Indeed. Even the (discounted) selling price seems a bit much considering that a (spring) mattress is a set of springs with padding top and bottom. Not exactly high tech.
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Personally, I don't like them. For years - decades - firmness was touted. For something that you sleep on to be comfortable, it needs to conform to the contours of the body; anyone who has ever dug a hip hole in the ground will agree.
Although they don't conform well, some of the most comfortable beds I have slept on have been the cheapest of the cheap...a 4" or so mattress made of cotton felt on a spring frame (interlaced steel straps attached to a steel frame with tension helical springs). No firmness here! :)
Someone mentioned hammocks: I find them comfortable especially Mayan string hammocks.
No one mentioned straw: it is not comfortable.
Personally, I have been happy with water for the last 30 years.
I read the whole CR article. It pretty much sucked, as I had expected.
They only tested a handful of mattresses, which, of course, doesn't include the one I bought or the one which I was comparing it to.
They did describe the sleazy mattress selling process, in that they on purpose confuse the buyer, and they said, more than a few times, that you should pay roughly about half what the asking price is.
They did objectively measure the firmness, and found that almost zero of the tested mattresses corresponded to what the marketing people said it would be like, so they said any manufacturer indication of firmness was totally useless.
They also objectively measured wear (with a huge roller going over the bed 30,000 times), but again, all that great testing is useless when I can't find the mattress they've tested in the stores.
They said a box spring is a box spring is a box spring, and even suggested re-using an old box spring instead of buying a new one (they called it the "foundation").
They did say you never know a bed until you sleep in it, but, in the store, the best you can do is lay it for at least
15 minutes, which, they said, kind of pretty much sort of roughly corresponds to sleeping overnight (with a huge margin of error, based on their surveys).
That is what you said starting out. You said you sleep on the floor and are only getting a mattress so that your guest won't feel they're putting you out. Now you're redefining your request, asking for the longest lasting, best-made, most comfortable mattress. (Why else count springs, after all? And why else care about whether you can flip it over?)
This is starting to sound to me like a case of the rationalist and the pea. :) If you're not *too* picky then foam should be the best deal. If you're looking for top quality comfort it *will* cost you dearly.
I was teasing, but, while we're at it I would argue that quality is just about as subjective as comfort.....
We bought a queen set 2 yrs ago at local furniture store, one of two independent stores in our town. $700+. Both stores are locally owned, in business for many years, and have large selections of mattresses. One issue with them is that they are the thickest (and cheapest) at this store, and wrestling fitted sheets onto them isn't easy. I avoid foam because I want as much air flow as possible.
If you are shopping mainly for visitors, I would consider their ages, weight (generally...go firmer for heavier people) and any conditions like arthritis. Firm mattress (for back) with some soft covering (bony people or very thin need some padding). Inner spring is my ideal, just out of habit and history.
I never used the term "top quality", and, anyway, that your suggestion of buying top quality is not at all the same thing as "understanding quality".
One is an object. The other is a process of making a decision.
I've made my decision. I hope it was the right one under the circumstances. The CR thread was helpful in that it pretty much said what I had thought all along, which is that a mattress is a mattress is a mattress unless you can actually test it overnight and with their 30,000 roller press (which you can't).
If I was looking at a Picasso painting, then I would have to agree.
But, if I was looking at a block of wood for a stated purpose, I'm sure the number of knots, the cracks, the hardness, etc, would all be part of a simple quality metric.
Same with beds. There are simple quality metrics, but not many.
It turns out that buying a mattress is pretty easy, since you can't reliably test them for comfort anyway (CR had lackluster results with 1/4 of the people who lay on them for 15 minutes in the store).
Sure, you can kick the tires (ie bounce on the bed a few times), but that won't tell you all that much, and, CR showed that the manufacturers' designation of firmness was totally useless (they tested it objectively with a foot-wide yellow circular press).
Anyway, I already bought it, so, it will arrive today. Thanks for all the advice.
While I was at the store, getting mine for 1/2 the listed price, a guy came in, bounced on a few beds, and picked one, and paid full price (three times what I paid). The other salesperson gave him the upsell, and, Wow. He bought it all! Some people have a lot of money to spend!
I agree. I want standard queen-sized sheets to fit. So, I opted for a normal thickness mattress, which the manufacturer qualified as "cushion firm", but who knows how firm it really is.
I liked the advice from the saleslady that you can always make a bed softer but you can't make it firmer. So I opted for the "cushion firm", which, as CR stated, means nothing (but it doesn't have extra layers of foam on top of gel on top of foam, etc).
I googled for prices and it seems I couldn't find the price I paid anywhere so, at least I didn't get badly ripped off.
The mattress I bought was the "Sealy Posturepedic AP 704 Cushion Firm" which has 704 coils (at the time, I had thought that coil count matters but CR said it didn't matter at all).
I would argue that coil count does matter, especially if it is a softer mattress....logic tells me that it will conform to one's shape better than matt. with fewer coils.
That's probably true. I maybe should have opted for a double-sided mattress, but the two places I tried (Costo + Mattress Discounters) didn't sell any.
I have no idea where a hotel-supply store would be.
Like any quality metric, the devil is in the details.
The problem with coil count is that you don't have the wire gauge information. So, you can get a coil count of 704 with a thin wire gauge, which might be equivalent to a coil count of, say, 500, with a thick wire gauge.
So, coil count is only half the metric. They don't give you the other half, so, it's (nearly) useless.
Anyway, mine is 704 coils for a Queen mattress. I have no idea what the wire gauge is though.
Probably a good decision. If you are 5'4" or less, you may find it difficult to get up onto the taller bed. OTOH, if you are taller, it is still easy to get on to the lower bed.
Good start. In the winter, we like Jersey sheets. Even WalMart has them at reasonable price. There are some nice microfiber sheets too. Good prices at Amazon and Overstock.
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