Hi Cantstandmattressshopping,
Even if the specs for a mattress are listed in an earlier post on the forum it’s always a good idea to confirm them because manufacturers can change the materials they use inside their mattresses. Dormeo recently came out with their mattresses that use Talalay latex in the top 2" of the mattress (the rest of the mattress is either memory foam or polyfoam) but they never did provide the other specs for these when I asked for them in this post. If the densities of the other “non latex” layers are in the same range as the specs listed here then there would be no weak links in the mattress but I would want to confirm this so you aren’t going by what may be outdated information.
Restonic is a licensee brand and each licensee can make their mattresses differently in different areas so once again it’s always important to make sure you know the specs of the specific mattress you are considering. A search online shows some specs for the Barbados are listed here. They list about 2" of polyfoam on top of 4" of latex on top of a 5.75" polyfoam core on top of a 1" polyfoam base layer (assuming I’ve listed the order of the layers correctly) so this would be a very different mattress from the Octaspring. The top 2" would be polyfoam (the top 2" in the Octaspring are latex) so the surface feel would be different. The layers under the top 2" in the Restonic are latex and in the Octaspring are memory foam and the deeper layers in both are polyfoam (although the Octaspring uses their foam “springs” rather than a solid layer). If the Barbados is about 13" thick then you would know that all the layers are listed. If these specs are correct and are the same as the Barbados you are considering I would want to know the density of the top 2" of polyfoam in the quilting because it could be “on the edge” of being a weak link in the mattress (see the guidelines here).
I never recommend specific mattresses or specific brands or manufacturers because there is no way to know whether any mattress is a good match for you in terms of PPP based on specs (either yours or a mattress) and I also don’t know the parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you and most manufacturers make a range of higher and lower quality mattresses. My goal is always to help with “how” to choose, to act as a “fact check”, and to help identify any potential weak links in a mattress you are considering so that you will end up with a final choice between mattresses that have no obvious weak links and are a choice between “good and good”.
In essence a mattress purchase comes down to testing for suitability (or making sure you are comfortable with any exchange or return policies if you can’t test a mattress in person or aren’t confident that it’s a suitable choice for you), checking for durability (which is the part I can help with), and comparing for value based on the parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you.
I wish I knew the specs of every mattress in the industry but unfortunately there are many mattresses where the specs aren’t easily available (the majority of mattresses) and even when they are the specs and mattress models can change from year to year, model to model, and even area to area, so it would be impossible for any one person could keep up with in a constantly changing market. This is why it’s always important that every consumer makes checking for the quality of the materials in any mattress they are considering a “normal” part of a mattress purchase so that retailers and manufacturers that don’t provide this information to their customers start to lose sales until they realize that forcing their customers to make a “blind purchase” will cost them sales that are going to other manufacturers and retailers that are more transparent than they are. The more consumers don’t insist on this “piece of the puzzle” the less likely that retailers or manufacturers will make it important to provide them … and the more consumers as a whole are likely to experience buyers remorse with their mattress purchases.
There are enough manufacturers and retailers that are fully transparent about the quality/durability of the materials that are inside their mattresses that there is little reason for a consumer to make a blind purchase and every reason in the world to “reward” the manufacturers that do so and make it possible for their customers can make meaningful comparisons between mattresses.
Phoenix