so absolutecomfortonsale came through with the foam sample - in fact i don’t remember when i requested it, but it seems like only maybe 3 days ago - super fast !
initial impression - feels great.
i will now weigh it and estimate the desnity, but for now here is a pic !
this pic is to give you the idea of the color only - i did NOT press my hand on the foam - i’m just using my skin color as a reference, along with white paper and a magazine.
picture taken with galaxy note 2 phone with natural daylight from the window.
so i compared this foam to my 19 ILD talalay from Brooklyn Bedding …
this 12 ILD foam actually appears to provide more support than 19 ILD talalay.
by the way i weighed the talalay topper and it was 22 pounds, but taking a pound off for the cover we have 21 lbs / 5.5 cu ft = 3.8 lbs per cubic foot.
so we’re comparing 7.8 lbs foam to a 3.8 lbs foam and 7.8 lbs foam has more support - i guess this shouldn’t be shocking, except for 12 ILD versus 19 ILD
you know Phoenix this goes back to what i said about the Brooklyn Bedding 19 ILD being as soft as 14 ILD PLB topper …
if BB 19 topper actually is ~ 14 frankly that makes me a bit worried about their 36 topper that i should be getting this friday …
anyway on friday i get the 36 BB and on monday i get the 24 Talalay GL from Arizona Premium so at that point on monday i will know for a fact whether BB has messed up or if it’s just me
by the way there is only about 3 seconds of memory effect on this foam which is supposed to be the slowest one foamex makes …
when i lay on a good tempurpedic i got up from the bed and looked back and my body impression was still there. it probably took 20 seconds to go away. this foam seems to have only about one fifth the memory effect of tempurpedic.
considering that tempurpedic outperforms the most expensive memory foam on the market i can only conclude that tempurpedic is worth the money - if you can afford it that is - and if you can afford to buy a new one every few years.
i frankly can’t afford to buy a $3,000 tempurpedic every 5 years but if i could i would have.
my original plan with this project was to outperform the tempurpedic for less than half the price. then it changed to outperform PLB world’s best bed for the price of PLB nature. i still hope i will be able to accomplish the latter, but i now see i could never even match tempurpedic regardless of budget - the kind of material they use is simply not available.
so anyway i think this 12 ild memory foam is better than my 19 ild talalay - it doesn’t have much memory effect or creep to speak of but also doesn’t have any bounce. if i pound it with my fist when its on my desk the whole desk shakes and the 1" foam doesn’t bottom out and the impact is completely absorbed in the foam - i can neither feel the table under the 1" foam when pounding it nor can i feel any bounce. i can certainly see how this could be of benefit in a high vibration environment like a space shuttle launch.
when i hit it - it feels almost as firm as my 50 ILD foam, minus the bounce …
on the other hand a 2" topper of this thing is $569 versus $229 for the talalay of same size … we’ll see …
also, it is sticky to the touch and in fact my fingers are getting stuck to the keyboard right now after handling it LOL
but it doesn’t seem to have any objectionalble smell ! it’s a bit hard to judge with a small sample like this, but what little smell there is smells more like air freshener or perfume than paint. i can generally smell things pretty good and i could certainly smell the PLB and i can smell my talalay topper - although both have a pleasant “sweet” smell, but it was very noticeable with talalay.
finally i tried breathing through it and didn’t have much problem with it. i compared its airflow with my 19 ild talalay and my 50 ild HD foam. the 8LB memory had least airflow but it wasn’t a night and day difference - i would estimate that 19 ILD talalay had about twice the airflow of this memory foam and the 50 ILD HD foam had about twice the airflow of talalay.
even so this memory foam is quite breathable - much more so than i had expected from all the horror stories about memory foam.
For someone where the recovery speed in a specific memory foam in a certain temperature range is the most important consideration … then this could certainly be true for that person (along with other memory foam formulations that were slower responding) regardless of any other pros and cons of Tempurpedic memory foam or its quality compared to other memory foam formulations.
You may not fully understand what “creep” is because all memory foam or viscoelastic materials have higher levels of creep. They also all have high hysteresis (ability to absorb energy) and low resilience and they also all feel different depending on the speed of compression (just like water or honey will feel very firm if you slap it but very soft if you sink into it slowly).
amazing material - the only problem ( aside from price ) is that the amazing feel of this foam will be ruined by layers above and below it.
the combination of surface softness and deep support is unbelievable. the surface is so soft you can barely feel it at all but once you push about halfway into it suddenly it starts to resist. this is in stark contrast to some cheap old worn out foam that i have from an old bed where the suface is hard but if you push through the surface it just collapses. i was skeptical of Foamex claim that this foam has a support factor of 3.3 but now i don’t doubt it.
also i looked at the cell structure closely ( no i don’t have a microscope - i used 2.00+ glasses which did the trick ) and it is extremely open - i could see about 2 or 3 layers of cells INTO the foam because of how open the cells were - it is almost like fiber batting and not a foam - in fact i don’t undestand how they got it to be this heavy considering how open it is
they clearly pulled out all the stops on this foam - like i said, the only problem is its performance will not translate well into overall sleeping system performance because other mattress components will not be able to keep up with it - the wool topper on top of it will not be nearly as soft and point elastic / responsive and the talalay below it will not be as supportive - so this foam will be bottlenecked by the rest of the mattress.
this is why tempurpedic has such a huge advantage - they can really make sure the layers work synergistically and not bottleneck each other because they custom manufacture each layer.
by the way i think cell open-ness is not just good for ventilation - i think it is also good for pressure relief - the more open the structure them more it can be deformed. the downside is of course that the more open the structure the less support it has, so that is why this foam needs such large density - to be able to combine support with open structure and do so using soft plastic. this foam is the real deal.
i forgot that latex has pincore holes in it since mine is in a nonremovable topper, so i realized my airflow testing methodology was inappropriate.
i retested the airflow ( i use a pipe similar in dimensions to that from a vacuum cleaner ) to blow air using my mouth through the foam. the pipe is constant diameter and my lungs have a constant volume so by noting how long it takes me to empty my lungs through the foam pressed against this 1" diameter pipe i get an idea of relative airflow of different foams …
so the updated results are talalay and HD poly foam are about the same - takes only about 2 seconds to empty the lungs through it. but the Venus airflow is less - takes about 6 seconds. this despite the fact that Venus is only 1" thick sample while the other foams are thicker.
so i would have to conclude that an equally thick 2" sample would probably have about 1/4 th the airflow of 19 ILD talalay.
on the other hand in a real life the foam would be compressed, and those pincore holes would be as well so these tests may not have any relevance to performance in real life.