
Smart beds may include a special foundation – for example, ones with a self-adjusting position. These foundations lift the upper side or the leg side of the bed, so not only do they directly take part in the process, but are also indispensable for that particular action.
Although the words “smart bed” mean that the entire bed performs “smart” actions, people often say smart bed to mean a smart mattress on a regular foundation. This isn’t technically wrong because a smart mattress and a foundation really do make a bed, and this bed indeed is a smart one.
Smart mattresses
These mattresses have the features we mentioned above, including sensors, air chambers, temperature control, etc. Every smart bed has a smart mattress on it. If such a mattress isn’t designed to work together with a foundation, you can buy the mattress only (and save some money).
When you place a smart mattress on your foundation, you could either say that you have a smart mattress or a smart bed – it’s just semantics.
Smart mattress pads or covers
A smart mattress pad or cover is designed to go on top of a regular mattress. They are typically technologically simpler and with limited capabilities, but nevertheless, they may still contain sensors to collect biometrics such as heart rate, breathing, motions, and temperature, among other things. Some of them might even be able to warm you up.
Common Issues with Smart Mattresses
Smart beds are built around the idea that a bed can revolutionize sleep by means of collecting and analyzing biometric data, being integrated with a phone app or connected to other home appliances, and the like. Today’s advanced technology allows this to some extent, but it’s not really there yet.
This branch of industry is still relatively new and as such, it can’t go without occasional app bugs, possible data breaches, and air or water leaks, among other things. Here is a list of common issues with smart beds.
- Connectivity issues. One of the most common complaints is about the phone losing connection to the mattress – so when people try to adjust some settings, all they find is bad news on screen; which means that they’re stuck with settings that are currently on.
- Constantly readjusting. The bed might wrongly detect changes in sleeping positions when there are none, so it could keep inflating or deflating the air chambers below you when you’re just trying to fall asleep in one spot. This can wake people up in the middle of the night or worse still – leave their body in complete misalignment, causing bad pain and sores.
- Bad sleep tracking. A lot of tech-savvy users didn’t only rely on how their mattress tracked their sleep stages, but they also wore some of the sleep trackers to compare results. While some were happy that their results matched, others were disappointed by how the mattress performed. Bad results, although wrong, can push people into worrying over nothing and impairing their sleep quality; and this is a whole new can of worms when it comes to sleep technology.
- Firmness. Some sleepers complained about their mattress being too firm. This also goes for smart covers and pads.
- Leaks. If the air chambers or water tubes break, you might witness unpleasant leaks. And I’m not sure which one’s worse – sleeping partly in a pit and partly on a mountain after an air chamber leaked or in a wet puddle from a water leak.
- App bugging. There are just too many factors that go into a smart bed. The app itself might get into loops of conflicting instructions due to programming issues, but it might also start glitching because of the constant connectivity on/off issues. Then again, some of the sensors might not work properly, sending weird information to the app, which can easily cause more buggy issues.
- Making you use your phone too much. You might be prompted to check your app to adjust the mattress just before bedtime, and it’s not uncommon for smart bed owners to wake up in the middle of the night and look at their phone to see what’s going on with their sleep, the bed itself, or to readjust something. This is additional night screen time that you really don’t need in your life.
- Nonfunctional. The problem might lie in pumps, the app, sensors, or anything else. It might even be in the mix of all those issues. These things can render smart beds nonfunctional and all the features that convinced you to buy the bed could be giving you nightmares instead of a good night’s sleep.
- Long delivery time. Finally, some customers complained about long delivery times. Delivery services have been severely disrupted from 2020 onwards, so it’s not always the company’s logistics to blame. Even so, a 4-9 week waiting time is way too long for many.
Smart Beds Pros and Cons
Pros
- No need for any wearables for advanced sleep tracking
- Temperature won’t be a problem anymore
- Maximum pressure relief as you toss and turn
- The ability to track your sleep long-term
Cons
- Your personal health data possibly becomes accessible to others through security breaches
- Any feature could break due to emerging technology that’s not been tested long enough
- Allowing technology to rule over even more aspects of your daily life (as if what we already have isn’t enough)
- Astronomical prices
Frequently Asked Questions
Non-wearable options include smart beds and sleep tracking mats such as the Withings Sleep Mat. There’s also Emfit QS Sleep Monitor which is just a sensor that you put under your sleep pad. Another non-wearable is the echolocation-relying bedside sleep tracker called SleepScore Max.
Some of the wrist wearables are the popular Apple Watch, Fitbit, Whoop Strap, and Garmin VivoSmart 4. Even Amazon came up with their Halo strap for sleep and fitness tracking. And finally, there’s the Oura Ring that you simply put on a finger.
If you follow the manufacturer’s instructions carefully, it won’t. For example, the Eight Sleep app will tell you to use distilled water with two tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide. Distilled water is already completely clean and the hydrogen peroxide ensures that it stays that way. As you add new water make sure it’s distilled, and add more hydrogen peroxide from time to time.
– sleep tracker
– vibrating bracelet for relaxation
– smart headband for sleep guidance and meditation
– smart bed
– smart alarm clock
– smart thermostat
– smart lights
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With over 5 years experience writing about sleep and mattresses, she's considered one of the go-to experts on the topic.
She likes cycling, nature, art, and languages. She pays special attention to providing you with accurate and useful information when it comes to your sleep quality.
After solving her personal sleep and tiredness problems, she is on to help others by sharing this invaluable information.
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