This $7,600 smart bed isn’t smart enough

Let’s start with the good stuff. The sensors built into the Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed really do work. They tracked my breathing rate and my heart rate every night for the nearly four months I slept on them, as well as how long I slept and how restful that sleep was. The bed also tracked my husband Kevin’s sleep separately via the profile he created in the same SleepIQ app. 

Along with the ability to view your “sleep score” every morning and your sleep averages over time, we could individually adjust each side of the bed to our preferred firmness via the included remote or straight from the free app. Optional accessories, like the motorized base and the DualTemp heating and cooling mattress pads, add extra layers of functionality to an already high-tech bed. 

At the same time, the Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed ($5,798 at Sleep number) is missing something major. For all of the data it collects — you can even pair third-party apps like Nest and Fitbit to gather your temperature and fitness stats — you don’t get much back in return. Where’s the Alexa skill? Why can’t this bed use the info it gathers to auto-adjust your bed’s settings (or even your Nest’s set temperature) for you? 

The specific king-size 360 Smart Bed I tested costs a whopping $7,600. It’s a comfortable, customizable bed to be sure, but it can’t actually do much with the loads of information it gathers about you. That makes it hard to recommend to most. I’d instead suggest the Eight Sleep Tracker. It costs just $419 for a king mattress cover, complete with sleep tracking, an Alexa skill, IFTTT compatibility and a heating function. 

Note: The Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed is only sold in the US. At the current exchange rate, $7,600 coverts to roughly £5,900 and AU$10,310. 

Inside the Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed

The best part about the Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed is its customizability. That starts with the various configurations available for the bed itself. I tested the $3,800 king FlexTop P6 mattress, the $2,100 FlexFit 1 traditional base and two $850 DualTemp mattress pads. All together, that comes to $7,600. 

Since we’re comparing the 360 bed to queen-size competitors from Beautyrest, Eight and Winkbed, I priced out the queen version of the bed I tested — it comes to $5,500. 

Whether it’s a king or a queen bed, the 360 Smart Bed by Sleep Number, with optional accessories like the FlexFit 1 base and the DualTemp pads, is expensive. See how it stacks up against other connected beds in the chart below.

Comparing smart beds

	Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed	Beautyrest SmartMotion Base 3	Eight Mars+	Winkbed Cool Control Base
Price	$7,600 total: $3,800 FlexTop P6 king mattress/$2,100 FlexFit 1 traditional base/$1,700 two DualTemp mattress pads	Base $1,499/Sleeptracker $199	Mattress: $1,399/Base: $275/Smart cover sleep tracker: $399	Base $2,200 / LUXURY FIRM WinkBed $1,299
Mattress material	Foam	Foam	Hybrid spring/foam	Hybrid spring/foam
Size we tested	King	Queen	Queen	Queen
Motorized base	Yes, with optional FlexFit base	Yes	No	No, can buy one for $3,000 extra
App	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Heating	Yes, with optional DualTemp mattress pads	No	Yes	Yes
Cooling	Yes, with optional DualTemp mattress pads	No	No	Yes
Smart home partners	Nest	Amazon Alexa	Amazon Alexa, IFTTT, Nest	No
Sleep tracking	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Heart rate	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Breathing rate	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Does it track sides/zones?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Remote	Yes	Yes	No	Yes, 2
Massage	No	Yes	No	No
Other notable features	Automatic under-bed nightlight	4 USB chargers	No	No

The Sleep Number 360 Smart Bed is by far the priciest product we tested in this roundup. Again, its customizability is what sets it apart. You can adjust the firmness of the FlexTop P6 mattress straight from the app, or from the included remote — and each side of the bed is individually customizable. I tend to like my mattress a little firmer than Kevin, so we both got what we wanted from the same mattress.

The FlexFit 1 base, combined with the FlexTop P6 mattress lets you adjust the incline of each side of the bed. If Kevin wants to stay up later than me and read, he can use the app, the remote — or the “favorites” button on his side of the bed (my side has one, too) — to move the motorized base into an upright position, just on one side. 

This allows for a lot of flexibility, since you can be in bed without having to lie flat or use tons of pillows to prop yourself up. But in order for each side to raise and lower independently, the top section of the mattress is split. That means you can’t really sleep in the middle of the mattress, since there’s an obvious divide between the two sides that really isn’t comfortable. For that reason, I personally wouldn’t want this particular style of mattress, but it does work well and isn’t very noisy.

The FlexFit 1 base also has a built-in nightlight under the bed that can automatically turn on and off when you get out of bed at night. 

The SleepIQ app also has a setting that’s supposed to stop snoring when you have a FlexFit base, but it isn’t as neat as it sounds. Sleep Number puts a default option in the app that you can select when you wake up to your partner snoring. The setting slightly raises your partner’s head using the motorized base and is supposed to ease their snoring. I expected the bed to “listen” for snoring and automatically adjust the bed ideally before it wakes up anyone else, but it doesn’t work that way. So if Kevin woke up to me snoring, he’d have to go into the app and press the “snore” default setting to raise up my side of the bed. Fortunately, neither of us snores, so it didn’t become an issue.