thanks for this. Ended up going with the Sedona and a split topper. Can’t wait to try it out
Hi skunkguts,
Welcome to the Mattress Forum! 
And congratulations on your new mattress and topper! :cheer: I’ll be interested in learning about your new Sedona mattress and topper once you’ve had a chance to sleep upon it for a while.
Phoenix
Hi Phoenix,
Thank you for this detailed Information on the one-size-fits-all category of mattresses. I have recently been intorduced to this too and i find it very appealing. I am planning to buy a mattress for my wife and I but we are very confused with the number of Options. We live in UK and there are some companies like Casper, Simba, Eve sleep, Emma mattress to Name a few. I looked through the mattress from Emma mattress and it seems to be a good fit for us considering the Price and Quality. However, in your post there is no Information about Emma mattress. Does anyone on this forum have any experience or knowledge about that Company and Quality of their mattresses? Would really appreciate your help since we are not at all happy with our old mattress since its been almost 10 years.
Thank you for the help!
Hi grayson.w,
Welcome to the Mattress Forum!
The Emma is a new “simplified choice” offering in the UK. They unfortunately don’t list any meaningful specifications on their web site about the componentry on the inside of the mattress. The layers are as follows:
Airgocell foam (4 cm) – they don’t state if this is a high performance polyfoam or a memory foam
Small pocket springs (2 cm)
Memory foam (3 cm)
Polyfoam support core (16 cm)
In order to make an informed mattress buying decision, make sure that you find out the information listed here so you can compare the quality of the materials and components to the durability guidelines here to make sure there are no lower quality materials or weak links in a mattress that would be a cause for concern relative to the durability and useful life of a mattress before making any purchase. If you’re able to acquire that information and post it back here I’ll be happy to provide commentary about it.
I’m not sure what you’ve read since you found the site but just in case you haven’t read it yet … the first place to start your research is the mattress shopping tutorial here which includes all the basic information, steps, and guidelines that can help you make the best possible choice … and perhaps more importantly know how and why to avoid the worst ones.
Phoenix
Hi Grayson,
I have been using the Emma Mattress for about 6 months now. My husband and I were looking for comfortable, quality mattress within a reasonable price range. I am not too aware of the technical specifications of a mattress but I can share my experience with Emma Mattress.
A friend of mine referred Emma mattress and since they provide free 100 day trial period we decided to go ahead with it. The mattress is designed very well and we enjoyed unboxing it. After a few days we felt that the mattress was a bit too soft for our liking. So we called customer service to return the mattress. They offered us a free topper that would be firmer. With the topper, the experience was much better and we decided to keep the mattress. Overall my experience with Emma Mattress was positive. I hope this information helped.
Good luck finding your mattress!
Hi lucieblue22,
Welcome to the Mattress Forum!
Thank you for taking the time to post about your mattress experience with your Emma mattress. I’m glad it was a positive one.
However, your one comment that…
…would be something which you would not be able to objectively evaluate without meaningful knowledge of the layers within the product (as I mentioned to grayson.w), and you admit that you are “not too aware of the technical specifications of a mattress”. Without that information such a statement could be viewed as more “promotional” than accurate/educational, and is one of the reasons I always advise caution about the amount of emphasis placed upon reviews or other people’s experiences in general (see post #13 here).
If you are aware of the complete specifications of the Emma mattress, please feel free to post that information back in this thread in order to share it with other site members.
Phoenix
Phoenix,
What an excellent breakdown of the “Simplified Choice Mattresses aka Disruptors, Bed In A Box, One Choice Fits All, Universal Comfort, Millennial Mattresses” phenomenon. Being the president of FloBeds I’ve had a ringside seat since we first started shipping a “Bed In A Box” (actually 2 via UPS) in 1997. When we first saw Casper blow up, we thought: “no problem, they advertise latex but put in less than an inch!” We continued to have our best years ever.
Others copied their model. Still, a $1,000 polyfoam mattress was not what our customers wanted. We continued to thrive.
Then an interesting thing happened: Somewhere around the 50th “me-too online mattress store” we saw our sales dip. After a serious investigation into what was happening we realized that even though our FloBeds Latex Mattress can go head-to-head with any company out there, we need to be seen through all the smoke (and mirrors) before a customer can compare us. In other words, there are so many online mattress companies vying for the attention of consumers that it is much harder to get noticed.
We are fortunate that almost half our business comes from repeat customers or customer referrals: 20 years of good product and customer service is paying off. In the meantime, we will both wait for the dust to settle and surmount this new challenge with a little more traditional marketing.
Thanks again for helping folks figure out how to find the mattress that is right for them. Back in 1996 I said the traditional mattress business is the biggest shell game ever. 2017 is evidence that some games keep getting played.
Dave Turner
FloBeds.com
Hi davet,
Nice of you to visit again!
Yes, the “simplified choice” category continues to grow at a pace so fast that I can’t keep up with detailed information on all of the new offerings springing up every week, not only here but abroad. Some are offering better quality materials than others, but unfortunately there are also some “me-toos” that are popping up using lower quality materials.
Luckily for people visiting the site, our retail and manufacturing members offer some very high quality “simplified choice” and component-style offerings, combined with trusted and expert advice, and some members (such as yourself) have been doing it for quite some time.
Don’t take four years to visit the site again! It’s always nice to get some objective information and answers to the questions posted here from our trusted manufacturing members B) .
Phoenix
I won’t wait so long. Even if you don’t hear from me… know that we are appreciative of the diligent research you do topped by informed answers to member questions. Kudos!
Hi Phoenix,
Thank you so much for your insight. There is so much Information here, it can get very overwhelming.
I found that Emma Mattress has been awarded Best Buy by the Which? results. I regularly follow Which? testing for Reviews on various products and I think they are very transparent and trust worthy. Emma mattress rated highest in durability and Overall Performance.
And pros are: supports most people well, stands the test of time extremely well, breathable, stable, easy to turn on
The cons of the mattress as mentioned by Which? is that Support for heavier than average weight individuals who sleep on their back is low.
They also tested other one-fits-all mattress companies and provides a good comparison between difference mattress Performances.
What are your views on this?
Hi grayson.w,
I’m not personally very familiar with Which?, as that is a group focused upon reviews, testing and opinions of products in the UK, and this site focuses primarily upon the United States and Canada.
Which? (Consumers’ Association) seems to be quite similar in concept to the Consumers Union in the United States (which publishes Consumer Reports) – the Consumers Union predates the Consumers’ Association by 21 years.
I can’t read the actual article that Which? wrote about the Emma (you have to be a member), but based upon their testing methodology listed they seem to be quite similar to what Consumers Union does, which while helpful in some ways also tends to come up with some very subjective conclusions and focuses away from the more important details such as foam density (I don’t know if this was discussed in the article you mention, but I’m assuming it wasn’t as you didn’t post that information back here in the forum as I requested in case you ran across it).
While Which? is not Consumer Reports, you can read some of my comments about the Consumer Reports mattress ratings and recommendations in post #2 here and in this topic. While they may be a good source of information about more “objective” purchases, as you can see I would consider them to be an unreliable source of information or guidance about purchasing a mattress and their “ratings” are somewhat nonsensical and meaningless. My thoughts are also shared by most of the more knowledgeable people in the industry (see post #5 here for an example).
Which? may be better and more objective in how they go about analyzing a product (again I’m not completely familiar with them), but in the end you need to focus upon the specifications I mentioned to you in my earlier reply, as knowing that information will give you your best chance of making an educated and successful mattress purchase. Any mattress purchase made without that information is IMHO quite risky.
Phoenix
Hmm, thats why I truly need to make a custom matress for myself. I have severe back disability, deformed. Cannot take zero pressure on hips lower back at all. I will need different weights horizontally as well as vertically. That is the only way. Barely sleep 1 hour night. I have an 5,000 dollar sleep number bed set to zero, because of the pressure pushing back. There are many back sufferers with lessor degrees of this pain. My back will never be straight and never be forced to go straight as the industry ALWAYS TRY TO MAKE IT!
IS THERE A REPUTABLE REAL TALALAY DEALER I CAN PURCHASE FROM AS I WILL NEED AS I DESIGN THIS INTERESTING MATTRESS FOR MYSELF!
Hi Phoenix,
Your Response got me thinking and i did some Research about the specifications of the Emma Mattress and this is what I could find:
The 4 layers in the Emma Mattress are
- Airgocell foam (50kg/ m³): 2 cm high - the aigorcell foam is a polyfoam with an open cell structure and high breathability
- Upto 2000 individual pcket springs: 2 cms high
- Visco-elastic Memory foam (60 kg/ m³): 4 cm high
- Cold Foam (60 kg/ m³): 17 cm high
The mattress has open cell structure and is temperature regulating. It has high Point elasticity and durability.
Suitable for individuals between 50kg to 130kg
The cover of the mattress is made of 100% polyester
HI lucieblue22,
Thank you for that information. However, I believe you may have been provided incorrect information about the density of the polyfoam core of this Emma mattress.
The Airgocell foam at 50 kg/m3 would be approximately 3.12 lb density, which would be a good quality polyfoam. The memory foam, at 60 kg/m3, would be approximately 3.75 lb density, which is a little on the low side (I recommend 4 lb density or higher), but it is located a bit deeper in the mattress and at 1.5" it is in the range of “an inch or so”. The polyfoam core is listed at 60 kg/m3, which again specs out to 3.75 lb density, which is quite a bit above the “normal” range for a polyfoam core. I good quality high-resilience polyfoam core might be expected to be in the 2.5 lb range, or around 40 kg/m3. I confirmed your information with a customer service person at Emma, but I believe from the nature of the information I was provided they are simply reading back what information is provided them and I believe there may be a “typo” in the density of the polyfoam core they’ve been given.
To check this, I tried to compare some approximate weights of the foam layers to compare those to the finished mattress. The Airgocell foam layer at the density and thickness specified should spec out at approximately 4 kg in the 200cm x 200cm mattress. The visco elastic foam layer should spec out at approximately 9.6 kg, and the polyfoam core should spec out to approximately 40.8 kg. That is a total of approximately 54.4 kg, and doesn’t include the covering and the pocket spring unit. Emma lists the approximate weight of the 200cm x 200cm mattress at 45 kg, so there’s obviously a discrepancy here, either with the total weight that Emma provides on their web site, or what I believe is most likely, the provided density of their polyfoam core. But I can’t confirm the true source for the discrepancy and all I can do is provide the numbers and specifications as offered by Emma and relay those here with my concerns/comments.
Phoenix
Why isn’t Nest Alexander on this list but the Nest Love & Sleep Mattress is? It seems like the Alexander competes with many of these products and neither have their own dedicated site. Just curious on what qualifies or disqualifies a mattress from this list?
Hi dneal12,
That’s a good question. This list, while incomplete, is a bit of a “parking area” for some of the (now not so) newer boxed-bed mattresses. Of course, this category keeps growing and growing, so much so to the point that keeping the list updated is something that is a constant challenge. Initially, manufacturers were producing one mattress in one comfort designation as a “one-style-fits-all” or “simplified choice” product, and the Love & Sleep Mattress would be the Dreamfoam type of product most appropriate to include in this list. Then manufacturers started offering different comfort designations of the same mattress, so I included some of those. Now with advances in packaging, there are more offerings that can be compressed and shipped, and the “simplified choice” category is rapidly becoming “boxed-bedding”. Dreamfoam produces many items that they compress and ship, and many of these are discussed in quite a bit of detail throughout the forum (they are site members here, which means that I think highly of them). But including all of their models on this list wouldn’t be the most accurate representation of why I initially created this particular list, and with the upcoming changes that are being made behind the scenes with the site, wouldn’t be a priority or best use of my time as well.
Phoenix
That makes sense. After looking through all the simplified choice websites and then the websites of “recommend by MU” websites it seemed Nest was out of place with several lines and SleepOnLatex was missing with it’s single line. Thanks for all your hard work!
I was wondering if I could get your comments similar to this thread on SleepOnLatex. They seem to be the most budget friendly all-latex choice.
Hi dneal12,
I’m not quite sure what you mean about “comments similar to this thread” regarding Sleep on Latex, as they are frequently mentioned here on the forum (you can use the search feature here to find more mentions), and they are complete with the details of their products on their web site. Their 7" and 9" latex mattresses use natural Dunlop and are outfitted with GOTS certified wool and GOTS certified cotton. As you know, they are a site member here and I think highly of them. Other site members, Arizona Premium, Latex Mattress Factory, My Green Mattress, and SleepEZ also offer affordable non-configurable latex mattresses.
Phoenix