Big Guy on the Sleep Number C4

If you’ve been with us for a while, you probably saw one of my first posts, Big Guy Sleeping the Wave, where I wrote about my purchase of a Casper Wave mattress. You may have also caught the follow-up to that yesterday, Big Guy on Returning the Casper, where I wrote about returning the mattress after deciding that it just didn’t work for us. As I was searching for mattresses the first time around, a rich friend of mine (so rich) had suggested a Sleep Number bed. At the time I kind of wrote it off for two reasons. One, I thought they were super expensive, and two, I was so enamored by the Casper story and the idea of getting a bed-in-a-box that I pretty much set on it after I first started my research.

The Sleep Number C4

Since I knew we were giving up the Casper, I started looking around for the replacement. Remembering my rich friend’s advice on getting a Sleep Number, it was one of the first places I looked. After doing some research on the different models, we decided on the C4 model (see below for a code to save even more).

The Sleep Number C4 has the DualAir^™ adjustability that the other Sleep Numbers have, and a 10″ profile with a 1 and a half inch think comfort layer. It also has three zones of contouring support, a soft, breathable knit fabric, and the SleepIQ^® technology.

The Setup

When this bed arrived, it showed up in two boxes. Neither of them was very heavy. I thought, “Oh cool. Another bed in a box.” However, after I opened the boxes, I realized that the bed was in several pieces. It was a little daunting at first, but I put the boxes away until our previous mattress could be hauled off. When the day came, I broke open the boxes, and started following the instructions. It actually wasn’t too bad. It took me just around an hour, and you can see my process in the time lapse video above. This time lapse was taken with an awesome little, $20 device called the WyzeCam, which you can read more about over at Big Guy on the WyzeCam.

DualAir^™ Adjustability

The Sleep Number beds are basically air beds. With the Sleep Number C4 (and many other models), you can control the firmness on each side by configuring your Sleep Number which changes how much air is in your half of the bed. After you setup your bed, one of the first things you will do is go through the process of finding your Sleep Number using the included remote control. When I initially did this, I ended up on 50. As I was going to bed that night, I felt like that wasn’t firm enough, so I set it to 60. I woke up a little sore, so the next night I turned it down to 55 but was still a little sore. Eventually, I ended up on 35. You can also control this via the Sleep IQ^® app on your phone.

Sleep IQ^® : Your Bed in the Cloud.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this, but as Big Guy Damien mentioned in his post on home automation, most of us have already given into the Big Brother effect to gain all of the cool little conveniences that come along with it. Paranoia aside, Sleep IQ^® is a technology that works with sensors in your mattress and your WiFi to track and optimize your sleep.



Each morning you get a score on how well you slept, and Sleep IQ^® also reports on several other readings such as average breathing and heart rates, how restless your sleep was, and whether or not you met your predefined sleep goals.

How I Got the C4 Connected to Google Wi-Fi (Band Steering Fix)

Here’s the gotcha nobody warns you about during setup. The Sleep Number C4 only talks to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. If you have a modern mesh system that uses a single SSID for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz (which is most of them now), the C4 can get stuck on the SleepIQ app’s “connecting to your network” screen and just sit there forever. That’s what happened to me on my Google Wi-Fi setup.

The culprit is band steering. Band steering is the feature that nudges capable devices onto the 5 GHz radio so the 2.4 GHz band stays clear for stuff that needs it. It’s a good feature for everyday use, but during the handshake for a brand new 2.4 GHz-only device, the router can keep trying to shove the C4 toward 5 GHz, and the C4 has no idea what to do with that. It never finishes associating, the app times out, and you start questioning your life choices.

Here’s what actually worked for me:

1. Open the Google Home app on your phone.
2. Tap your Wi-Fi network, then Settings.
3. Find the toggle for “Prefer higher speeds for devices” (that’s Google’s polite name for band steering) and turn it off. Give it a minute to apply.
4. Go back to the SleepIQ app and run the C4 network setup again from scratch.
5. Once the C4 shows up as connected and the app is happy, pop back into Google Home and flip that toggle back on.

After the C4 is associated with the network, it stays connected. I haven’t had to touch that setting since, and the rest of the house is back to getting steered onto 5 GHz the way it should be.

A few honest caveats. This is what worked on my specific Google Wi-Fi generation. If you’re on Eero, Orbi, TP-Link Deco, or something else, the toggle has a different name and lives in a different menu. Eero calls it “Band Steering” under Labs or advanced settings. Orbi tucks it under Advanced Wireless. Some routers hide band steering entirely or don’t let you disable it without dropping the 5 GHz band, in which case a workaround is to temporarily broadcast a separate 2.4 GHz-only SSID (a “guest” or IoT network works well), join the C4 to that, and then you’re done. If your router won’t let you do any of that, the last-resort trick is to walk the C4 to the far edge of your 5 GHz coverage so the router gives up on steering it. Not elegant, but it works.

Final Thoughts

Hello I’m Tommy, and my sleep number is 35. I’m liking the Sleep Number so far, but it’s a little early to tell for sure. I’ll update if anything changes. I can say it is the coolest mattress I’ve ever had from a techie point of view. I mean, being able to control your bed from you phone? That’s crazy! Below is a breakdown of the Pros and Cons I see so far for the Sleep Number C4. If you want to look into a Sleep Number, you can use my code, FFQ417QMNRNS, to save some money (and give me a kickback). As of this writing, you can actually save 300 bucks on the C4 if you were to choose it. You can also check out other Sleep Number sales, here.

Pros

• I’ve never considered my mattress a tech gadget until now. This is awesome!
• Being able to control the firmness on each side will hopefully help with the issue we had with our Casper.
• The Sleep IQ^® feature, while maybe kind of scary, is super cool!
• The boxes that it showed up in were fairly light and easy to carry.

Cons

• Putting it together is a little crazy, but at least I got a cool time lapse!
• The “find your sleep number” process may not get you where you need to be. Stay with it and keep tweaking.
• Only works with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, which makes setup on a modern mesh network a pain. See the band steering fix section above if you’re stuck.

Do you have a Sleep Number? Tell us what your number is in the comments below if so! And if you’re still mattress shopping, I put together a mattress buying guide for big guys that covers everything I learned through these purchases.