Tempur-ActiveBreeze Smart Bed Review: High-Tech Titan

The base offers leg-warming settings designed to draw blood flow away from the core, helping you fall asleep faster. The ActiveBreeze provided more evenly distributed heat, as the fans are in the center of the bed. I didn’t mind it, especially on cold nights. You can also use the remote to set low, medium, or high heating speeds, which the bed can achieve in a matter of minutes. Depending on your programmed wake time, you also have the option for the Tempur-ActiveBreeze to warm up 30 minutes earlier—which was lovely, but made it even harder to leave my actual warm, cozy bed.

number cruncher

Temperature control is just one aspect of this smart bed; I found the sleep tracking to be equally impressive. With the smart bed, I usually wear my Apple Watch in bed, and compare data points. The sleep-tracking capabilities of the Tempur-ActiveBreeze are encyclopedic, and you can’t get enough of them—within a day of testing the bed, I began receiving email breakdowns of my sleep data, with suggested areas for improvement.

You can get a quick overview of the stages of sleep you’ve achieved with a pie chart showing breathing rate, heart rate variability, changes in wakefulness, and whether you’ve achieved your targeted sleep goals. And this is just the overview. In the “Sleep” tab within the app, the data is much more comprehensive, detailing observational data points in graphs, charts, and numerical metrics. A lot of this data is repeated in the visuals, but I appreciated the variety of visuals that pointed out what I was doing well and what needed improvement. Over time, the app will provide daily, weekly, monthly and yearly breakdowns of your sleep data.

My biggest concern is that despite all this data, my initial readings did not align with what my Apple Watch was tracking, especially for deep sleep and REM. There can be a difference of up to 40 minutes between the data from the two trackers. By day five, the Tempur-ActiveBreeze had a better handle on my sleep patterns, and tracked data that was much more aligned with what my Apple Watch was reporting. Instead of rigid limits, it was a maximum 10-minute swing for REM, deep sleep, and actually bedtime.

Assistant

Like many smart beds, most of the features are housed in the adjustable base rather than the mattress. The Tempur-ActiveBreeze bed and base are a package deal and work together only to let sleepers experience its marquee temperature-control feature.

When it comes to mattresses, it’s a classic Tempur-Pedic experience. The foam isn’t completely pressure-relieving, as I’ve experienced with other firm-feeling hybrid mattresses like the Wolf Memory Foam Premium Firm Hybrid Mattress or the DreamCloud. The surface of the Tempur-ActiveBreeze takes several minutes to adapt to the shape of your body, and although it offers deep contouring, it’s still not as soft around pressure points as other beds I’ve tested. To be clear, it is not uncomfortable, nor does it cause any pain or ache. But if you’re super sensitive to pressure point relief, keep this in mind. The indentations left by the contouring didn’t stop me from moving around, but they are more noticeable as you settle into a new sleep position and feel the imprint of where you just moved.