Air Mattress Shopping - What I Learned

[phoenix]

Hi awill,

Welcome to the Mattress Forum!

Thank you for taking the time to provide such a detailed accounting of your search for an air mattress.

I’ll add a few comments to what you’ve already contributed.

My partner and I decided we wanted an air mattress. We went to the local Sleep Number store and tried all the beds. The sales people are very nice and try hard to sell you a bed. Whatever you do walk away! Don’t make a big purchase like this quickly. I went online and started researching other brands and quickly realized there are much cheaper options!

Just like shopping for an innerspring mattress or a foam mattress, education is key, and you need to know about all of the componentry and foam layers within any mattress you’re considering, and you can use the guidelines in the mattress shopping tutorial for this. You tip on taking your time is a good one!

The beds are the same on Best Beds, Air Beds Unlimited, and Innomax.

Yes, these are facilitated through the Specialty Sleep Services location on Ealti Street in Denver, CO. Innomax is the main brand there, but I can’t speak to exactness of each mattress on the online retail sites you mentioned, as they are very short on meaningful information.

Personal Comfort and Habitat have their own unique type of mattresses

Personal Comfort is made by American National, and Habitat is from US WaterMattresses.

But, Selectabed and Mattress Mill are in a whole different ball game! The offer independent lumbar support.

Yes, both of these have a separate adjustment for the middle third of the mattress. I have talked with Rick before at Air-Pedic (Selectabed) about the design and I like that they have a separate air chamber under the lumbar/pelvis area which can help offset any sagging in the middle of an airbed which can be a fairly common experience with airbeds … especially with softer settings.

I bought a king Infinity Platinum air mattress (Mattress Mill) with medium latex + firm latex on one side and memory foam + medium latex on the other.

I’m happy that you had such a pleasant experience dealing with Mattress Mill, and most of all, congratulations on your new mattress purchase! :cheer: I’m looking forward to hearing about your experience with the mattress once you’ve had a chance to sleep upon it for a while.

For others considering air mattresses, you can see some of my general comments about air mattresses here. While any mattress can be a good match for a specific person because each person’s needs and preferences or the criteria that are most important to them can be very different, in general terms I advise caution to consider them unless there is a very compelling reason that an airbed would be a better choice in “real life” (outside of the many “marketing stories” that you will hear about them) than the many other options or types of mattresses that are available to you. For those that are committed to an airbed, there are additional listings of airbed options that are detailed in post #3 here .

Phoenix