Hi tracyamor,
The most important part of knowing the quality and value of a mattress is to know the density of the foam layers that are in it. This is what determines its quality and value and could be a more important difference between the two mattresses than the extra 2’ of height. The guidelines I use for memory foam mattresses are listed in post #10 here.
Since the Sams Club listing doesn’t include the density of the base layer (criteria #3) I would normally not consider it unless you called them and they could tell you what it was on a phone call (and they are not very knowledgeable about these things).
The Aerus Natura Plush 10" supposedly uses 3" of 4 lb Aerus (medium density/quality) over 7" of polyfoam (this is the intelliform) but they don’t disclose the density of this layer.
If there is a 3" layer of 4 lb memory foam then in a queen size this should weigh 33.3 lbs.
The complete mattress including the cover weighs 44.6 lbs.
This means that the polyfoam base layer would weigh 44.6 - 33.3 = 11.3 lbs.
The 7" polyfoam (intelliform) base layer is 19.4 cubic feet in volume.
So 11.3 / 19.4 = .58 lbs which is not possible because there is no polyfoam that has this low density and this doesn’t even take the weight of the cover off.
If the weight is correct then there is no way that it uses 4 lb Aerus.
Even if the memory foam was only 3 lbs then the base polyfoam layer would only work out to about 1.0 lb which is still very unlikely.
Something is very wrong here and the specs just don’t add up. I would not buy this mattress unless I knew which of the numbers (either theweight or the foam densities) was incorrect.
The Aerus Natural Ultra-Luxe 12" supposedly uses the same 3" of 4 lb Aerus memory foam and then has 9" of polyfoam (Intelliform) for the base layer.
The 3" layer of 4 lb memory foam then in a queen size would also weigh 33.3 lbs.
The complete mattress including the cover weighs 70.0 lbs (queen)
This means that the polyfoam base layer would weigh 70.0 - 33.3 = 36.7 lbs.
The 7" polyfoam (intelliform) base layer is 25 cubic feet in volume.
So 36.7 / 25 = 1.47 which if you accounted for the cover would be a little lower yet (probably in the range of 1.3 - 1.4 lbs) which is possible but a very low quality/density base layer.
This “makes sense” but is certainly not a mattress that I would say uses good quality materials other than the Aerus itself. I would be very suspicious of any mattress that used less than 1.8 lb polyfoam in the base layer and even the lowest cost mattresses generally would use a minimum of 1.5 lbs.
I think you could do better … but no matter what you are looking at you need to make sure that the retailer you are buying from will tell you the density or quality specs of every layer in your mattress. This will save you from buying some very low quality mattresses.
Phoenix