Hi there, how do you feel your product compares to a Berkeley Ergonomics mattress? I’m contemplating a hybrid mattress, and am just starting in my research - as a side/back sleeper, who thought I liked firm mattresses, I suspect what I really need is a medium firmness mattress. My previous mattress was a softsided waterbed and right now we’re making do with a futon but the futon is a lot more firm than I remember it being (it’s foam wrapped in cotton if I remember right).
I was wondering how the Arizona Premium Mattress does with motion transfer, as both myself and my husband suffer bouts of insomnia and restlessness.
Boy did you reach out to right person on this one since my first job in the mattress industry was working for the company that invented the soft sided waterbed back in the 70’s. For 20 years I slept on the soft sided waterbed myself but of course you always had some motion with it which is why I turned to latex because it offers the contouring feel of a waterbed but without any motion. Berkeley makes several models so without knowing which one you are referring to it’s hard to make a direct comparison. Our hybrid mattresses use a pocket coil spring which by themselves keep motion transfer to a minimum and coupled with 3" of latex on top also keeps motion in check. It’s still a spring and as such will have some bounce to it.
It’s hard for me to make a recommendation without knowing your body weight but generally speaking a “medium” firmness would be the catch all for a back/side combo sleeper. I’m pretty much a pure side sleeper about 168 lbs. and can get away with an all soft mattress but find I can also sleep on a medium but no way can I get away with a firm mattress which is why I travel with a 2" soft latex topper just to throw on top of a hotel bed that’s too firm.
I hope this info helps but if you can provide the specs on the Berkeley model I can be of more assistance.
Thanks Ken.
I’ve since moved on from the Berkeley mattress (single coil interactive model) to Nest and Arizona Premium Mattress Co since I can buy directly without having to deal with a showroom. I was not aware of Nest or Arizona Premium Mattress Co until after my initial round of showroom visits last weekend as I stumbled upon this forum while doing some followup research.
I listed a comparison of the two mattresses I think might be appropriate on the main mattress forum as [strike]post #324[/strike].*
My husband has a BMI in the mid 20s and I have a BMI in the low 30s - I’m close to 200# and he’s more around 160#
I’ve based my guess at “medium” firmess preference based on various lie-downs in show rooms, though I anticipate I might have to go try to visit a Nest showroom again to gauge softness preference. I’m interested in any further feedback you can provide.
*Note: A moderator deleted my post from the main forum and I am not going to recreate the line by line comparison of features here.
So based on your info listed for the Nest bed I can point out some important differences. Their latex based on advertising #28 ILD means that it is blended talalay not all natural talalay that only comes in a range like #25-29, not a specific ILD as does blended. I recently posted an article on this very subject. As you may know all natural talalay is more expensive. Brass vs. Teflon zipper - YKK is the leading zipper manufacturer in world and their teflon zippers are the strongest I’ve ever seen and I’ve been using them for over 20 years with no issues. The number of times we zip and unzip our covers in our showroom is staggering and we have yet to have one fail. Organic cotton vs. bamboo - Bamboo is simply stronger and has built in anti-microbial features which is why we use it on most of our mattresses. Just like bamboo sheets will last much longer than cotton. I have several bamboo shirts that still look like new even though they are over 5 years old. A lot of people who have sweating issues also use bamboo shirts because of the anti-microbial features (less smell).
You mentioned their’s has 2" of wool but I only see 1" in their description. All talalay latex no matter who you get it from is Oeko Tex 100 Class 1 certified. We also have more ILD’s to choose from including soft which is our most popular and yet they don’t offer it. If they merged with Brooklyn Bedding that means to me they also gave up manufacturing their products which means there is another piece of the pie to share. That would account for the $400 price difference between ours and theirs as well.
Thanks Ken.
I was just getting ready to go and update my notes
I don’t know if they have changed the wool thickness or not - many online reviews call out 2-inches, but you are correct, the current online description is for 1 inch thickness.
The zipper has also been changed on the nest mattress based on a visit I made to a local brooklyn bedding showroom.
Based on weight info above, would you recommend a soft or medium latex?
For Bamboo, can you tell me if your cover is bamboo rayon or is it more unprocessed? I ask because many fabrics I see today claim the fabric is Bamboo - but it is really bamboo rayon, and not the more linen-like more natural version of the fiber.
Can you also tell me the thickness of your wool in the cover, as well as the wool type/source? (I hand spin yarn which is why I’m asking these wool and textile questions).
Our bamboo fabric is the same that most anyone would use on this type of mattress, bamboo, rayon and lycra. The cover needs to stretch and without the use of rayon and lycra the cover would create a trampoline effect and not contour to your body curves. The all natural sounds great but not practical for this application. Our wool is 1 1/2" before quilting but measures about 1" after quilting. It’s just enough to pass the fire test. Too much wool can compress and cause body impressions. We use Joma Wool from New Zealand, the most widely used wool in the mattress industry.
Hi SleepdeprivedSprite.
I am happy to see that you are so well taken care by our Expert members here (Thank you Ken!, Thank you Jeff! 
and that you are making progress in finding a suitable system.
I deleted your duplicate (or very similar) post from another thread because posting the same questions in multiple threads on the forum makes it quite difficult to manage, reference your input, keep track, and accurately answer your questions.
If you have extra questions you can add them here and either the Expert members you already engaged or I will be happy to assist you.
As you are aware of both of the options you are considering from are our members here, which means that I think highly of them and that I believe that they compete well with the best in the industry who has mattresses that use good quality and durable materials and there are no lower quality materials or weak links in any of them that would be a cause for concern in terms of the durability and useful life of their mattresses.
Good luck and I’ll be interested to learn of your eventual decisions.
Phoenix
Looking for some guidance,
I have visited the tempurpedic store and tried selection recently, I have found that their Tempur-Flex Prima fits the firmness and comfort level I am looking for.
What are some comparable mattress I should consider?
Hi reenendete.
Welcome to our Mattress Forum!
Testing a mattresses in a store is surely a good starting point and I although you seem to have found a mattress that fits you… unfortunately attempting to find something that is exactly the same is often a frustrating and futile exercise. There is more information in post #9 here about the different ways that one mattress can “match” or “approximate” another one. Every layer and component in a mattress (including the cover and any quilting materials) will affect the feel and performance of every other layer and component and the mattress “as a whole” so unless you are able to find another mattress that uses exactly the same type of materials, components, cover and quilting, layer thicknesses, layer firmnesses, and overall design (which would be fairly unlikely) then there really isn’t a reliable way to match one mattress to another one in terms of “comfort”, firmness, and PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and your Personal preferences) based on the specifications of the mattresses (even assuming that you can find out all the specifications you would need for both mattresses you are comparing in the first place).
While you usually won’t find a mattress that is “equivalent” to another mattress made by a different manufacturer… if you look for something that is “comparable” with the one you tested than you can seek the guidance of a manufacturer or retailer that is experienced in this field and is familiar with your reference mattress who either has something similar or can try to closely approximate the system that you are looking for, but you have to be ready to accept the risk that every difference between the two mattresses can either have a cumulative effect or an offsetting effect that is very difficult for even a knowledgeable and experienced manufacturer or retailer to predict, especially with only limited or incomplete information about all the specs of the mattress you have tested.
Tempurpedic isn’t completely transparent about the materials and components in their mattresses and the difficulty with this is that you may not have access to all the information you need to be able to “match” one mattress to another one or attempt to replicate it which includes the type and quality of all the layers and components, the thickness of all the layers, and all the other “quality specs” or “comfort specs” for every layer and component as well (such as the firmness/softness of every layer).
The Tempur Flex mattresses are in a different category from most of the other Tempurpedic mattresses because it’s a pocket coil/memory foam/polyfoam hybrid which uses memory foam and polyfoam in the comfort and transition layers on top of a pocket coil support core. I believe the polyfoam layer that they use underneath their memory foam is 1.6 lb density which is a little lower quality/density than I would normally like to see … especially in a mattress in its budget range.
In other words … the short version of all of this and the “bottom line” is that spending time testing major brand mattresses or any mattress where you can’t find out the specifics of the materials and components inside it and where another manufacturer doesn’t make a better quality/value mattress that they specifically describe as being similar is mostly wasted because it would be too risky to purchase and it can’t be used as a reference point to purchase another mattress that is “similar”.
I don’t keep a record of the individual mattresses or their specs that the retailers and manufacturers carry on their floor or have available online (it would be a bigger job than anyone could possibly keep up with in a constantly changing market) but checking their websites and making some preliminary phone calls to the retailers/manufacturers is always a good idea before you decide on which retailers or manufacturers you wish to deal with or visit anyway. This will tell you which of them carry mattresses that would meet your specific criteria, are transparent about the materials in their mattresses, and that carry the type of mattresses that you are interested in testing that are also in the budget range you are comfortable with. As a starting point you can reach out to some of our Trusted Members here who have hybrid mattresses and find out if they carry something similar or can help you closely match the mattress you tested in the showroom.
Phoenix
Not sure how to start a topic. I thought we were supposed to comment under an article in the Our Articles section but my comment is still there and I saw come comments in the thread about hyjacking being a necessary evil while the forum is in transition so I’m copying & pasting my question here…my apologies if I’m confused!
My husband & I purchased a Brooklyn Bedding #bestmattressever back in October (it is a version that seems to be no longer available with 3 layers of memory foam). Our old mattress was a double-sided pillowtop from Denver Mattress that we bought way back in 2002 - it had seen better days and my husband’s back was starting to hurt all the time. He adamantly insisted on purchasing the “soft” version, vs the medium or hard, though I wondered if medium was probably wiser. He is primarily a back sleeper, I sleep exclusively on my side. We are both overweight - he is 210lbs, I am 250lbs. The new mattress came and it was beautiful and comfortable and neither of us had any complaints initially. But after a week, the hip I sleep on started to become very tender. I visited some family for a few days and the pain went away but as soon as I came back and slept on the new mattress, it came back again. But we wanted to give the mattress a fair trial so we slept on it until mid-December and I was still hurting and his back was starting to hurt again so I contacted Brooklyn Bedding to return it.
They offered a cooling gel-infused memory foam topper and an extension on the trial-period so we accepted. And for the past two months we’ve been sleeping with that on top of the mattress. My hip is mostly better, just the occasional twinge, but my elbow of all things has begun hurting - the one on the side I sleep on. And my husband’s back still aches often. Plus I feel like we are sleeping warmer than we did on our our pillowtop. So I contacted Brooklyn Bedding again.
They no longer carry the same mattress and asked if we’d be willing to try the new Signature Hybrid which is two layers of foam on top of 6" coils. Supposedly it sleeps cooler due to the coils. And they suggested we stick with the “soft” option saying it “will be softer than your current mattress with the topper due to the pocketed coils. Since the topper still didn’t make the mattress soft enough, I would definitely encourage going with the soft comfort level to get you that added pressure point relief.” I just want to confirm we are heading down the right route? Is staying soft wise or should we push for medium? (My husband is still thinking soft is best.) I just don’t want my elbow and hip pressure points hurting.
If you are asking my opinion I would have to say that he needs something firmer. His back issues sound like lack of support from the soft configuration. You do need something soft to relieve pressure points but the problem is at 250 lbs. you may be collapsing the soft layers and penetrating through them onto the firmer base which may be causing the tingling in your elbow.
That was my suspicion. Thanks!