Hi all,
I’ve been reading the site and forums for a couple days. I’m looking at a king size memory foam bed. I’m 5’11 and about 190 at the moment, my wife doesn’t care what I get as she can sleep on a pile of boxes and be comfortable.
I live in Madison WI and I’ve been sleeping on a Verlo pillow top for 7 years, it’s completely shot at this point and I’m looking to upgrade. I have both neck and back problems for various reasons so I need something with good support.
I am looking at either the sitka or kodiak gel foam mattresses from Verlo. The exact specs are already on another thread, but basicall it goes like this:
Kodiak is 13": 3" gel foam, 2" mem foam, 2" transition layer, and 6" acellaflex for $1900 including a box spring
Sitka is 11": 3" gel foam, 2" mem foam, 6" acellaflex for $1700.
The Ultimate Dreams gel foam bed is very tempting, but they say it’s similar to the Cloud Luxe which I just tried out at a skeezy big box and I found it to be too soft by far. Is the difference in materials enough to make it more firm? Obviously at $700 for the Ultimate Dreams is substantially cheaper, but that doesn’ tmean much if it isn’t supportive enough and/or uncomfortable for me.
Anyone who has purchased the U.D. gel foam bed want to chime in on how soft it is?
I found great sales support from Verlo, but in the end went latex. It sounds like it’s a good thing that I did since you apparently didn’t get a lot more from a dual sided (I assume) verlo than we were getting from single sided S brand.
In my searching I did fid a dealer fro Savvy Rest in the Madison area, but we decided that the 3+hr drive (we are north) would have us in no shape for trying out beds. Also the Savvy dealer had limited ILD’s available. Since you are close I’d suggest trying the Savvy and see how the Med/Soft/firm configuration feels.
Personally, I think this Gel crap is just a marketing gimmick looking to heal the “sleeps hot” reputation of certain foams.
Yeah that could be just marketing, but even so I already sleep with nearly no clothes on and no blankets in the summer anyway lol. And in the winter it’s about 60 degrees in our bedroom, so sleeping warm is fine with me.
Mostly I’m concerned about comfort and support from the mattresses, and then next the expected lifetime of the mattress.
Verlo does give a 10 year warranty, and a 1 year comfort guarantee - the question is it worth $1k more?
I really cooled down with the new latex setup from SleepEz. I typically cannot side sleep as wherever my skin contacts skin I tend to sweat.
I bought a memory foam pillow and with the amount of stink of that thing combined with the goofy feel of a latex mattress the mem foam is out for me. I spent hours at the Verlo store and in the end it was Pure latex Bliss that felt best and what I tried to emulate in my SleepEz custom 13000. Being a bit gunshy about anything lasting, I wanted the ability to zip it open adjust or replace as necessary.
You can see some of my thoughts about the specific construction of the Kodiak in post #4 here.
The Sitka uses the same materials except it eliminates the 1.5 lb convoluted polyfoam layer which may be a little less “risky” construction.
While I understand that these could be very comfortable mattresses … they could also be a little more risky in terms of durability and in terms of value they’re a little on the costly side considering the materials that are in them IMO. I also know though that “value” is more than just the “commodity value” of a mattress and knowing that a mattress matches your needs and preferences (assuming you have tested carefully for both pressure relief, alignment, and your other preferences rather than just testing for “comfort”) and the other benefits and options that are part of the services and options offered by each manufacturer can also be just as important a part of the value of a mattress purchase. Overall I would say that Verlo would be “better than average” but not 'the “best” value available. Of course this is also where each person would need to decide on which parts of their own “personal value equation” are most important to decide on which mattress has the best value for them.
The mattress at mattresses.net uses the same 4 lb memory foam and the same acella-flex base layer but is missing the gel memory foam layer so it would stand to reason that it would be less costly … and also firmer. An online purchase of a mattress can also be a little more risky unless you have the chance to test a similar mattress at Verlo.
Some of the online “value references” I use for memory foam mattresses are listed in post #12 here. I normally dd about 20% to the cost of an online mattress compared to the cost of a similar local mattress to get to “equivalent value” because of the extra risk involved in an online purchase. Of course each person may have a different risk tolerance and may add more or less to reflect their own risk tolerance and their comfort level with an online purchase.
Dreamfoam themselves have indicated and most of the forum feedback has indicated as well that their 13" gel memory foam mattress is a little firmer than the Cloud Luxe and somewhere in between the Cloud Luxe and the Cloud Supreme. It probably wouldn’t be suitable for someone that didn’t want a softer mattress.
Some of the better options I’m aware of in the Madison area are listed in post #5 here and two of them are also members of this site which means that I believe that they are among the best quality/value in the country. the rest of the thread may be well worth reading as well.
I have a feeling that almost all latex mattresses are out of my price range There is a dealer for those beds right down the street, but there’s not much point as I’m not able to pay those prices anyway.
Anyone have any opinions about the 3 mattresses I mentioned in my earlier post?
Phoenix,
Do you know if the other beds that you x-linked (the EcoSense and EcoSleep) are of the same manufacture as the current batch of verlo beds? It doesn’t appear so, just because those two don’t mention anything about gel memory foam.
Well… except here: Latex Mattresses On Sale - Latex Mattress Toppers - Phoenix, AZ
“Introducing Talalay GL latex derived memory foam product totally made in the U.S.A. Latex International has created the most breathable memory foam on the market and will help you sleep cooler with it’s gel like features and latex foam construction.”
EcoSense is the Gold Bond version of Ecosleep and Verlo uses the same materials but each may have options that the other two don’t have. They all use cool contour and accella-flex for example. While they aren’t listed on the Ecosleep site here … you can see some of their gel memory foam mattresses here
The Ecosleep mattresses at mattresses.net have a confusing description to me. The main page talks about Talalay GL but if you click on either of the options it has the description of their regular cool contour memory foam mattresses. I’ll have to call him when I have a chance to see which one of the descriptions is correct.
Just what sort of budget do you have? Can you afford to do this all over again in a handful of years?
The PLB nutrition at Wi Rapids is $1498 for queen set. Not a bad price at all. I think they only stock in Green Bay warehouse though so you may end up with 2 trips if you want one.
The Sleepez queen 13000 with their foundtaion will just top $2k. Scale back to the 10000 and you should be less than the Verlo sets that you mentioned.
The idea behind shopping is to test and find something that works regardless of price. You then bneed to decide if it is worth the price or if you can custom “build” something close for much less.
Beloit Mattress also seems to have decent pricing on their mattresses and they are a manufacturer. To me their comfort layers were a bit on the thin side and the 4 hr drive made it impractical, but if they were closer I’d have been there to test.
Phoenix,
do you know if you can adjust the Ultimate Dreams gel foam bed for firmness? I have seen other posts where people say they have picked a “number” for firmness… or is that just the latex based beds?
Thanks!
TD-Max, so far I have only laid on 1 latex bed at the verlo store but I didn’t really care for the feel of it in general. I’m not sure how it stacks up against other latex beds however.
I did not care for the Verlo one either. There’s just something “wrong” with the way it felt to me. Probably too soft and too thin a top layer so what happens is insufficient support for small of back and sinking through too close to core would be my guess. There was no question that the PLB nutrition felt much better.
I really wanted to buy from Verlo as the salesman was great and we had talked 3 years ago when I got my first Stearns warranty set. I just couldn’t find anything that worked except for maybe the Grandeur and I just did not want an innerspring. I really wanted air for the adjustable core, but could not find one with the correct combination of comfort layers to make it work and they are also overpriced…
I just talked with EcoSleep for a LONG time, she was super super nice given that they don’t actually even sell directly to customers lol. Their main retailer is http://www.us-mattress.com/
I am also fairly sure that Verlo is using their mattresses still, even though the person I spoke to didn’t know. The materials and layouts of the memory foam mattresses are exactly the same as EcoSleep’s line.
EcoSleep sold through US-mattress however appears to be much cheaper.
Thanks for pointing them out Phoenix Is us-mattress one of your preferred vendors?
