Hi waterwagen,
I think that the quality of your sleep has a bigger effect on your overall health and well being than almost anything else and since your mattress plays such an important role in this (even though it may not always be obvious and its effects are cumulative and incremental) it can be one of the most important purchases you make in the next decade or so. IMO … it’s well worth doing right.
I also think that it’s important to ask “why” you believe what you do about memory foam (or any other material of style of mattress for that matter) and whether it’s just about marketing, facts, or based on your own personal experience. The marketing of mattresses and the misleading and inaccurate information that it usually includes is one of the biggest reasons so many people are making such poor mattress choices. A recent study even clearly indicates that most people’s choice of mattress and the methods they use to choose it is worse than if they used random chance as their main criteria.
I’m not sure which two mattresses you mean (you mentioned several including a Simmons “extra firm” … model or layering unknown … Tempurpedic Rhapsody, and the Bedinabox Pacdown) and it would depend on whether you were comparing the feel and performance of a mattress and how it felt to you or the quality of the materials. I certainly wouldn’t want to match the quality of the memory foam of the Bedinabox or the quality of the materials in the Simmons. There are really only three ways to “match” a mattress in terms of feel and performance (see post #3 here) and most of these would not be possible in your case except perhaps with the Rhapsody. Every person can have a different definition of firm and soft as well and your body type, sleeping positions, perceptions, and preferences play as big a role as the mattress itself. My personal experience (or anyone else’s as well) with any mattress and how it felt could be and likely would be very different from your own.
This is not actually not accurate. Comfort is subjective and means different things to different people (for most people it’s mainly about the pressure relief of a mattress) and memory foam is certainly not the most durable mattress material (although higher density memory foam is quite durable and better than lower quality materials). Each person may have very different needs and preferences. No matter how a mattress feels or performs initially in terms of comfort and support … the quality of the materials will determine how long the comfort and support will last and the loss of comfort and support from softening or other changes in lower quality materials is not covered by any warranty. You can’t “feel” the quality of the materials in a mattress and you can only know them if you know the details of every layer in a mattress.
If you do decide to take the additional risk of an online purchase vs a local purchase … then some of the better memory foam options I’m aware of are listed in post #12 here.
The knowledge and experience of who you buy from and their ability to help you make good choices that are suitable for your body type, sleeping style, and preferences can be just as important as what you would buy based on marketing or any other information that is only partly true at best.
Phoenix