Sleep tech only seems to have become more widespread, permanent, and expensive. One day, you will begin to examine your sleep rings on your Apple Watchnext time, you will find yourself shopping smart mattresses which requires you to rethink your entire bed, fans that blow cool air under your duvetand subscription applications that promise sleep coaching with hyper-granular data. Smart sleep pads are a good middle ground. They don’t require you to change your bed and frametie anything to your body, or change your routine. They just sit on or under your mattress or pillowand quietly do their thing—from tracking to temperature regulation—while you sleep.

Some smart sleep pads adjust the temperature, while others monitor movement or constantly influence your sleep patterns. Either way, they’re easy to live with, feeling closer to how we think tech should work at night. I tried several sleeping pads on the same bed, during a Midwestern winter, to see which ones really felt like they made a difference, and which felt more like experiments than solutions. All testing is done on a king size Purple Restore Cool Touch mattress with a standard fitted cotton sheet and my love Mellow comforter. Using the same mattress, bedding, and sleep routine throughout helped differentiate what each pad actually changed (or didn’t) about my sleep. As a way to measure and slowly improve sleep without rethinking your entire routine, it’s surprisingly effective.

Be sure to check out our other sleep-related guides, including Best Mattresses, Best Mattress Toppers, Best Sheetsand Best Sleep Tracker.

Best for Temperature Regulation

Photo: Nicole Kinning

Perfectly Snug

The Smart Topper

Every night, what excites me most about crawling into bed (besides catching up on some episodes of Below Deck), knowing that I was about to reconcile with a warm one. The Smart Topper from Perfectly Snug is a temperature-regulating mesh pad that fits on top of your mattress under your fitted sheet, actively warming and cooling you while you sleep. I hesitated at first: I was overwhelmed loyal to my Purple mattress and didn’t want to leave its pillowy face. Perfectly Snug’s airy pad is surprisingly supportive and comfortable, landing somewhere around a medium-firm feel.

Setup is straightforward: Plug it in, place it on the bed, put fresh sheets on top of it, and connect to Wi-Fi through Perfectly Snug’s app. From there, you enter your weekly sleep time and wake schedule and adjust settings such as the strength of the foot heating and the aggressiveness of the cool bursts. Once programmed, the pad will begin heating an hour before your scheduled bedtime. If you have the Dual Zone option, each side of the bed can be adjusted independently, saving my husband from my preference for heat. The app’s interface feels a little beta, like it belongs on an old iPod Touch next Temple Runbut it works.

From there, your night’s temperature is (mostly) in the hands of the Smart Topper. Cooling takes place through almost silent fans that kick in when sensors detect an increase in body heat, and it warms you up when it senses you’re cold. If you want to override the automation, physical buttons on the side of the topper let you adjust cooling or heating without having to squint at your phone in the middle of the night. For anyone who gets hot at night, the Smart Topper is an effective, hassle-free way to stay cozy.

Value: 9/10: The Perfectly Snug smart topper is expensive up front, but it delivers something that will require a new mattress or a higher electric bill. For hot sleepers in particular, the cooling feature can replace many workarounds (fans, AC toggles, frequent sheet changes).

Comfort: 8/10: The pad is noticeable, but not bothersome. This slightly changes the feel of your mattress, but the mesh construction is breathable and supportive. And once you get used to it, the real comfort payoff is exactly what the pad is for: constant temperature regulation.