First off - what a great and informative website! My wife and I were looking at the Serta iComfort (although it was a bit out of our price range) when we came across this site and so glad we did!
As a newly married couple we’re looking to upgrade our awful and old innerspring mattress without breaking the bank. Based on your website recommendations we are leaning towards Queen EcoSleep Memory Foam Mattress with Bamboo Cover. What are your thoughts on this mattress? Are you aware of something else online of comparable or better quality for similar price? We fully expect that the durability of this mattress will be less than a latex - but we’re ok with that at this stage of our lives in order to save some money in the short term.
I have noticed that we can move up to a latex mattress for not much more - Queen Adjustable Ultra Plush Latex Sleep System. Do you think it would be wise for us to do so?
Thank you for your help.
Hi lxjenkins,
The Ecosleep is a good value in a mid range mattress using 4 lb memory foam and a 2.0 lb (good quality) base layer. You are right that 4 lb memory foam won’t last as long as higher density memory foam or latex but lower density memory foam also tends to have a more “movement friendly” and less temperature sensitive feel and is often more breathable and cooler (depending which of hundreds of types of memory foam it is) than the higher densities. All of this of course is part of the many tradeoffs between price, performance, durability, and the many different “feels” that are possible with memory foam and different types of laering.
Some other online memory foam choices with good value and various other layering options are in post #12 here.
The choice between latex and memory foam is a personal preference issue and they are very different in how they feel and perform as well of course in durability. The Queen adjustable Ultra Plush is also excellent value but whether it “fits” with the type of mattress you are looking for really depends on how you feel about the two very different materials. Memory foam is a more “in the mattress” type of material (to different degrees with different types of memory foam) while latex is a more “on the mattress” type of material. You can read more about the pros and cons of memory foam here and latex here but how you feel about actually trying out or sleeping on each material is just as important a part of choosing between them. There are some people who even prefer a combination of both but this would also increase the price of the mattress (latex is more expensive than memory foam).
So overall the two choices you mentioned are both good ones with great value IMO … but the decision between them would be based on your preferences and the qualities of each material that are important to you (your own “value equation”) rather than one being a “better” choice than the other.
Phoenix
Thank you Phoenix.
I’m curious, but do you happen to know how long memory foam lasts - especially compared to innerspring mattresses?
Hilxjenkins,
There is no real objective way to predict how long any mattress will last because it depends as much on the person using it and the type of use as it does on the materials in the mattress.
Innersprings are a “support layer” and are generally not the weak link of a mattress. It is almost always the materials above the support layers that are the first to soften or degrade to an extent that makes a mattress unsuitable for sleeping on. In other words a “memory foam” mattress can use either an innerspring, polyfoam, latex, air, or even water as a support system because memory foam is a material used in comfort layers rather than support layers and can have any type of support layer underneath it (or other materials over it as well which will also affect it’s durability)
How long any foam lasts depends primarily on it’s density. With memory foam … materials that are less than about 5 lbs are beginning to exchange durability for the sake of other memory foam qualities (such as breathability or temperature sensitivity or response time) which in some cases may be more important to some than durability. A reasonable estimate for a 5 lb density memory foam though (that is made without fillers and that doesn’t have a “false density” because of cheap manufacturing methods) that otherwise used good quality materials would likely be in the 10 - 12 year range but this may be much less or much more depending on the layering of the mattress, the thickness of the memory foam, the type of memory foam, someone’s sensitivity to a mattress softening, and perhaps most importantly, the people using it (weight, activity etc) and the overall environment or conditions that it was being used in.
Phoenix