If there’s one thing I’ve learned from testing mattresses, it’s to generally keep your expectations low when it comes to anything labeled “cooling.” A lot of mattresses are marketed as cooling, but a more accurate way to describe most of these beds would be “less hot.” It’s not that the purported cooling materials inside them don’t work, but that they often don’t work the way we expect them to — the idea is to keep you from getting too warm in the first place rather than hitting you with a cooling blast, like the AC in a car might.
A quest to actually be cooled is why I recently spent a few weeks testing the Chilipad Dock Pro Cooling Bed System, from Sleepme. A few years ago, Strategist writer and self-proclaimed hot sleeper Dominique Pariso tested (and loved) the brand’s original product, the Chilipad Cube, so as summer heat set in, I set up the brand’s newest cooling system, the Dock Pro. It’s similar to the Cube in that it’s basically a tube-filled pad that goes over your mattress and uses water to regulate temperature. However, it has a few upgrades from the older system: app controls (including the ability to schedule temperature changes), a control unit that more easily fits under a bed, and, according to Sleepme, more cooling power (95 watts for the Dock Pro compared to 52 watts for the Cube). If you want to get really precise, you can also synchronize it with Sleepme’s sleep tracker, which makes real-time temperature adjustments based on your sleep data, but I don’t have one, so I didn’t try that (the tracker also adds a lot to the cost, at $199 plus a $6 monthly subscription fee). Like the Cube, the Dock Pro comes in two models: a “Me” version that just covers half a mattress and a “We” version that covers the whole thing and has two zones, so that two sleepers can each control their own temperature preferences. Both come in queen, king, and California king (half-)sizes.
I have the “Me” version, which was easy enough to set up. I laid the Dock Pro’s mattress pad over a waterproof mattress protector (which the company recommends, just in case) and positioned it on my side of the bed; the hardest part was getting the two large elastic bands around the sides and bottom of the mattress. You can position the pad so the tube hook-up is at either the head or the foot of your bed, and I went with head because that made it easier to tuck the tubing and cords out of sight. You can place the control unit almost wherever you want, though the instructions say not to block airflow from the grille and air filter. I did notice after remaking the bed that the dark gray mattress pad was very visible through my white linen sheets — something to keep in mind if your sheets are at all sheer.
To finish the process, I used a large cup to fill the control unit’s tank with about two liters of water, as you might with a humidifier, added the provided cleaning solution (which the directions say to do during set-up), and downloaded the Sleepme app. There are buttons on the control unit that you can use to change the temperature, but the app allows you to customize and create scheduled routines, which I wanted to try.
One of the app’s most useful features is the option to create a “sleep program,” kind of like an alarm-clock schedule — you can set the Dock Pro to automatically turn on at a specific temperature, at a specific time, on specific days. From there, you can set it so the temperature progressively changes throughout the night for “optimal” sleep: If you put in your bedtime and wake-up time, the app will automatically suggest temperature changes throughout the night (getting cooler about 30 minutes after bedtime, then getting slightly warmer halfway through the night to optimize REM sleep). But you can tweak these, delete them, or add other automatic adjustments if you want. You can also turn on a “warm awake,” in which the Dock Pro will gradually warm to max heat to wake you up.
The Dock Pro can cool your bed to as low as 55 degrees or as high as 116 degrees. Initially, I set up a weeknight routine with a starting bed temperature of 65 degrees, because it sounded like a cool enough temperature that would make for a pleasant sleep in the early summer heat. When I went to bed, I was impressed: The mattress pad was quite chilly, and the sensation of laying on it was unique — it felt like I was floating on top of a cold body of water, but completely dry. Then, a while after shutting off the lights, I realized I was too cold, and having trouble falling asleep. I upped the temperature to about 75 degrees and still felt cool, but comfortable enough to drift off.
When I woke up in the morning my bed was super warm from the “warm awake” function. For the most part, I felt so cozy that I didn’t want to get out of bed. But if you sweat easily, I don’t think I’d recommend this setting, unless you really want to be sauna’d out of bed every day, since the Dock Pro’s max temperature is 116 degrees, and you can’t adjust the “warm awake” setting lower than that. If you want to wake up warm but not sweltering, you could just add a different adjustment to more subtly increase the temperature in the morning.
The mattress pad is very thin and, other than showing through my sheets, barely perceptible — I can’t feel any tubing through it, and it has stayed in place pretty well. My partner isn’t bothered by it, and says he hasn’t noticed much difference with the Chilipad on just half our bed. Maintaining the system has been straightforward. I’ve refilled the control unit about once a week during the three weeks I’ve been testing it. The brand recommends using distilled water; though you can use tap water, it may leave some sediment build up, which could reduce efficiency over time. I’ve used tap water so far, but if I keep the system on my bed in the long term, I’ll switch to distilled water to keep the everything in good condition.
And after a few weeks of fiddling with my sleep program, I’ve learned the most comfortable sleep temperature for me is somewhere between 75 and 80. Though I’m not an overly hot sleeper, I have appreciated the cooling effects as the temperatures have routinely been 90 degrees and above where I live in North Carolina. It should be plenty effective for people who feel like they are sleeping in an oven and want to feel more like they are sleeping in a fridge. And because I tend to get fairly cold at night during the rest of the year, I’m excited to try the warming features once fall and winter roll around.
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