Hi ChannelGSW,
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences and I can certainly understand that they would be frustrating given that the Tempurpedic Weightless Supreme, Two of the Berkeley Ergonomics mattresses, and now the Bedinabox Pac Bamboo have all caused pain and/or discomfort for you when you slept on them.
I’m not sure of the location of your back pain (assuming upper back?) or any of the specifics and I don’t know your weight or sleeping positions and you didn’t mention whether you believe this mattress is too firm or too soft but it may be worth experimenting with different pillows to see if this makes a difference because replacing a mattress can also make a difference in how much you sink in with different area of the body and change the gap between your mattress and your head and neck and can often need a change in pillow as well.
It’s very unlikely that the issue would be in your slats since they would most likely be rigid and have no flex which and a firm non flexing and evenly supportive support system that doesn’t flex under weight is generally the best choice for a memory foam (or any foam) mattress.
There are no “standardized” hotel beds and different hotels have different types of mattresses (see post #3 here and the posts it links to) so knowing the specifics of any hotel beds or any other mattresses you have slept well on may help identify a pattern in the types of mattresses you tend to do best with. Unfortunately most hotels don’t provide any specific information about the materials that are inside them so using them as a reference point can be difficult. Most hotel beds would have a firmer innerspring core and softer polyfoam comfort layers and they will often have some kind of more “cushy” mattress pad on top of them as well which can change the “feel” of the mattress but this doesn’t really tell you much about the specific hotel mattresses that you slept well on.
The Sultan Fidjetun is described here as being “plush” but it’s also very thin which means that there wouldn’t be much “room” for your hips/pelvis to sink down too far and the “plush” would probably describe the softness of the memory foam not the mattress as a whole because thinner mattresses tend to be firmer when they are compressed.
Looking at the mattresses that didn’t work for you the first one was the Tempurpedic Weightless Supreme. This one resulted in back pain although I don’t know where you were experiencing the pain (lower or upper back). Tempurpedic describes this mattress as “medium soft” and since the most common cause of back pain (or at least lower back pain) is a mattress that is too soft I would guess that this fits in the “too soft for you” category.
The next mattress you purchased was the Berkeley Ergonomics Nordic C. You mentioned “back and shoulder pain” on this one but the specifics also weren’t clear (lower or upper back pain or whether your shoulder pain was from excess pressure from sleeping on your side or in another position) so it’s also difficult to say whether this was too soft in the support layers or whether the comfort layers were too firm or too thick/soft. Again I don’t have enough information about you or the type of pain or discomfort you were feeling to use it as a guideline.
The next mattress you tried was the Berkeley Ergonomics Nordic A but the only thing I know about this was that it was somehow “too soft” for you as well but I don’t know anything about the specific discomfort or symptoms you were experiencing on this mattress.
Finally you are currently sleeping on the Bedinabox PacBamboo Gel and you are experiencing back/neck pain (similar to the Nordic C?) as well. Once again I don’t know enough about the specifics or location of your pain, the sleeping position you experience the pain, or whether it is from excess pressure or from alignment issues.
Overall though … while I don’t have nearly enough information about you, your sleeping positions, the specifics of your symptoms, or other information that I could use as a more specific reference point … the only “pattern” I can see that “may” account for your symptoms on these mattresses that are different from the Ikea Fidjetun or possibly even some of the hotel mattresses you slept on are that the comfort layers may be thicker and/or softer on the mattresses that didn’t work than on the mattresses that did work for you although I am really working blind and this is really just a “wild guess” based on some very limited information.
Phoenix