During the early hours of Tuesday, Oct. 21, AWS went down. You'd think that would simply mean we couldn't shop on Amazon or Woot in the middle of the night, but this is highly incorrect, as we all now know. The AWS outage took down what felt like half of the internet. WhatsApp, Snapchat, Venmo, Slack, banks, airlines, shipping networks, and trading platforms like Robinhood all went offline on a global scale.
Some folks were impacted by the AWS outage to the point of losing sleep. Yes, the spendy Eight Sleep Pod system operates via a WiFi connection only, and the brand uses Amazon's cloud network to make that happen. Once AWS crashed, the Eight Sleep Pods lost connection to the mothership.
I'm in the process of testing the Eight Sleep Pod 5 for Mashable, the latest version of the Eight Sleep system. My full review isn't out yet, but I was certainly one of the sad people who slept poorly due to the outage. While the experience was much better than other nights I've had (like sleeping on an airport floor), it wasn't a great night, and getting my bed back online once AWS was back online took me hours.
The Eight Sleep Pod's (former?) WiFi addiction
The Eight Sleep Pod is a pricey smart bed with several components. First, there's the Eight Sleep Pod's cover, which slips over your mattress like a fitted sheet. This cover contains small water channels that connect to the Pod's Hub, or the brains of the bed. The Hub connects to the Eight Sleep Pod app, and from there, users can set temperature preferences, schedules, and a wake-up alarm.
Should users add the Eight Sleep Pod Blanket to the Cover, the Hub can also control it. The Blanket essentially works in the same way as the Cover. It's laced with small water channels that either cool or heat the sleeper to their preferred settings. The Eight Sleep Pod also uses AI with an automatic mode that makes small temperature adjustments throughout the night to optimize sleep.
People are paying big money to equip their mattress with the Eight Sleep Pod system. In a queen-size, the current model, the Eight Sleep Pod 5 with Hub and Cover, is selling for $3,348. Add the blanket to this setup, and you're at a total of $4,348. For those who want to further upgrade the sleep experience, Eight Sleep also sells an adjustable base with fancy features like a built-in speaker, the ability to set an alarm with vibration, and snoring mitigation. Add the base to the setup and it's a grand total of $6,398.
Every element of the Eight Sleep Pod requires a WiFi connection to work, so when AWS crashed, so did the Sleep Pod. The temperature regulation stopped working, the base's elevation and vibration functions went offline, alarms went dead, and the app did not function except to give an error message after a few minutes.
Some sleepers were stuck in a real pickle
My bedroom is chilly by design. I love a cold room with a warm, cozy bed. I keep the Eight Sleep Pod's Cover and Blanket, keeping me toasty but not sweating. I woke up sometime around 1 a.m. PT on Oct. 21 to a cold bed. Since the water in the cover and blanket was no longer warming, and my bedroom was probably about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, my bed was cold to the touch. The water had more or less taken on the ambient temperature in my room.
I dove into the app to fix my chills, and while waiting for it to load (it was not loading), I noticed I was lying totally flat, not the standard sleep position with head and legs slightly elevated the base typically adjusts to at night.
It took me maybe an hour to figure out my bed was offline because of the AWS outage. I found out by reinstalling X on my phone and then locating the EightSleepApp account, which had posted about the outage to its 38 followers. At the time, the outage information wasn't posted to the brand's main X account, EightSleepPod.
I put on warmer pajamas and socks and added more blankets to my bed, and eventually, my body heat seemed to heat up the water chambers well enough that I could sleep again.
Other users were not so lucky and took to the internet to explain they were way too cold or sweating thanks to a hot bed. Others said their bases were stuck in an elevated position. Since the app wouldn't load, there was no way to make temperature or elevation adjustments. People also said they didn't wake up on time since the alarm function on the Eight Sleep Pod was also offline.
Changes coming to the Eight Sleep Pod
Eight Sleep has since acknowledged the bed's reliance on WiFi, and the AWS is not ideal. The brand's CEO, Matteo Franceschetti, announced Backup Mode on Oct. 22 via his X account. This new function allows users to alter the Pod's temperature and elevation when either the WiFi is out or the cloud network is down. Features vary slightly depending on which outage users are battling with, but the main problem of having no control over the temperature could be solved with this upgrade. Eight Sleep says the rollout is "gradual," and doesn't mention when all users will be in line for this new Bluetooth support.
This upgrade is great news for Eight Sleep Pod users who were left concerned about the expensive Pod's functionality during future outages. This is especially relevant as we head into stormy winter weather, which could turn WiFi routers off, unless you use a portable power station.
When all is said and done, we all gained a bit more knowledge this week. We now know AWS is one powerful beast that can legitimately ruin your slumber.
