My girlfriend and I are shopping around for mattresses, she has a very bad back and needs something that will more cradle her body. We found that the Serta Icomfort Intrigue and the Sealy Optimum Radiance both gave her back relief when we tried them in the stores. However, after finding and reading on this site I realized there is a whole other mattress world out there I did not know about. So after some more research and searching I came across the DreamFoam gel mattress and thought it looked great, and would save me $500, which is a very nice bonus! What my question to you all is, how would these mattresses compare in that “cradle” department and what is the main difference between these models. I know that the DreamFoam is made with 4lb and 5lb foam over a lesser base foam, what I could not find is what the Serta and Sealy are made with that give them that support my girlfriend really needs. Thank you all for any help you can give and thank you Phoenix for providing so much information and support!
Hi IceDragon22,
You’ve probably read this but just in case the first place I would start your research is post #1 here.
As you can read in post #2 here … it’s not usually possible to match one mattress to another in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) outside of your own personal side by side testing or unless a manufacturer or retailer has enough specific experience with both to make accurate comparisons between them in terms of “feel”, quality of materials, or design. Without this, if the thickness, type, and quality of materials in both (assuming that all the specs of both are available to you) are the same they may “approximate” each other in terms of how they feel or perform but this is not really reliable because each type and variation of foam has it’s own properties so it would be more of a comparison in terms of quality or value (not suitability) and only a very rough “approximation” in terms of feel and performance (if the two mattresses used the same type and density of materials in the same layer thicknesses).
Serta and Sealy don’t normally disclose the contents of their mattresses which makes them difficult to compare to other mattresses (which of course is the idea). Sometimes though this information is available through various sources.
I’m not familiar with an iComfort Intrigue although Serta did at one point make a Pure Response mattress called the Intrigue which was made with talalay latex (I don’t know the exact layers).
You can see some details of the Sealy Optimum Radiance in post #48 here.
It contains …
2" of 3.7 lb gel memory foam
2" of 4 lb memory foam
6" of 1.5 lb polyfoam
I’m not sure which of the Dreamfam mattresses you are looking at but if it’s the 13" Gel memory foam then it contains …
3" of 4 lb gel memory foam
2" of 5 lb memory foam
8" of 1.5 lb polyfoam
As you can see the Dreamfoam uses the same or higher quality/durability materials as the Sealy Optimum Radiance.
I don’t know how these would compare in terms of “feel” but Dreamfoam has said that their 13" gel memory foam mattress has a similar “feel” to the Tempurpedic Cloud Luxe (just a bit firmer) so if you were to test this you could “extrapolate” how it compared to the two mattresses you mentioned based on your own personal experience.
Phoenix