Did you know that the temperature of your bed can make a big difference in how well you sleep throughout the night? Temperature is a key factor in regulating sleep, and being able to adjust your bed temperature throughout the night can improve heart rate (HR), heart rate variability, deep sleep, and REM sleep.
Until now, no studies have explored whether adjusting bed temperature for each specific sleep stage could help you spend more time in that stage. However, Eight Sleep is committed to uncovering the science behind how temperature influences sleep and health, thereby supporting the continuous refinement of its proprietary algorithm, Autopilot.
How does Autopilot work?
Autopilot is the intelligence behind the Pod, a set of AI algorithms that refine a user’s sleep environment based on their personal needs and variations of their body, habits, and environment. For example, it adjusts the bed temperature based on the body’s different temperature needs during deep and REM sleep. Each night, Autopilot applies temperature offsets to the user’s selected temperatures to promote more time in deep and REM sleep – cooler offsets promote deep sleep and warmer offsets promote REM sleep. Additionally, if the user had low deep sleep (<15% of the night) or REM sleep (<20% of the night) the previous night, Autopilot will increase the magnitude of the temperature offset to further promote increased time in deep and REM sleep stages.
A new research study presented by Eight Sleep’s Clinical Research team at the SLEEP 2025 conference in Seattle, WA reveals that the latest version of Autopilot, is the first to make real-time, sleep stage-based temperature changes throughout the night, resulting in cardiovascular and sleep benefits.
How researchers tested the Pod’s impact
Researchers studied 34 individuals who completed at least 7 nights each sleeping without the Pod and then with the Pod using the Autopilot feature, all while wearing Oura rings as a third-party device to track their sleep and cardiovascular metrics. The Autopilot feature automatically adjusted the bed’s temperature in real time based on each individual’s sleep stage.
To measure its impact, researchers used paired t-tests to identify changes in sleep stages, HR, and HRV when switching from sleeping without a Pod to sleeping with a Pod using the Autopilot feature.
Using the Pod with the Autopilot feature resulted in significant improvements
Participants saw significant gains in their health and sleep metrics:
- Lower sleeping HR (down by 2.3 bpm, a 3% decrease)
- Higher HRV (up by 4.9 ms, a 13% increase)– a sign of enhanced cardiovascular recovery
- More deep sleep (up by 4.7 minutes per night or 10% increase per night)
- Lower light sleep by 1.4%, likely as a trade-off for increased deep sleep
The biggest improvements while using Autopilot were seen in people who struggled most with sleep before sleeping on the Pod, especially women. Those with below-average sleep before purchasing the Pod had a 16% increase in deep sleep, and women had a 19% increase in deep sleep with Autopilot. Those with below-average sleep before purchasing the Pod had a 9% reduction in wake time, and women had a 15% reduction in wake time when using Autopilot.
Why does this matter?
This is the first study to show that real-time, sleep stage-based temperature adjustments of your bed can meaningfully improve cardiovascular recovery and deep sleep, while minimizing wake periods. The Eight Sleep Pod with Autopilot could be an effective non-pharmacological intervention to improve sleep and cardiovascular recovery.
Want to read the full study?
