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Pillow Cube Side Cube for $66: This isn’t technically a body pillow, but it’s specifically designed for side sleepers (and I love it), so it’s included in this list. This cuboid pillow is designed for the side sleeper, and aims to help with headaches and back and shoulder pains through its unique shape and soft, yet structured, filling. It has a breathable, soft-and-stretchy quilted side case that’s removable with a zipper, and the AeroPluff foam core is comfy, regulating temperature to keep you sleeping coolly. I can sleep only on my side, and one of the problems I regularly have is a sore neck from the gap between my shoulder and my head. This square, 90-degree-angled pillow perfectly fills that gap and sits at a manageable head pillow size of 24 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 5 inches deep. The breathable cover and soft density even helped with ear pressure.

Leacho Snoogle for $50: Though out of stock at the moment, this versatile body pillow is marketed for pregnant people because of its versatility and belly, hip, and knee support. Due to its unique shape, it can be contorted into many figures. With a removable cover made of a polyester/cotton blend and a polyester filling, this pillow is a lot more breathable than similar large body pillows on the list. Because of its unique shape for many positions, the pillow isn’t overstuffed, and I found that the fill tended to sink to the lower foot portion of the pillow when sleeping on it. Overall, this pillow is breathable and extremely customizable in shape, although I would’ve preferred something with a little more filling.

White Noise Memory Foam Body Pillow With Hypoallergenic Zippered Protector for $50: I absolutely love the fill of this 50 x 14-inch pillow—the shredded foam is the perfect mix of structure and softness. If it were wider, 20 or so inches rather than 14 inches, this pillow would be perfect. But because I’m a side-only sleeper, I like to hold the body pillow and wrap my arms and legs around it. Since it is so narrow, my knees knock together on the other side. I may be able to overlook the flaw of its narrowness because the pillow has a super-comfy fill, but I wouldn’t recommend it for bigger people with longer limbs.

Eli & Elm Memory Foam Body Pillow for $130: In my home, we call this one “the 7 pillow” because … well, take a guess. This long, L/7-shaped pillow is marketed as a pregnancy pillow, but it’s great for anyone who sleeps on their side. The short section fits neatly under your head, while the long end can reach down to fit between your legs. It comes with its own custom pillow case, which is great, because it’s not like you’ll have a ton of spares in this shape in your linen closet. —Eric Ravenscraft

Eli & Elm Side Sleeper for $116: The Eli & Elm Side Sleeper pillow is one of the firmest pillows right out of the box of any we’ve tested. You can remove some of the excess fill if you want to reduce that firmness, but if you’re the type of person who likes feeling like they’re sleeping on a very soft rock, this is the pillow for you. It’s not quite big enough for multiple people to cuddle up with, like our Honeydew pick, but for a single person, it’s a great option. —Eric Ravenscraft

Bearaby Cuddler for $229: Bearaby is best known for its weighted blankets, eye masks, and stuffed animals, but it makes other sleep products like heated pads, throw blankets, and the body pillow I tested, the Cuddler. At 75 inches long and 8 inches in diameter, with a filling of plant-based Melofoam, an all-natural foam made from rubber-tree sap, it’s unlike any other pillow fill I’ve slept on. It’s heavier than a stuffed pillow but lighter than memory foam and has a rubbery, bouncy quality. Its springy fill, skinny body, and extraordinary length made it fit awkwardly on the bed, but its bouncy quality and ability to conform into many shapes may make this an attractive pick for some side sleepers.

Not Recommended

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Alwyn Home Butcher Fiber Plush Pillow for $56: This 90 x 19-inch pillow disappoints. It’s egregiously long, which could be helpful for people who are taller or those who like more all-around body support. However, it just doesn’t have enough stuffing to fill 90 inches. The batting inside feels like typical fluffy batting found in homemade pillows, but it bunches throughout the pillow in clumps, leaving gaps where no filling reaches. These gaps often happen where your limbs rest, thus defeating the purpose of having a body pillow for support. The pillow is only about 2 inches deep and didn’t seem to ever spring up after I took it out of the box. I had to shake and knead the fiber to help make it more uniform throughout the inside of the pillow, but it did little to help.

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The Ultrahuman Home is a futuristic-looking home environment monitor that tracks air quality, light, sound, and temperature. All this data flows into the Ultrahuman app on your phone, offering potential insights into your environment and suggestions on how you could make it healthier. Sadly, this mostly amounts to reminders to crack a window open, because most of the touted features are not yet present and correct, despite the rather hefty $550 price.

Ultrahuman made its name with a subscription-free smart ring that made biohacking more affordable (though it may soon be banned in the US due to a lawsuit from Oura). The Home monitor may seem like a strange sidestep, but if you’re going to hack your body, why not your environment? After all, we know air quality, light and sound exposure, and temperature and humidity can impact our sleep and general health.

Setup and Tracking

Taking a leaf from Apple’s playbook, the Ultrahuman Home is a 4.7-inch anodized aluminum block with rounded corners (it looks like a Mac Mini). There’s an Ultrahuman logo and light sensor on top, a power button and LED on the front, and a USB-C port on the back flanked by privacy switches to turn off the microphone or connectivity (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth).

Setup is super simple: Plug it in and add it via the Ultrahuman app. The Home gets its own tab at the bottom of the Ultrahuman app, alongside the ring, and if you tap on it, you’ll get a score out of 100, indicating how healthy your environment is. Scroll down for a breakdown of the four scores that combine to create your overall Home score (air quality, environmental comfort, light exposure, and UV exposure).

Ultrahuman via Simon Hill

Ultrahuman via Simon Hill

To compile all this data, the Ultrahuman Home is packed with sensors:

• Air quality sensors to track things like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), typically released by cleaning fluids, and carbon dioxide levels (CO₂) that might indicate poor ventilation. They also watch out for formaldehyde (HCHO), carbon monoxide (CO), and smoke.
• Particulate matter sensors to track tiny particles in the air, including things like dust, pollen, mold spores, and particles released by cooking. Covering PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10 (the number refers to the size in microns), the Home warns if you’re in danger of breathing these particles in.
• Temperature and humidity sensors to track how warm or cool it is and how much moisture is in the air. You get a chart of the temperature in your environment and the humidity level.
• Light sensors to track the level of light and also its makeup, including the amount of blue light and ultraviolet (UV) exposure.
• Microphones to track the noise levels in your environment, showing noise in decibels in a chart.

Ultrahuman via Simon Hill

The data is all easy to access and read in the app. You get notifications throughout the day, including alerts if VOC levels spike or there’s prolonged noise. I set the Home up in my office for a few weeks and then tried it for another couple of weeks in my bedroom, after I moved houses. This raises the issue of where to put it, because it must be plugged in and isn’t really designed to be moved around. The bedroom seems like the best bet, but you ideally want both, though I can’t imagine springing for two or more of these to cover all your bases.

Oversensitive and Alarming

Photograph: Simon Hill

The idea of combining body and environment tracking data seems smart, but the Ultrahuman Home doesn’t really do it yet. The touted UltraSync with the Ultrahuman Ring Air is limited to basic common sense advice for now. I don’t think anyone really needs a box to tell them they will sleep better in the dark and quiet, and the air quality advice mostly amounts to opening a window for better ventilation.

President Donald Trump insists he has found a solution to keep TikTok alive in the United States through a group of investors who will buy the short-video app from its Chinese owners in accordance with US law.

But questions remain unresolved about how this will play out and what it means for American users.

Is there actually a deal?

Any sale of TikTok’s US operations would require Chinese owner ByteDance to divest. That would need approval from China’s government, which is reluctant to see a national champion forced out of its largest market as a trade war rages with an increasingly protectionist Trump.

While the Trump administration has insisted that China has accepted a deal for the sale, there has been no confirmation from Beijing. Queries to TikTok and ByteDance have gone unanswered.

“This deal is still very confusing in terms of what is exactly going on,” University of Florida media professor Andrew Selepak told AFP.

Is Trump taking over TikTok?

In an executive order signed on Thursday, the White House outlined a deal centered on key investors with close ties to the president.

Trump has specifically named Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a longtime ally and the world’s second-richest man, as a major player in the arrangement. For decades, Ellison has been one of Silicon Valley’s few high-profile Republicans in a tech sector dominated by liberal politics.

Ellison is returning to the spotlight through his dealings with Trump, who has brought his old friend into major AI partnerships with OpenAI, for example.

The 81-year-old has also backed his son David’s acquisition of Hollywood studio Paramount and is reportedly eyeing Warner Brothers.

The investor group also includes 94-year-old media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who control Fox News.

Whether this signals a conservative rebranding of TikTok—a platform Trump credits with helping him reach young voters—remains unclear. Trump denied this possibility on Thursday.

The prospect of a right-wing shift, or increased government intervention in media, has raised concerns that key platforms are falling under conservative control, potentially limiting diverse viewpoints in a bitterly divided America.

The fate of TikTok will be decided amid major shifts across social media platforms.

Elon Musk has transformed X (formerly Twitter) into a vehicle for far-right politics, driving away many establishment media outlets and liberal users.

Meanwhile, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has aligned with Trump and overhauled content moderation on Facebook and Instagram to address Republican claims of anti-conservative bias.

Why so cheap?

At Thursday’s White House ceremony, Vice President JD Vance pegged the deal at $14 billion. That’s a surprisingly low figure given Twitter’s $44 billion valuation when it sold and TikTok’s unique reach among young consumers in the world’s largest economy.

Bloomberg reporting helped shed light on the modest price tag: unnamed sources indicated that ByteDance would retain significant value through an expensive licensing arrangement, potentially receiving about half of the new company’s profits even if the company would hold just a 20% stake, according to Trump’s plan.

Such terms could trigger alarm in Washington, where some lawmakers could scrutinize whether any sale meets the requirements of the divest-or-ban law that should have taken effect in January but has been repeatedly delayed since Trump took office.

And confusingly, the executive order announced Thursday extended the deadline to ban TikTok until mid-January to finalize a deal that the Trump administration simultaneously claimed was already complete.

John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reiterated this point on Friday and warned that he would be “conducting full oversight over this agreement.”

“ByteDance has shown time and again that it is a bad actor,” he said.

The Trump plan “offers vague assurances about protecting US national security but provides virtually no specifics,” said Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law.

Adding to skepticism: Ellison’s Oracle already manages TikTok’s data servers from an earlier attempt to address US security concerns. Critics question whether this deal changes anything substantive.

© 2025 AFP