Review: BedJet V2

According to absolutely legitimate research I read about in the Daily Mail, 55 percent of couples say they argue about the temperature at which their home is maintained. While the whole house is clearly a battleground, certainly it’s the bedroom that is ground zero for such squabbles.

Stereotypically, women like things hot, men like them colder. This truism is largely born out in my own home, as a typical night’s sleep finds me awake in the early wee hours, sweating under even a thin duvet. But at the same time, when I slip into the sheets, it’s invariably freezing, leading to a nightly battle of who-gets-to-put-whose-icy-hands-on-whose-warm-back.

BedJet is billed as the solution to all of this, a climate control system that is exclusive to the bed itself.

If the BedJet sounds familiar it’s probably because you saw former NASA engineer Mark Aramli pitch it on Shark Tank a few years ago, only to be shot down by the panel. Aramli got his business going all the same, and a Kickstarter for the BedJet v2 raised over $1.3 million for the business. (The BedJet 3 is now in the works.)

BedJet provides a lot of collateral to describe the device, with the official description being that it is a “cooling, warming climate comfort system for beds.” That’s a bit vague: Basically it is a large blower that sits under your bed and pushes air up and through a flexible duct, to a nozzle that is positioned to direct that air between your mattress and your top sheet. The temperature of this air and the speed of air flow is adjustable, so you can heat up on cold nights or cool down in the summer. You can think of it as a giant hair dryer that lives under your bed.

Installing and using the BedJet is surprisingly simple—much easier than the 30-page manual would lead you to believe. It can be constructed in minutes (the hardest part being getting the nozzle situated just right so that it sits close to the mattress), and once you plug it in, you’re off and running. Or rather, you’re under the covers, because the thing really does raise the game on bedtime comfort.

In chilly northern California, the BedJet is a godsend. A few minutes of heat before hopping into bed at night turns dreaded, cold sheets into a toasty envelope that I was soon rushing to get into. Even my wife, a natural-born skeptic on gear like this, was quickly converted. While I didn’t have much need for the cooling mode (note that it doesn’t actively chill the air, it simply draws cooler air from under the bed and blasts it between the sheets) during my November testing, I can already see that in the blistering heat of summer it will be welcomed.

All of this is controlled via a dedicated remote, a clunky device which looks like something Art Linkletter might have hawked and is puzzling in its design, particularly due to its lack of an off button. The remote features three modes—cool, heat, and turbo heat (YEAH!)—but to turn them off you have to press the button for the mode you’re on a second time. Don’t know if you’re on heat or turbo heat? You just stab at buttons until the thing shuts down. That’s fine, though, because at least you can keep your hands under the covers while you do it.

BedJet also works with a mobile app, and while it also looks like an Art Linkletter project, it does give you more fine-grained control over the speed of the fan, the temperature of the heat, and the duration of each run. If you want to set up timers or use the BedJet as a decadent alarm clock, this is how you do it.

If you want to get really fancy, BedJet markets a special $99 sheet called the AirComfort Cloud Sheet, which you attach directly to the BedJet nozzle. This directs the airflow in between the two layers of the sheet, which causes it to puff up like a balloon, trapping the air inside and ostensibly keeping you warmer or cooler for longer, since the air can’t leak out as easily. But my wife’s got Swedish blood, so we sleep only with a duvet, no top sheet, and this was a non-starter for her. She wasn’t even sold on the concept of the Dual Zone Cloud Sheet, which is split down the middle so you can—wait for it—attach two BedJets to it, one on either side. This concept lets you heat one side of the bed and cool the other, but you’re probably better off sleeping in separate rooms if that’s how things are playing out in your relationship.

Mind you this is not a perfect piece of equipment. BedJet tries to make the case that you can turn off climate control in the rest of your house and just rely on the BedJet to keep you warm or cool at night (thus saving you money) but I already keep my home as cold as I realistically can after hours. I think you have to accept that the BedJet is a small luxury, though at a power draw of up to 1,500 watts in turbo heat mode, I know it’s one that will add to my electric bill.

There’s also the questionable aesthetic of having a large, reticulating tube snaking out from under your bed and under your sheets. If your bed isn’t positioned in such a way as to make this non-obvious when someone enters the room, it may give your room a Brazil vibe that clashes a bit with the rest of your décor.

Were my wife and I as happy as these folks? Perhaps not, but I’m happy to report that we were both sold on the device, at least through the winter months. Much to my surprise, our cat was decidedly not a fan, but she’s a strange one and, well, that’s a story for another time.