Although humans have been sleeping since the beginning of time, it seems we still haven’t figured out how to do it properly. Not a week goes by without a new study or survey making headlines for having cracked the code when it comes to sleep. It is by now a given that a solid eight hours is what most people need to function at maximum capacity during the day, but myths of four-hour blocks, six-hour segments, and two-hour naps are constantly creeping in there to confuse us. We all know that a lack of sleep makes us anxious and stressed and less able to cope with daily life, but how do we change our habits to help us sleep better? Well, now a new mattress is on hand to help us get a handle on our sleep.

The Sleep Number 360 p5 bed in a modern living room.

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Sleep Number’s new smart bed 360 p5 is designed to not only help you have the best sleep possible, but also monitor your sleep and help you figure out how you might improve it. The mattress has a handy design centered around two air cavities located in the middle of the foam bottom layer, which allows each person on either side of the bed to control how soft or firm they want their side to be. This has been a feature of advanced mattress design for a while, but Sleep Number’s 360 p5 has gone one step further to include some snazzy new features that not only help you to control the comfort of your bed, but also monitor your sleeping patterns. Sensors built into the mattress’s body can detect your movements, your breathing, and even your heart rate. These data sensors are undetectable by the user of the bed, so once the technology is rigged up to your mobile app, you can go to bed safe in the knowledge that your mattress will be working for you through the night.

A close-up image of the Sleep Number p5 mattress.

The smart technology in the mattress will give you a sleep score out of 100, and tell you how much restful sleep you had, when you got up, and when your sleep was less deep. Taken over a couple of days or weeks, it will allow you to trace any patterns of sleep, meaning you can think back over the day and see if there was anything in particular that might have led to a disrupted sleep that day. Drinking coffee or large amounts of liquid right before bed might result in taking longer to get to sleep, or waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. You might find that working out in the morning makes you sleep better than working out right before bed. You will be able to correlate stress patterns or dreams to restless sleep. The idea is that with this knowledge, you can change your daytime habits to influence your nighttime ones. Sleep Number’s 360 p5 will offer some tips on how to sleep better, and there are options to sync some of your fitness and health apps with the mattress app to allow you to get a more comprehensive picture of your daily and nightly routine. While the smart mattress will not exactly solve all your sleep problems, it can help you work towards a better, data driven slumber.