I am in the market for a full mattress for a guest bedroom where my relative will use it 2 months out of the year and is 6ft tall and about 200 pounds. Seven years ago, I spent $300 on a “doorbuster” base grade “S” brand mattress and box spring that my relative has used for 14 months total. He complains that he feels the springs. Surprisingly, It doesn’t sag, but there is little “cushion” or padding above the coils, so you are basically laying down on coils I bought an inexpensive foam mattress topper that he says helps a little bit, but I think he would prefer a new mattress. Would the Simmons Adda in the link below be an improvement and a good solution for this situation?
How many months would this mattress last for someone of his weight? Obviously if it was a full time mattress, I would choose latex or memory foam, but that’s not cost effective in this situation.
Costco has a Sealy Posturepedic 600 coil count firm mattress for around $400 with box spring.
The first place I would start with any mattress search is the tutorial post here which has all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that can help you make the best possible choice in any budget range … and know how and why to avoid the worst ones. As you can see in the guidelines here … I don’t recommend any major brand mattress or any manufacturer that doesn’t disclose the quality of the materials inside it.
The weak link of most mattresses is the foam on top of the innersprings and with a mattress where there is little foam there would be less material to develop impressions but of course the tradeoff is that you will feel the springs more. If the mattress is still in good condition and has a firm and flat sleeping surface with no soft spots or sagging then it may be worth considering a better quality topper. If you do decide to go in this direction then post #2 here and the topper guidelines that it links to will be helpful.
I don’t know for sure of course because I don’t know anything about your current mattress but it most likely has thicker padding than your current mattress and it also has pocket coils so it would probably be an improvement in terms of feeling the coils.
The useful life of a mattress will depend on a combination of many variables including the quality of the materials in the mattress and on the person sleeping on it. A mattress that may last a matter of a few months for one person may last for years for someone else (see post #2 here). If you know the type and quality of the materials inside a mattress then you can make meaningful comparisons between mattresses and you can have a better idea which of the two will likely last longer but there isn’t a formula that can assign a specific number of years to any specific combination of a mattress and the person sleeping on it. There is more about all the variables that can affect the durability and useful life of a mattress in post #2 here.
In the case of both mattresses that you are looking at though … Neither Simmons or Sealy disclose the quality of the materials inside their mattresses so it’s not really possible to make any meaningful comments about either one but it would be safe to assume based on their “norms” that the quality of the polyfoam layers in both of them would be very low and that both would have obvious weak links in their materials. This means that in normal use you could probably measure the useful life of these types of mattresses as a matter of “a few months” to “a few years” depending on the person and the suitability of the mattress and anything more than that would be “bonus time”. Of course as a temporary use mattress then it would last longer than if it was used every night.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend either one or any “blind purchase” where you have no idea about the quality/durability of what you are buying except perhaps having a good idea that it is very low.