This Nifty Mattress Fan Makes Falling Asleep A Breeze

This Nifty Mattress Fan Makes Falling Asleep A Breeze

Everyone has different requirements for the perfect night’s sleep. Some people need a white noise generator, while others might require a weighted blanket, or maybe even a body pillow to snuggle up against. And while it’s not a necessity, one thing that really does it for me is a gentle breeze, like when you take a nap outside on a lazy summer afternoon. Damn, I’m getting sleepy just imagining it.

What most people do to simulate a gentle breeze is to get a fan, angle it toward the bed, and call it a day (or night). But that’s kind of a half-assed solution, because only your head and maybe your shoulders will feel the air current. That’s precisely where the BedJet 3 comes in.

At its core, the BedJet 3 is a very simple device. There’s a main fan unit, a hose, an adjustable stand, and a nozzle. That’s it. (Oh, and an included remote, but we’ll get to that in a bit.) Ideally, the fan goes under your bed, though because the box containing the fan measures six inches at its thinnest, depending on your bedframe/mattress set up, you may have to keep it off to the side or at the foot of your bed, which can definitely mess with your feng shui. But what the BedJet 3 can do for your sleep is quite profound, and potentially worth the added clutter.

BedJet 3

BedJet 3

What is it?

A dedicated fan for heating or cooling your bed

Price

$US600 ($872)

Like

Simple to set up and use, built-in wifi for downloading updates, comes with a remote, effective in both summer and winter

Don't Like

Constant feeling of air blowing on you while sleeping can be very hit-or-miss, phone apps are clunky, hoses sticking out of your bed isn't the most elegant look, lacks smarts

In addition to being able to pipe in a steady gust of air that flows under your covers (so you get a full-body breeze), the BedJet 3 can also adjust the temperature of said air to either cool or heat your bed. This is critical because getting the temperature just right is essential for increasing the quality and duration of your sleep, with scientists generally recommending that your bedroom should be between 60 and 67 degrees. The problem with this is that those temperatures are typically cooler than what’s generally considered a comfortable room temp, so you can either turn your thermostat way down at night, or use something like a fan or the BedJet to cool things down in a more targeted manner.

And if you don’t care about sleeping cooler, the BedJet also has a heating function that can be especially useful in the winter or for people with poor circulation. Using the BedJet’s remote or app, you can set sleep timers or routines that can keep the temp of your bed just the way you like it all through the night, or wake you up with a blast of 100-degree hot air if you’re a masochist.

Like its components, the BedJet 3’s setup is similarly straightforward. You start by plugging in the BedJet 3 fan unit into the wall (it comes with a 10-foot power cord) and hiding it somewhere out of the way wherever you can. Then you attach the hose, put one side of the hose stand underneath your mattress, and then add as many extension sections as needed so that, when attached, the hose’s nozzle rests on top of the edge or your mattress. Then put your covers back on top and connect the thing to your wifi (2.4GHz networks only please)

From there, you have a few choices, because you can put the nozzle in various places depending on where you want your air. You can put it at the foot of the bed in the middle to cover both people lying on a king or queen mattress, off to the left or right if only one person wants air, or on the sides of the bed if someone wants a more directed gust. You will also need to choose if you want to use the BedJet 3 with your normal covers, or opt for BedJet’s optional $US80 ($116) Cloud Sheet, which is designed with openings for the BedJet’s nozzle to help spread air around more evenly.

OK, so how much better does the BedJet make your sleep? For me, the difference was noticeable right away. I love the feeling of getting in a slightly chilly bed, and the BedJet 3 helps maintain that temperature, particularly down by my feet. My wife prefers the bed to be a bit warmer, and depending on how our thermostat was set, without the BedJet, sometimes I had to poke my feet out from under the covers in order to cool down (a trick I learned from our friends at Lifehacker).

Another added benefit of having a breeze come from underneath your covers is that the air circulation helps keep things from getting excessively sweaty, which is especially valuable during hot and humid summer months. Waking up dry and cool just feels really refreshing. And while BedJet explicitly claims this device is not intended as a replacement for real heating or AC, it does offer an additional thermal buffer between you and your standard room temp, and could even help you save some money by allowing you to spend less energy cooling or heating an entire room or floor of your home.

The unit is also pretty quiet—though not totally silent—with the loudest noise being a faint whirring and a whoosh as air enters your bed. That is, until you get above 80 per cent or so fan speed, at which point this thing really does start to sound like an actual jet engine. Then again, I found that turning the fan speed above 50 per cent was generally overkill, and often made my bed so windy it was hard to sleep. For me, the sweet spot was having the temp set to 66 degrees and the fan at around 25 to 30 per cent.

Unfortunately, where the BedJet feels a bit lacking is that while it can follow a routine or maintain a desired temp, it doesn’t really have any smarts that would allow it to adjust the temp based on how much you are tossing and turning, a feature you get with smart mattresses from companies like Eight Sleep, Tempur-Pedic, and others. And there isn’t really smart home integration either—you can’t ask Alexa, Siri, or whoever to change the fan on the BedJet.

Also, in addition to a regular standalone remote, for some reason there are two BedJet apps (plus a third for the previous two versions of this device). One is strictly for connecting the BedJet to wifi and downloading firmware updates, while the other duplicates the functionality of the included remote, but in a clunky manner. Either way, having multiple apps is redundant.

But the trickiest part about all this is that while the BedJet helped me sleep better, my wife basically hated the thing. At first, she tolerated the novelty, but as testing went on, she liked it less and less. Her contention was that the fan made hot and cold air spread too unevenly, and that feeling wind down there was annoying (insert your fart jokes here).

The only time she ever really enjoyed the BedJet was during the winter, when she used it to warm up her feet right when she first got in bed. Eventually, she forced me to move the BedJet over to my side of the bed, so she couldn’t feel the fan at all. Thankfully, that wasn’t a big deal, because if you have a heavier blanket or comforter, it’s relatively easily to isolate the breeze to one half of the bed. And when you’re using the BedJet with normal sheets, it’s more effective at circulating air across the lower part of your body anyways (when positioned at the foot of your bed).

However, if you want to get extra serious about moving air around, you’ll probably want to add on BedJet’s optional Cloud Sheet, which lets you stick the Bed Jet’s nozzle into the middle of the sheet, effectively turning the entire sheet into an air pillow. This helps more evenly distribute the air, but can be kind of distracting on higher fan speeds, which can cause the sheet to bounce around. It’s nice, but in my opinion, not super essential, especially for people like me who have colourful sheets and don’t want to mess with their precious interior design.

So, is the BedJet effective? Yes, absolutely, and its fan is probably way more powerful than anyone actually needs. But at the same time, it’s hard to recommend to everyone, because how much you will like the BedJet 3 depends completely on your preference for having breezier sleeping conditions. For me, the BedJet 3 made it easier to fall asleep, and while charging $US360 ($523) (or $US600 ($872) at full retail) for what is basically a fancy fan seems like a lot, this is one case where having a purpose-built device makes a lot of sense. And for anyone who wants to improve their sleep without buying a completely new bed or mattress, the BedJet 3 is an easy, breezy alternative.

README

  • At its full retail price of $US600 ($872), the BedJet 3 feels kind of expensive.

  • BedJet’s Cloud Sheet is an $US80 ($116) optional accessory and only comes in white, but it can help maximise the BedJet V3’s performance.

  • Having a fan blowing on you all through the night is a love-it-or-hate-it feeling that is definitely not for everyone.

  • The BedJet can both cool and heat air, so it can help you find the perfect sleeping temp all year round.

Editor’s Note: The BedJet 3 does not appear to be available commercially in Australia just yet. Stay tuned!


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.