The ChiliPad was a water-based mattress pad that could be used to heat or cool your bed. It was invented in 2007 by Todd and Tara Youngblood, a husband and wife duo with totally different sleep preferences. He liked to sleep cool, she liked to sleep hot, so they came up with a solution that would keep them both comfortable.
In 2019, the ChiliPad was rebranded as the Ooler Sleep System. The Ooler is essentially the same product as the ChiliPad, but with a few key updates, such as a more sleek design, a quieter operation, and a more user-friendly app.
The Ooler is a great option for people who have trouble sleeping due to temperature. It can help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling refreshed. It can also be used to relieve hot flashes, night sweats, and other temperature-related symptoms.
The Ooler is available in two models: the Ooler Standard and the Ooler Pro. The Ooler Standard is a good option for most people, while the Ooler Pro is better suited for people with more specific needs, such as couples who sleep at different temperatures or people who need a lot of cooling.
If you are looking for a way to improve your sleep, the Ooler is a great option to consider. It is a well-designed and effective product that can help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling refreshed.
The Ooler is a mattress pad that will heat and cool your bed through the use of water. The pad has tubes running throughout that circulate warm or cool water depending on your temperature preferences. The Chilipad is an ideal solution for hot sleepers because there aren’t that many effective ways to keep you cool at night, especially on the surface of the mattress where your body will trap heat.
Overview of the Ooler
The Chilipad comes in a box like the one below. Everything is packaged nicely and clearly labeled for easy setup.
Upon opening the box you will find the mattress pad. This has good padding which helps mask the feeling of the tubes inside. If you really press, you will feel the tubes but when it is on your mattress and you are laying down you won’t feel them. Just know that the mattress will feel a little firmer since you are adding another layer to your mattress.
Underneath the matttress pad are the climate control boxes or Cubes as Chilipad calls them. These are the devices that circulate and condition the water for the pad. They aren’t that big and weigh about 5 lbs. each.
Below is a video overview of the Chilipad. I have it on my king size bed at home which currently is a hybrid mattress, spring and memory foam. The Chilipad will work on any type of mattress. I think people on dense memory foam mattresses will find this most beneficial as dense foam mattresses trap a lot of heat.
How Much Does the Ooler Cost?
Here are the current prices on the Ooler as listed on their website.
Single $449
Twin $499
Twin XL $$599
Full $649
Queen $999
King $1,099
Cal King $1,099
Ooler
Setting up the Ooler is super easy. After getting everything out of the box it looks a little intimidating but Ooler made the process foolproof by clearly labeling everything and creating parts that snap together so you don’t have to worry about water leaking out of the cube or pad during the night.
After unboxing everything, the first thing you want to do is put the Chilipad on the bed. Make sure that the hoses are towards the top of the bed as they will need to connect to the Cube which you will probably want up by your nightstand. You can put it at the foot of the bed as well, it really doesn’t matter.
As you can see below the pad comes with straps to hold it in place and keep it from shifting on the mattress overnight. I recommend putting this over your mattress protector for maximum benefit.
After you get the pad on, you will want to then connect the hose to the cube. Here’s a closeup of the tube. This snaps into the cube and you can hear a click to know that it is secure. These tubes also will not leak when you disconnect.
Here’s the back of the cube where you plug in the other end of the hose.
Below is a picture of the cube. You will need to first plug in and turn on the cube before adding water.
I set my cube to cool to start but it doesn’t matter if it is hot or cold. I bought some distilled water as recommended in the instructions. Distilled water will keep the cube cleaner longer and distilled water is cheap so I just went that route.
My Ooler Findings
I putt the chilipad to the test by making one side as cool as possible as seen on the left-hand side of this picture and the other side as hot as possible as seen on the right. I rand the chilipad for an hour on these settings before taking a temperature reading with my thermal camera. As you can see the cool side clocked in at 23.6 degrees Celsius.
The left hand size just a few inches over clocked in at 30.6 degrees celsius.
Chilipade recommends that you use a blanket or comforter to help insulate the bed and get the best results. For my next test I let the system run with a comforter over it for an hour. In the video below you will see that it is an even starker contrast.
The chilipad remote is easy to use and it worked right out of the box for me. You will need to supply your own batteries though. The remote is fairly simple, it has an on/off button and then a hot and cool button. The temperature reading is backlit so you can adjust the temp in dark without having to turn on the lights.
How does the Ooler Feel?
The Chilipad was designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. That said, it did make my mattress feel a little firmer. The Chilipad will make noise at night as water runs through the system. This is similar to the amount of noise made by a white noise machine and something you will get used to after a few nights. I sleep with a white noise machine already so just turned it off and relied on the hum of the Chilipad. For people who aren’t used to white noise at night, this may take more of an adjustment. In terms of volume, I found it similar to the whir of a computer fan running.
This device heat up a mattress easily but the real benefit of the Chilipad is its ability to cool a mattress. There are very few options out there for hot sleepers looking for lasting relief from a hot mattress. Sleeping hot has become a growing concern with the rise in popularity of memory foam mattresses. With the Chilipad you get technology that will keep your mattress cool all night long. This means you should get deeper, more restorative sleep as you won’t feel the need to toss and turn all night.
I highly recommend the Ooler for hot sleepers of all types. It beats a fan and you can still get cozy in your blanket without waking up a sweaty mess.
10 thoughts on “Ooler Review : The Ultimate Solution for Hot and Cold Sleepers”
what is the dimension of the microtubes dispersed in the pad? the thickness of the pad is 3/4 inch. is it embedded in the pad like a spider’s web? you said sleepers will not feel the microtubes on their back,feeling uncomfortable,how height are the microtubes? will the sleeper’s weight interfere,hinder,stop the flow of water inside the microtbes? are there any retail stores in new York city? if I buy through your link, is there any discount,coupon? you said water leak is not a problem. 90 days warranty,satisfaction guaranteed. what do they do with this returned pad? must be in new good condition. how could I be guaranteed that they will not sell this returned pad to any customer when the customer who returns it get 100% refund?
I’ve heard the cube itself puts out some heat and can actually make the room hotter even though your bed is cool. Has anyone noticed this?
Yes it does! I have a Chilipad and it does make the room hotter, so I am trying to mitigate that with fans to circulate the hot air from the room out into other spaces in the house. This makes me wonder if it’s not a better idea to just get a window ac unit. The energy use could be quite similar, 300W all night for 2 chilicubes vs. 600 W for half the night for a window ac, for example, comes out the same for energy use. For $1,000 you can get a good window unit too.
Do not buy the Ooler. All new devices make ticking noises and make too much noise to sleep through.
I have always been a warm sleeper but really like my memory foam mattress for everything but keeping too much heat. I bought this not believing it would work to try and return. I was worried about feeling the tubes and leaking.
If something happened it today I would buy another one tomorrow. It is amazing. I don’t feel the tubes at all. I found the pad can get too cold for me to sleep comfortably. I keep it at 63 most nights, sometimes 64 in the summer and because I sleep in a back cold room of the house 67 in the winter. I can keep the ac at 69 to 72 instead of 64. Even at 64 room temp I was still too hot in the summer but the ac wouldn’t get cooler than that on 75 plus degree nights outside.
In the winter I can forego the space heater, the room is 55 to 61.
I think this is one of the best purchases I have ever made
I loved my Chilipad for the first 2 years and then once the warranty ended it started to fail. Finally, it began to burn. Wrote to Chilipad and got nothing but see our website response. No longer a fan.
The Chilipad unit is very noisy and probably not good for your hearing. I wear hearing aids during the day. At night without hearing aid I find the unit to be too noisy to have close to the bed. Cable is not that long. Then you have cable exposed running across floor. You are hearing this noise all night 7 days a week. The unit performance is good and I like the coolness. I tried to swap it for the other unit but is pass the 90day. Buyers beware.
Can you recommend an insulated comforter to pair with the Chilipad, as the instructions suggest? Thank you!
Great review. As an mechanical engineer I fond the thermal camera informative. I’m curious to know a couple things that i can’t find anywhere about the chilipad. How does it cool the water? Is it a refrigerant system similar to an AC, or does it use evaporative cooling that will add humidity to my bedroom? I see that you got it down to 23c. (73.5F). Is it capable of getting down to 20.5c (69F)? Do you know if there is any protection from running it cold enough to condensate on the bed tubes, causing the mattress to get wet?
I have the chilipad under my bed and away from my side so the noise is muffled and not bad at all (for me). I use it at about 60-62 degrees except in the cold of winter when I don’t use it at all for a few months. I sleep better with it and sleep through 6-8 hours without waking most nights. I wake up refreshed. I stay warm with my blanket but don’t get too hot using the chilipad. The cooling is very comfortable and feels great.