Hi collation,
There are three main types of “foam” (polyfoam, memory foam, and latex) and they are all very different from each other. Both polyfoam and latex are resilient foams and memory foam has little to no resilience at all and is almost the “opposite” of the other two.
All of them come in a range of softness/firmness levels but latex and polyfoam respond directly to compression while memory foam responds to heat, humidity, time of compression and its softness and firmness changes with different circumstances and conditiions. You can read a little more about the differences between memory foam and latex in post #2 here.
Softness and firmness is also subjective and perceived in different ways by different people. There is more about the different types of softness (“feel” softness, surface softness, pressure relief softness, support softness) in post #15 here.
Before you purchase a mattress with a material that you aren’t familiar with it’s probably a good idea to do some local testing with mattresses that use the same material. While the design of the local mattress may not be the same so that the mattress may still be very different in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences) … at least you would have a better idea of whether you like the general characteristics and response of the material itself.
For someone with back pain the suitability of the specific design of the mattress is more important than the materials that are used. The goal is to make sure a mattress allows you to sleep in good alignment in all your sleeping positions and of course one of the benefits of a mattress like the Aloe Alexis is that you can customize the mattress after a purchase (either by re-arranging or exchanging a layer) if your sleeping experience indicates that you need to make changes to pressure relief or alignment.
Both memory foam and latex can be very durable although I would give the overall advantage to most latex compared to most memory foam. The single biggest factor in the durability of memory foam is density and while all latex is a durable material … the type and softness of latex can make a difference in its durability. There is more about the many factors that can affect the relative durability of a mattress and it’s useful life relative to each person in post #4 here.
I personally don’t believe that the support layers are “giving way” after a year and if this was true then they would replace it under the warranty.
For heavier people though that “go through” the latex layers and compress the support layers more and where they were already on the edge of having a mattress that was too soft for them then foam softening of the base layer may be the cause of what they are describing and for heavier people that sink into the mattress more deeply a higher density support core would be well worth considering.
My first suggestion for anyone is to make sure you’ve read post #1 here which has all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that can help you make the best possible choices. If you have specific questions along the way I’d certainly be happy to answer them as well.
As you may know Dreamfoam is one of the members of this site which means I think very highly of them and they compete well with the best in the industry in terms of quality and value.
You can read more about foundations and box springs in the foundation post here and the other posts it links to. The Simple life foundation certainly looks strong enough but it also has wider gaps in between the wires which for some mattresses or more elastic materials could allow the foam to impress into the gaps over time. You can read more about wire grid types of foundations in post #10 here.
The Ikea website doesn’t give any details of the top surface of the Sultan Aram foundation that would be supporting the mattress, the distance between the slats, and appears to use cardboard on top (which would reduce ventilation under the mattress). I would want to know more information about it before I could make any meaningful comments.
Phoenix