Hacker News Reader

Comment by wedn3sday | Hacker News Reader

A $20/month bed subscription is objectively hilarious. I cant imagine how this company attracts a non-zero number of clients.

View on HN

*subjectively.

Once you realize just how important quality sleep is, and how much this can help, $20/month bed subscription becomes a laughably small price to pay.

Do you have the same reasoning with cigarettes? $10 every day is a small price to pay to avoid having to stop smoking.

I don't follow, sorry

Cigarettes is a consumable resources, as for any resources like that it has fifferen justification as you cant produce it.

The subscription for bed is not, it locks artificially features to pay monthly. Even more, it collecs data to improve the product (which sounds good) - but you need to pay for this. They have an ability to run model locally - they choose to not.

I like Topaz approach: you have an ability over some time (subscription period) to have up to date model that will help you recognise snoring etc, then if you choose not to pay - you stick with this model, but it still works.

Subscription in addition is something that limits an ability to sell it in the future.

How much can this help?

Depends person to person. For me it's the difference between waking up 6-8 times throughout the night, and sleeping for a sound 8 hours without interruption. For my wife, not much difference, other than we are able to sleep together, where as before our wildly different temperature tolerances meant separate rooms. I've seen a few people in this thread state it negatively impacted their sleep.

in a way, yes. 20$/month to marginally improve sleep efficiency can be worth it, especially when you have high energy expenditure and need to be able to keep up.

on the other hand, paying 20$/month for the right to use the bed, that your purchased at 2000$ cost is a ripoff.

sleeping isn't costly, has never been, yet a company is trying to enforce it and i can see how it doesn't go well with most people.

Why is it a ripoff? Is anyone being swindled?

What I don't understand is things like:

    - What's required to justify this cost?
    - How many features and updates does the app require?
    - What could the ongoing server costs be?
    - How many people maintain the software?

I've built some IoT projects and handling events from the hardware was remarkably inexpensive. Piping tiny telemetric packets, even at a high frequency, was no big deal. It wouldn't justify charging customers $20/month. Maybe $2.50?

Plus, these things are only piping out data when they're in use, right? So... Only 1/3 of the day, if that.

Then the feature set, who knows. Is it just a readout with some fixed controls for the firmware in the eight sleep?

How is that justifying $20? Every single month?

I know software (especially when hardware is involved) can be more complicated and demanding than it appears on the surface, so these are genuine questions. I'm very open to having bad assumptions here. It just doesn't map to my experiences properly. Especially since the customers pay a premium for the hardware upfront.

I guess if customers are willing to pay, it's fair game.

Indeed, it’s about what consumers are willing to pay, not what it costs to produce. It’s called value-based pricing.

If I could afford it, I’d certainly get a >$2000 queen size mattress in a few years. Nice firm mattresses are expensive. Internet connection and temperature control are not something I’m remotely interested in. A subscription doubly so. This is hilarious and illustrates how naive and reliant people are for technology to solve every problem in their lives.

I think that's just the price for the cover. You still need to supply your expensive mattress.

They have an excellent product apart from the downsides (subscription and forced internet connectivity), they have no real competitors.

The market is ripe for the taking, but nobody has attempted to compete with EightSleep. EighthSleep is sleek AF, the competitors seem like they are from the 90's, in all the worst ways (HydroSnooze doesn't even have a remote).

I also wonder what kind of bed costs $2000. Is it a bed made of gold and caviar? This article is confusing.

A $2000 bed (incl. mattress) is not that extraordinarily expensive.

The baseline for mattresses in the US is upwards of $500 according to Costco. If you want a bigger, higher quality regular mattress you get into the neighborhood of $1000. If you want one made with more exotic materials or you want to throw in something like a boxspring or a frame for a bed that sleeps two, you can approach $2000.

It's not actually a bed, it's a mattress cover. They are willing to sell you a mattress with it if you want, but the product itself is designed to go over your existing mattress. That said, good-quality beds cost money!

Wait - it's $2000 just for a mattress cover? You still need to spend $1k+ for frame + mattress?

Well, you probably already have a bed, no? And if you don't, there are lots of different types of mattresses out there and you may have preferences.

As for frame, if you buy the Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra (which is the version that comes with a base that adds head/foot elevation control), you can use the base as a bedframe if you like, though that would be pretty minimalistic.

If this product was an entire bed then it would actually be a lot less appealing because it means you have to replace your bed to use it. It's not a bed, it's a mattress cover (and optional base with the Ultra), so it's purely additive on top of your existing bed, and does not significantly alter the feel of your mattress (besides temperature).

Disclaimer: I own one. TL;DR: What can you give me for ~$70/mo (amortized over 5 years including bed) that makes my sleep better without me having to do anything or put anything in my body?

Think of the alternatives I have: Sleeping pills. Sleep studies. Benzos. "Supplements." Weight loss. Working out. Sleeping hygiene routines. FWIW, I've done/do all of these. They work, and they are work.

Sleep is more important to my health than what I eat. Some of us are like this. You know us. We're your colleagues, friends. You've seen us, heard us mope around.

I checked it out because I saw Bryan Johnson talk about it. Found it to be stupid, the price, the app, the subscription, I get what everyone here is saying. You are right. But, there was a free-x-nights trial policy and curiosity got the better of me.

So far, it's been amazing (5-6 months in).

+ You can slap a faux button/area on the bed to change temp without the app.

+ This App, mentioned in the article, it works 100% of the time, and it's fast. I suspect it's over LAN when you're home, at least it's that fast. For comparison, $3.2 billion dollar Nest's app isn't reliable nor fast -- How many total days of your life have you already lost to a synchronous thermostat app that needs to auth/connect with Google before you're allowed to change the temperature of the room you're sitting in? :) Come on, tell me the truth!

Does that help clarify why this sells?

Note: The bed is now $3k, not $2k, plus sales tax. Amortized over 5 years $3k + $240 * 5 = $4200. Divide by 60 months.

Note: Lots of misunderstanding in the thread by people who haven't checked the product out. It's not even a bed, guys, it's a liquid-cooled cover that fit's on top of your existing mattress. If you want the motorized mattress that lifts you when you snore, that's another few thousand dollars.

> Weight loss. Working out.

Well, working out will help with weight loss and will have a lot of other beneficial effects in the long run.

> FWIW, I've done/do all of these. They work, and they are work.

But you already know that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com