The Bryte Smart Bed Massaged Me to Sleep—and You Can Try It at Hotels

• Appearance: 20/20
• Effectiveness: 19/20
• Functionality: 18/20
• Ease of Use: 20/20
• Value: 20/20
  TOTAL: 97/100

In the tireless quest to ease insomniacs and light sleepers toward a refreshing and efficient rest, sleep tech has of late come to the rescue with vagus nerve stimulation, binaural beats and colored noise among other innovations, all designed to lull us to beddy bye. Add to those the 500-pound gorilla of sleep aids, the smart bed—particularly the Bryte Balance, a dual-adjustable smart mattress that, thanks to AI, does so much more than just lie there.

A smart bed, also known as a connected bed or an intelligent bed, is a mattress that incorporates advanced technology to enhance the sleep experience. For years, the leader in this category was the Sleep Number 360 mattress, an air and memory foam construction that lets you and your bedmate independently adjust mattress firmness and pitch. Also the Eight Sleep, introduced in 2014, a mattress cover and pod setup that adds personalized temperature control to each side of the bed, tracks your sleep quality and deploys “a vibration and thermal alarm [that] wakes you up gently every morning.”

The Bryte Balance Smart Bed, which I slept on for two nights, is the latest entry into this category. It debuted in 2022, and its special sauce is a tech-enabled experience which blends the attributes of artificial intelligent, a meditation app and a massage table. The result? An enhanced experience that seemed like I had been administered medical-grade anesthesia.

During a recent trip to New York, I tried the Bryte Bed at the Wall Street Hotel. (One canny move of the Bryte company—you can test out the bed by staying in one of two dozen hotels nationwide.) After downloading the Bryte app and syncing it to the bed via QR code, I lay down and enjoyed the feeling of sinking down into it as I set the support to medium softness—more pillowy than I usually prefer, but hey, I was traveling so I deserved to treat myself, right?

Next, I lay back and tried the audio-massage functionality of the bed called Somnify—it was only 3 p.m., but again, why wait until bed to play with my new king-sized toy? I chose the “Thunder” setting, which combines the muffled sound of rain and thunderclaps with what was a surprisingly active bed moving underneath me. The bed pushed upward under my head then rolled down my body, the air columns inside the mattress moving in sequence—and in time with the thunder. The feeling was, TBH, not entirely pleasant at first, as I felt a little disoriented for a few beats. Then I took a deep breath and just Went. With. It. And once I became one with the bed and stopped stiffening against the mattress, the intermittent massage and stormy sound really chilled me out.

I snapped out of my mini bliss fast because I had work to do, but later that night, I was poised to put this baby through its paces again. I activated a setting named Wind Chimes, and as I lay back to be massaged—this setting was gentler than the rolling thunder I’d tried earlier—I had the distinct sensation of being cradled in someone’s arms, rocked like a baby to sleep. It was the damnedest sensation, feeling like I was swaddled. Again, at first I was a bit unsettled being so cuddled, but knew that since I had only ten minutes of this setting total, I could endure such forced comfort. I breathed deep, felt my limbs soften and then…darkness. We’re talking the sudden unconsciousness I have only experienced counting backwards before surgery. I woke eight hours later (I checked the app, that’s what it reported) feeling like I had left the planet, which I now understand is a function of how deeply I slept.

That day was a blur of business trip activity that I felt refreshed and ready for, and while I can’t wholly attribute the spring in my step to the quality of my night’s sleep, it certainly helped. I suspect the more subtle parts of the bed’s design added to my well-being: an adaptive technology that senses your body’s shifting weight during sleep and rebalances distinct zones of the bed. According to Bryte, a top reason we wake during the night is because imbalances of pressure build up between our body and the mattress, causing disruptions in circulation. The Bryte mattress detects these pressure points and within seconds accommodates your body, before your arm falls asleep or your neck gets a kink in it and causes a micro-wakeup.

I appreciated that the bed gave me a sleep score report that broke down my night’s rest into stages, length and quality, a feature I’ve come to appreciate in my Oura ring. And there’s a Silent-Wake Assist functionality that slowly vibrates you awake over a half-hour, without ever making a sound or disturbing your co-sleeper. (Huzzah, an end to the sleep divorce caused by your partner’s early-morning schedule.) While I didn’t have a co-sleeper on my trip to test out each side of the bed simultaneously, I did lay on the opposite side of the bed while my side was in the midst of a thunder massage cycle; I can confirm that due to the bed’s hefty design, the opposite side was vibration-free.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to test out Bryte’s promise to learn my sleep preferences during the two-week-long machine learning the brand promises. (What else could the mattress learn I wonder? That I prefer my OJ fresh-squeezed?). That’s because after two nights I was on my own, back to a cruel world of boxed mattresses and the like that had been seemed heretofore restful enough. Was there room for improvement with the Bryte Balance Smart Mattress? Well, my bed didn’t have dual temperature controls, which some sleepers depend on, but I don’t require. And the price is dear. But these are quibbles in a product that’s cutting-edge in home sleep tech.

Bryte Bed lists 14 hotels across the country where special sleep suites or otherwise luxe rooms are kitted out with their beds. Think of a stay at one of these Four Seasons or Grand Hyatt resorts as a staycation/test drive of this bed, which, if you’ve got the coin, is well worth the investment.

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