Eight Sleep adds ‘outage mode’ to smart beds after AWS problems left them frozen

Some smart bed users were quite literally losing sleep over the massive AWS outage on Monday. Eight Sleep’s elevating, temperature-controlling mattress systems were temporarily knocked out of service by Amazon’s server issues, with users on Reddit and X reporting their smart beds were stuck at sweltering temperatures and uncomfortable incline positions. Even our senior reviewer, Victoria Song, woke up on Monday with an Eight Sleep Pod 4 stuck upright due to the outage. “The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep,” Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Franceschetti said in an X post on Tuesday. “That is not the experience we want to provide and I want to apologize for it.” The company’s “Pod” mattress toppers — which start at $2,000 depending on the model and size, alongside a monthly Autopilot subscription (starting at $17) to use the features — rely on cloud connectivity. An active internet connection is required to control temperature and elevation settings via the Eight Sleep app, and it previously didn’t provide a way to adjust features offline. The company started shipping out a new “outage mode” yesterday to address this, Eight Sleep co-founder Alexandra Zatarain told The Verge, which allows the app to communicate with Pod devices over Bluetooth when cloud infrastructure is unavailable. “During an outage, you’ll still be able to open the app, turn the Pod on/off, change temperature levels, and flatten the base,” Zatarain said. [Image: Eight Sleep Pod features are controlled using the company’s cloud-dependant app. https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25666307/247315_Eight_Sleep_Pod_4_Ultra_AKrales_0125.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] During the AWS outage, customers reported that their beds were stuck in whatever settings had been active at the time. A Reddit user claimed that one side of their bed had “set itself to 110F and won’t turn down.” Another user also responded to Franceschetti’s X post, saying their bed was stuck “in an inclined position.” “I woke up too hot in the middle of the night last night and kept double-tapping like a maniac to adjust the temp down since I wasn’t getting any haptic feedback. I only found out why after I got up in the morning,” said one Eight Sleep user on Reddit. “It would be somewhat understandable that Autopilot stops working because Eight Sleep’s backend is down but not being able to even adjust the temperature locally is ridiculous and completely unacceptable for such a high-end (and expensive) product.” Franceschetti said that all Eight Sleep devices are “currently working” again as of Tuesday, and said, “We will work the whole night+24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly.” That’s certainly a speedy resolution promise, especially when you consider that Eight Sleep customers have been complaining about the lack of offline feature controls for several years now.