ChiliPAD vs Eight Sleep vs Doc Pro

I have tried four mattress cooling systems for better sleep. Here's which one is the best!

ChiliPAD vs OOLER vs Eight Sleep vs Doc Pro: which is the best mattress cooling system?

One of the most game-changing purchases I ever made for my sleep was the purchase of a ChiliPAD in 2019. I described that in the post below, originally written in July of 2019 and updated almost a year later in June of 2020:

How the Chili Pad Took My Sleep To the Next Level

One of the most critical things our body has to do to fall asleep easily and get restful sleep is cool our core body temperature. This is much easier to do when the warmth of our mattress is not fighting us in direct opposition. Solution? Cool the mattress.

Limitations to the ChiliPAD

While the ChiliPAD was amazing, it had two major limitations:

• Since it wasn’t programmable, I couldn’t make it gradually warm through the night. The temperature that is cool enough to allow me to fall asleep is too cold for me to stay asleep through the end of my sleep cycle. So, I would tend to wake up cold around 4:00 AM, at which point I would raise the temperature by five degrees and throw a duvet cover or blanket over myself, rather than just having the sheet I fell asleep in.

• The ChiliPAD is powerful, but not powerful enough to withstand the ambient temperature getting into the high 70s F. I found that I needed to use it with air conditioning during the warmer parts of the year to keep the ambient temperature around 72 F.

Before I bought the ChiliPAD, I had sampled an OOLER for a few nights. The OOLER is the second iteration of the ChiliPAD. The ChiliPAD 2, if you will. It didn’t have either of those two limitations, since it was programmable and had a more powerful cooling engine. However, the OOLER was not ready for purchase yet, and I was eager to get a mattress cooling system, so I went with the ChiliPAD.

I delayed my interest in upgrading for quite a long time, as I had gotten rather insecure about money in the COVID era.

Eight Sleep and Wifi

Fast forward to last year, and a new kid on the block emerged, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep, Chili’s new competitor, offered me a complementary system with plans to potentially become an affiliate.

Eight Sleep had several obvious advantages over the ChiliPAD:

• Like the OOLER, it is programmable.

• Like the OOLER, it has a more powerful engine. I don’t have enough experience with the OOLER to say for sure, but my sense is that Eight Sleep is the more powerful of the two.

• The mattress covering is part of an integrated system that wraps around the sides of the mattress to the undersides. This makes it a little more difficult to set up, but my sense is this helped it cool the mattress more effectively.

The Eight Sleep, however, had one very annoying limitation: it only works when connected to wifi. In fact, in order to set it up I had to wire a second router into my bedroom from the primary router in my office. My walls at that time were thick and blocked the signal. Nevertheless, my phone and laptop could get wifi in my bedroom. There was a signal. It just wasn’t strong enough for the Eight Sleep.

The Eight Sleep also has a light that can be turned off in the app. Even though I turned the light off, I often had a sense that there was an internal light that was just barely leaking out. I am very sensitive to light when I sleep, and this apparent light did not keep me up, but it bothered me that it seemed slightly less than 100% blacked out.

Three months in, the mattress covering started leaking.

Within a few weeks, Eight Sleep sent me a new one at no charge.

However, I eventually realized that the leak had produced about a one-foot diameter water stain on my mattress. I took this as an opportunity to replace my Amazon-bought mattress with a Harvest Green, which my friend and colleague Dan Pardi, a sleep expert, had recommended to me.

Earlier this year, I decided to experiment with turning off the wifi at night while I sleep. I don’t have any rigorous experimental results to report, but I have since become a “wifi minimalist.” I turn it on when I am using it to connect my TV or my Nintendo Switch to play Mario Kart online, or when I have a guest over who needs it for work, but I turn it off when I am using my ethernet-wired computer in my office and when I am sleeping.

That meant the Eight Sleep is out.

The Annoying Light in the OOLER

So, I finally invested in an OOLER. While the OOLER was similarly programmable and more powerful than the ChiliPAD, and while it solved the wifi problem entirely by downloading the program and running it in airplane mode, it had a far more annoying problem: a self-cleaning UV light would come on in the middle of the night, producing enough white light to wake me up!

I cannot fathom how anyone could design anything to be used in a room with people who are sleeping and would allow it to emit any light at all. This should be a universal design rule for all electronic products:

Sleeping? No light. The end.

I complained to Chili about this. The CEO thought the light could be disabled in the app, but this turned out to be wrong. They offered to physically disable the light for me. I declined, because I wanted to be able to review a product for all of you that would perform for you the way it performs for me. I cannot boast about how great the OOLER is to everyone if my OOLER is a one-of-a-kind mutant.

They promised me the upcoming model, the Doc Pro, would not have a light.

It then turned out that some Doc Pros from the first manufacturing batch did have a light, but this was fixed from the second batch onward.

They offered me a free “me” version, which has one cooling system and only covers half the bed. I tried it, but I hated that it only covered half the bed. If I am sleeping alone, I will not be able to confine myself to half the bed. So I sent it back to them, and bought my own “we” model at a very friendly discount.

The Doc Pro, Cadillac of Mattress Cooling Systems

I am now happy to report that the “we” version of the Doc Pro — the third iteration of the ChiliPAD, if you will — is the first in its class, the Cadillac of all mattress cooling systems, the final choice that satisfies my every mattress cooling problem and delivers on my every mattress cooling need, and the system of which I will be the proud owner for years to come.

Here is what I love about it:

• First, the Doc Pro is, like the OOLER and Eight Sleep, programmable.

• Second, the Doc Pro “we” mattress cover has a wrap-around function like the Eight Sleep, but it is easier to set up. The difficulty of setting it up is roughly equivalent to the difficulty of putting on a fitted sheet, except that the connections for the water tubes make it pretty easy to tell which corner goes where.

• This thing is incredibly powerful. In fact, it either runs colder than it claims to run, or the mattress cover is insanely efficient at heat transfer. I actually find it too cold to fall asleep when it is set to 65 F, even though I always set the ChiliPAD to 55 F and without a mattress cooler I need the ambient temperature close to 65 F to fall asleep. It also can run up to 115 F, which heats the bed more than anyone craving a toasty warm bed could want. I now set my Doc Pro to 68 F when falling asleep, have it warm to 70 F by 3:00 AM, and to 72 F by 4:00 AM. These are all colder than body temperature, but warmer than I would ever set the ambient temperature to, so I believe the numbers run high because the pad is so efficient at drawing warmth out of my body.

• It makes NO LIGHT!!!

• (Ok, if you change the temperature or turn it on, the LED screen will temporarily light up, but it makes zero light once you leave it alone.)

• It downloads the program so it can run in airplane mode. No wifi needed.

One nice thing about the Eight Sleep is that the basic model has two independently controlled sides of the bed that are run from one single cooling system that stands tall rather than spreading flat. The “we” versions of all the Chili iterations require two separate cooling systems, and all the systems are at least as wide as they are tall. Therefore, the Eight Sleep takes up less floor space than any of the Chili iterations.

However, the Doc Pro has a flat top with the controls on a slanted front panel. Neither the top nor the bottom are involved in venting the hot air. This allows the two units to be stacked on top of one another, something you couldn’t do with earlier iterations.

Overall Comparison

Overall, I find both the Eight Sleep and the Doc Pro to be very effective, powerful, programmable mattress cooling systems. The Doc Pro seems more powerful, but both of them are more powerful than I need. The Doc Pro takes up a little more floor space, but seems more purely free of light — that is, I am 100% confident my room is completely blacked out when running it — and it runs without wifi, allowing me to turn the wifi off at night.

Both systems, like the OOLER, are superior to the ChiliPAD since they are programmable and more powerful.

The Eight Sleep’s major limitation is its wifi requirement, and the OOLER’s is the cleaning light.

Therefore, Doc Pro is my system of choice.

Save Hundreds of Dollars on All of This

Chili is now offering 25% off sitewide.

However, in the CMJ Masterpass program, I offer my 10% commission back to members in the form of a rebate within 60 days of their purchase. This amounts to $142 on a queen-size “we” Doc Pro, or $157 on a king size. This is over and above the $475-525 you save by taking advantage of their current 25% off sale. Throw in a set of queen-size Chili moisture-wicking sheets and you save almost $50 from the sale and get another nearly $15 in rebates.

This one purchase would save you the entire yearly membership fee of the Masterpass, which comes with all sorts of other goodies, such as access to premium content (preview the premium posts here), all my ebook guides for free (see the collection of ebook guides here), monthly live Q&A sessions (see when the next session is here), all my courses for free (see the collection here), and exclusive access to massive discounts (see the specific discounts available by clicking here). Upgrade your subscription to include Masterpass membership with this button:

Learn more about the Masterpass here.

What Is Your Experience?

Have you tried any of these mattress cooling systems? Let me know your experience in the comments!