Coil Count w/microcoil

[phoenix]

Hi fitchm,

Ryan is the expert about their own mattresses and could tell you much more that I could and good manufacturers are always the best resource for questions about their own mattresses but I can give you a bit of generic information that may be helpful.

Is there a point beyond which the number of coils doesn’t make a difference in terms of support/longetivity? I need to go back and test more extensively, but I’m unsure what the practical difference would be between 800 coils and 1080 coils when both models have 1353 microcoils in the comfort layer and the comfort layers are different.

You can read more about the factors involved in durability in post #4 here and as you can see the “weak link” of a mattress is rarely the innerspring even with much lower coil counts than either of these. The difference between these two innersprings is much less about the different coil counts and much more because they are completely different types of innersprings which will feel and perform differently from each other. The Symetrics is an open offset coil which uses helicals and the Comfortcore is a pocket coil which doesn’t use helicals and flex more independently. Coil count is not a meaningful way to compare different coils as you can see in this article.

The Softtech microcoils are also a type of pocket coil that is designed specifically for use in comfort layers rather than support layers. While they are also combined with various types of foam and aren’t used by themselves … they are more breathable than any foam.

One of the reasons I’m hesitant to switch to all foam is that it seems to change as it warms up and that how it sleeps is dependent on ambient temps.

This would certainly be true of memory foam (and gel memory foam) which is a slow response foam but fast response foams like polyfoam and latex are not temperature dependent or responsive. There are also many factors involved in how well a mattress regulates humidity and temmperature besides just the foam used which you can read about in post #2 here and post #29 here.

Can one lie on a foam bed long enough in a showroom to get a decent sense of how it will actually sleep? If so, what is a decent time range? It feels like a leap of faith to get a foam bed.

There are so many variations of memory foam that it would depend to a large part on the specific version that you are testing. Once again the manufacturer will know more about their own specific materials than anyone else. In addition to this … many of the gel foams are thermally conductive and only cooler until temperatures equalize at which point they become insulators so they may have a benefit early in the night but not so much later in the night. Don’t forget too that almost every mattresses you have slept on was probably a “foam bed” of some kind because in almost all cases the layers that you are sleeping on are some type of foam regardless of whether the support layers below them are an innerspring, polyfoam, latex, or any other support system. The key is which type of foam and what other temperature regulating factors are part of the mattress.

A good test with memory foam performance would normally be a little longer than the typical 15 minutes I normally suggest for fast response foams (say 20 - 30 minutes) and this will give you a good idea of how it will perform for the most part in similar ambient conditions as are in the showroom. Beyond this though to predict how it may perform for you over the course of the night in terms of temperature regulation would depend on knowing the details of all the layers and components of the mattress and the direct experience and customer feedback from a good manufacturer.

Phoenix