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The BedJet is essentially a heat blower for your bed — which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst idea in the world. Apparently made at least almost famous by appearing on a reality show called Shark Tank (where inventors parade before a camera competing for money from investors), the product seems to have won and actually hit the market. Still, whether the BedJet is better than a plain old mattress heater or electric blanket is still up for debate.
Blowing hot air
Here’s how it works. Basically, there’s a blower unit with a tube and air ejector that sits under your bottom sheet in one corner of the bed. Just turn the machine on, and a toasty stream of air puffs up your linens and makes the bed nice and warm. The BedJet also doubles as a white noise generator, because of the whirring hum it makes when on. So, if you’re into that kind of thing, it’s nice.
You can use the BedJet to simply heat up your bed beforehand or set a schedule (a “biorhythm” as the creators call it) for how the unit will perform through the night. The app can even create a custom biorhythm for you based on age and other factors if you’re not into building the schedule yourself. The BedJet can either blow heated or, well, non-heated (they say ‘cooled’) air at your feet to adjust to some kind of sleep rhythms that the creators claim are important. Given that, as I write this, it’s in the teens outside, I opted to not have non-heated air blown up into my sheets in the middle of the night.
The BedJet also doubles as a white noise generator, because of the whirring hum it makes.
The system does come with a standard remote, but to set a schedule, you need the smartphone app. Since this app relies on Bluetooth, however, the range is limited. So, unlike Wi-Fi smart devices, you can’t tell BedJet to start warming up the bed while you’re on your way home or something. You need to be fairly close to activate it, instead of just programming it once and letting it go. If you’re the sort of person who immediately rushes to bed after a long, drama-filled day at the office, this is slightly disappointing.
If you’ve got the money to spend, the BedJet is nothing if not versatile. While just the blower will heat up a king-sized bed nicely, you can opt for a dual blower system and get their special top sheet (the $100 “AirComforter”) that lets each side have its own environmental controls.
Between the sheets
In theory, this sounds amazing, but in practice … well, it really depends on how well you and (if applicable) your partner sleep. I, personally, sleep horribly and live with another human who somehow manages to shift around so much at night that they emerge at dawn as a saucy blanket-klepto burrito, layered in all the blankets and sheets that I too was using. After no small amount of time putting up with waking up freezing in the wee hours of the morning, we have since adopted separate bedding that shall never touch.
The BedJet’s spiffy dual-zone air-puffed sheet would fail miserably in the face of people who simply don’t lie motionless or only move about daintily in their sleep. Even when just using the blower, sans special pricey sheet, the bed has to be made properly. See, for this all to work, it needs bedding layers to keep the hot air in. The tube is held in place with a plastic attachment with latches to hold your sheet over it, which is handy, but messy sleepers always find a way to screw up bedding.
It does make the bed toasty warm and there are fewer pleasures in life greater than slinking into an already warm bed.
My other issue is I tend to sleep on the edge of the bed (apparently my sleep style is called “preparing to flee”), so I kept kicking the plastic blower. My slumber partner, on the other hand, was weirded out by the sensation of things moving along the bedding, thanks to the moving air current. Like bugs or something. Maybe snakes. I don’t know, but apparently it’s easy to acclimate to. There was a lot less screaming at 2:00 in the morning after the first night.
BedJet v2 is also pricey. Even on sale, the blower is just under $300 and list price is around $500. I really did enjoy the thing warming my tootsies and whatnot, but did I enjoy it that much more than a normal mattress heater? I’m leaning toward no, but the BedJet isn’t ideal for my anxiety-fraught sleeping patterns.
That said, it could be perfect for more sedate sleepers. It does make the bed toasty warm, after all, and there are fewer pleasures in life greater than slinking into an already warm bed.
