Once that frustrates me greatly is eight sleep. My wife had been trying various products and unfortunately eight sleep was the best executed one. But they are openly hostile to local controls.
From the time they have released people have been complaining over and over about zero local controls, suggesting buttons on the base, a remote, or even local wifi or Bluetooth controls and their people keep coming online and patronizing by claiming their engineers are working on it, but it’s hard. Truth is they are passing a fucking subscription plan to use your damn bed.
Finally they came out with their local control “solution”. No, buttons should not be on the base, that would be inconvenient. No, a remote control would be too easy to lose. So they implemented super dodgy earbud type controls, two taps for a tick colder, three taps for a tick warmer. Ok, janky as hell, but finally, local controls. So you get things going and do the tap and long buzz meaning “reject” the request. Turns out the taps will only process if the cloud server says it’s ok, and the bed will usually be “off” and not receptive to taps unless you turn it on via Internet app or you have an Internet arranged schedule that has it on at the time you want to adjust it.
It’s a shame since they otherwise had fantastic execution, but their monetization through an app strategy is maddening. So my home has one cloud based device and it pisses me off.
Stupidly enough, if you read their warranty policy, they got around the fact that it’s not legal for a warranty company to remove a warranty for modding the equipment, by forcing you to have a subscription in order to use the warranty. Their website states
The Pod is a product designed to be slept on every night – and designed to last. We stand behind our product with a 2-year limited warranty, meaning if you have any issues or problems, our team will replace your Pod device as long as you purchased directly through Eight Sleep and have an active membership.
Since this membership is the same thing that is connected to controlling the bed through the app from what I understand, it sounds like even if you did mod it you would still be stuck with that remote solution due to the fact that if you canceled your subscription you wouldn’t have a warranty, inviting a warranty on a at minimum $2,500 bed is just no bueno
This is definitely a device that I would be putting my States warranty law into effect, because this sort of shit ain’t legal in my state
my opinion, I would have returned it for that reason. Having a bed that doesn’t work if I lose power or have an internet outage is a hard no for me. Especially concidering the price range a lot of those start at 2k+ USD. The lack of an ability to use it without an app is a deal breaker, the lack of an ability to use it locally is almost as bad
edit: holy cow the more I read the site the more red flags I see, $2,500 minimum for a bed that doesn’t even have a warranty unless you have an active subscription that hasn’t expired since you bought the bed, the extended warranty is a 5-year warranty that is of course an additional amount of money with the same conditions. I’ve never seen a bed that didn’t have an at least 10 year warranty on it out of the box, most offer a 15 to 20 year warranty.
Well, even a locally controlled bed would have “not worked” (well, it’s still a bed obviously, just not heating/cooling) in a power outage.
Note our household got it when it was significantly cheaper (still expensive-ish, but not nearly as bad as now) and grandfathered into being able to use it without a monthly subscription. In a bit of bad/good luck, because replacements kept leaking, we got warranty-upgraded to the current offering. So get to know how the new stuff is without having had to pay as much or maintain a monthly subscription. When we bought it, at least, they had good warranty coverage for leaks.
So I get to see how good the hardware design fundamentally is while also knowing how anti-consumer the business and software side is going.
Ultimately when/if I lose sane access to the capabilities, I’ll probably start poking around to see about hacking at least the heating and cooling, since we did struggle to find a good comfortable design for such a thing before getting here. They really did at least nail the mattress pad part, and the heating/cooling is pretty good without being obtrusive. The vibration and sensors might be nice, but ultimately I don’t care too much about that.
Yea power outage makes sense given what it does. It’s good that you got it cheaper, currently see the pods starting $2500 and the higher end is $5500, for a bed that requires a $17-27 a month subscription, and doesn’t work if you lack internet is insane to me. excluding the warrenty part of it. Sad to see they downgraded their protections and quality
Once that frustrates me greatly is eight sleep. My wife had been trying various products and unfortunately eight sleep was the best executed one. But they are openly hostile to local controls.
From the time they have released people have been complaining over and over about zero local controls, suggesting buttons on the base, a remote, or even local wifi or Bluetooth controls and their people keep coming online and patronizing by claiming their engineers are working on it, but it’s hard. Truth is they are passing a fucking subscription plan to use your damn bed.
Finally they came out with their local control “solution”. No, buttons should not be on the base, that would be inconvenient. No, a remote control would be too easy to lose. So they implemented super dodgy earbud type controls, two taps for a tick colder, three taps for a tick warmer. Ok, janky as hell, but finally, local controls. So you get things going and do the tap and long buzz meaning “reject” the request. Turns out the taps will only process if the cloud server says it’s ok, and the bed will usually be “off” and not receptive to taps unless you turn it on via Internet app or you have an Internet arranged schedule that has it on at the time you want to adjust it.
It’s a shame since they otherwise had fantastic execution, but their monetization through an app strategy is maddening. So my home has one cloud based device and it pisses me off.
Now I want to take an eight sleep apart and see if I can lobotomize it…
What a world when you have to mod chip your bed.
Stupidly enough, if you read their warranty policy, they got around the fact that it’s not legal for a warranty company to remove a warranty for modding the equipment, by forcing you to have a subscription in order to use the warranty. Their website states
Since this membership is the same thing that is connected to controlling the bed through the app from what I understand, it sounds like even if you did mod it you would still be stuck with that remote solution due to the fact that if you canceled your subscription you wouldn’t have a warranty, inviting a warranty on a at minimum $2,500 bed is just no bueno
This is definitely a device that I would be putting my States warranty law into effect, because this sort of shit ain’t legal in my state
It’s gotta be what, a thermostat, a peristaltic pump and a heater/heat exchanger? Replace the brains with an arduino or a pi and a couple of relays.
I’ve never heard of eight sleep and I went to their web site, and immediately the site is super fucking annoying
my opinion, I would have returned it for that reason. Having a bed that doesn’t work if I lose power or have an internet outage is a hard no for me. Especially concidering the price range a lot of those start at 2k+ USD. The lack of an ability to use it without an app is a deal breaker, the lack of an ability to use it locally is almost as bad
edit: holy cow the more I read the site the more red flags I see, $2,500 minimum for a bed that doesn’t even have a warranty unless you have an active subscription that hasn’t expired since you bought the bed, the extended warranty is a 5-year warranty that is of course an additional amount of money with the same conditions. I’ve never seen a bed that didn’t have an at least 10 year warranty on it out of the box, most offer a 15 to 20 year warranty.
Well, even a locally controlled bed would have “not worked” (well, it’s still a bed obviously, just not heating/cooling) in a power outage.
Note our household got it when it was significantly cheaper (still expensive-ish, but not nearly as bad as now) and grandfathered into being able to use it without a monthly subscription. In a bit of bad/good luck, because replacements kept leaking, we got warranty-upgraded to the current offering. So get to know how the new stuff is without having had to pay as much or maintain a monthly subscription. When we bought it, at least, they had good warranty coverage for leaks.
So I get to see how good the hardware design fundamentally is while also knowing how anti-consumer the business and software side is going.
Ultimately when/if I lose sane access to the capabilities, I’ll probably start poking around to see about hacking at least the heating and cooling, since we did struggle to find a good comfortable design for such a thing before getting here. They really did at least nail the mattress pad part, and the heating/cooling is pretty good without being obtrusive. The vibration and sensors might be nice, but ultimately I don’t care too much about that.
Yea power outage makes sense given what it does. It’s good that you got it cheaper, currently see the pods starting $2500 and the higher end is $5500, for a bed that requires a $17-27 a month subscription, and doesn’t work if you lack internet is insane to me. excluding the warrenty part of it. Sad to see they downgraded their protections and quality