Hi RandomSanity,
Thanks for the update on your search.
[quote]Novosbed sounds good, but I have a lot of worries about this company. Theyâve been around for 7 years making these mattresses but there are very very few reviews online, compared to the relatively newer Casper and other companies that have been in business for only 2-3 years and have hundreds/thousands of reviews. Aside from this, searching around on The Mattress Underground I see that there have been several negative comments about them that have been removed or edited by administrators. Phoenix, youâve always adamantly defended them in these cases and it sounds as though your opinion may be biased (sorry!) because you are friends with the owner.
If anyone else has owned a Novosbed, I would really appreciate some opinions before I deal with them, as I would like to try their sleep trial but Iâm still skeptical.[/quote]
Hopefully some of the members here that own a Novosbed will see your post and share some comments but I would always keep in mind that you are the only one that can feel what you feel on a mattress and I would be cautious about about using other peopleâs experiences or reviews on a mattress (either positive or negative) or review sites in general as a reliable source of information or guidance about how you will feel on the same mattress or how suitable or how durable a mattress may be for you and in many if not most cases they can be more misleading than helpful because most consumers have little knowledge about mattresses and mattress materials or how to assess the quality of the materials in a mattress and any mattress that would be a perfect choice for one person or even a larger group of people may be completely unsuitable for someone else to sleep on (even if they are in a similar weight range). In other words ⌠reviews in general certainly wonât tell you much if anything about the suitability, quality, durability, or âvalueâ of a mattress for any particular person (see post #13 here). Reading reviews is among the worst says to choose a good quality/value mattress.
When I first started this site about 5 years ago now (with less than 10 members) I was determined that I would never become a âreview siteâ which was providing misleading and inaccurate information and/or promoting specific mattresses based primarily on the referral fees they received regardless of the quality or value of the mattress and that donât provide the type of more objective information that can help people to learn more meaningful ways to differentiate between the quality, durability, and value of the many options that are available in the market.
I have always defended (and will continue to defend) good manufacturers from the type of unreasonable criticism that is common with reviews that are posted by many consumers that often have no idea about the quality or value of the mattress they purchased or that have unreasonable expectations about the mattress they purchased or the company they purchased from. My defense or criticisms of both consumer reviews and manufacturers or retailers are based on objective and factual information and on âpreponderance of the evidenceâ that is the result of thousands of hours of research that comes from working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for over 5 years and the knowledge and experience of many people that have been involved in all areas of the industry for decades. In other words the information here has nothing to do with the ownership of a company, how I feel about them, or whether I even know them because the information that I share on the forum and on the site is self evident once you you have learned what to look for. The majority of the mattresses that are purchased as a result of the information on this site are from manufacturers and retailers that arenât members of this site and that in many cases may not even know they are discussed here.
Making a choice or excluding a choice based on whether âsomeone knows someoneâ or is âfriendsâ with someone would certainly make absolutely no sense.
While I do recommend the members here âas a groupâ because I believe that they compete well with the best in the industry in terms of their quality, value, service, knowledge, and transparency ⌠there are also many other sources of good quality/value mattresses as well that arenât members of this site (at least yet). Most of the manufacturers and retailers that ask to become members donât even qualify for membership (you can see some of the criteria here)
In the case of Novosbed they have only been a member of this site for a couple of weeks since they launched their new mattress but like many other manufacturers that arenât members of the site they have been making high quality and good value mattresses that would be well worth considering for years.
I should also mention that I donât edit memberâs posts unless they are against the rules of the forum.
Hopefully you are here to learn "howâ to choose a good quality/value mattress based on more objective and meaningful criteria that have nothing to do with any specific mattress that anyone else (including me) may ârecommendâ (although I never recommend specific manufacturers or mattresses). It may also be worth reading post #2 here and some of the other posts it links to which goes into much more detail about comments that are similar to your own that some of the members here have made over the years.
In any case you are always free to use whatever information that you find valuable on this or any other site (and of course ignore any information that you donât find valuable) but there is a great deal of information available here that can certainly help you make the âbest possibleâ choice regardless of any specific criteria that are important to you.
Convoluted foam removes a much larger percentage of the material (almost half) in the layer than the air channels (which would have little effect on durability) and the convoluted foam in the Loom & Leaf is also only one of the lower quality materials in their mattress (the quilting foam and the lower density base foam are the others) so the combined effect would be greater.
Phoenix