Hi EliGrace,
As you are mentioning you are down to a final choice between “good vs good” which means that the only way to decide would be based on your conversations with each of them, your past experience on mattresses, your local testing, and your “best judgement”. Only you can feel what you feel on a mattress and it may be very different from how someone else feels on the same mattress.
Zoning can certainly be helpful for those that are more difficult to “fit” to a mattress either because of more unusual body types (such as a larger differential between the waist and hips or waist and shoulders or unusual weight distribution) or other challenging circumstances (a less flexible spine or greater sensitivity to alignment issues or some health issues) and the vZone allows for custom zoning as well as custom layering but outside of personal testing and your own sleeping experience there is really no way to predict based on any “theory at a distance” exactly how much difference it would make for any particular person or whether it would be worth the extra cost for any particular person. There is more about zoning in post #11 here.
There are only two ways to make effective initial choices for the design of a mattress that is the best match for you. One is with your own careful and objective testing and the other would be through more detailed conversations on the phone where you can provide them with more information that can help them use “averages” and your own past experiences as a way to help you make the best choice. I wouldn’t use or trust any kind of “automated” firmness selector or “theory” as anything more than a general guideline that is subject to change based on your own unique preferences and circumstances.
Yes … Dunlop has a different “feel” and performance than Talalay and is less lively or springy. You can see a comparison between them in post #7 here but your own experience is really the only way to know which one you prefer with any certainty. Some people would notice more of a difference than others with transition or support layers that used each material if the top layers were the same type of latex because you will “feel” more of the upper layers than the deeper layers … at least when you first lie on a mattress.
Convoluted foam has a different ““feel” compared to a solid layer of the same foam with the same ILD. Depending on the specifics of the convoluting (the height and shape of the peaks and valleys) convoluting makes a material softer and also changes the compression modulus of the material which is the rate that a material becomes firmer as you sink into it more deeply. As the convoluted part of the layer compresses it would be softer (there is less latex to compress) but as you sink into the parts of the layer where the convoluting is thicker or the layer is solid then it would become firmer faster. It would have a greater “range” from firm to soft as the layer compresses from initial compression to deeper compression and would have a different response curve than the same type of latex that was a solid layer of the same thickness. In some senses (and this isn’t exactly accurate) having a 2” convoluted layer would be similar to having a softer 1" layer on top of a firmer 1" layer except the transition between softer and firmer would be more even than 2 separate layers. The convoluted layer is 28 ILD but with the convoluting it would “feel like” it was closer to the mid teens.
I don’t know the detailed specifics of their covers (amount of wool, type of wool, thickness of the fabric, type of fabric on each side of the quilting etc). Both are good quality and use stretch knit materials in at least one of the fabric layers (I don’t know about the backing for both) but I don’t know the detailed specs of each of them and for this you would need to talk with each manufacturer. I would think that unless you are familiar with how detailed “fabric or fiber specs” translate into “feel” for you that the specs may not answer the more important question of how each of them compares in terms of “feel” when they are used as part of a specific design. Perhaps there is a member here that has tried both and can tell you their experience with each cover.
The only way to really “evaluate” the differences in “value” between them would be based on a historical comparison of how well you sleep on each of them and whether any difference in the quality of your sleep was worth the extra price but this is so subjective and not really possible to “measure” or know ahead of time that once again it really boils down to your own knowledge and history with mattresses and sleep quality and the degree of customization relative to budget you are most comfortable with.
The “best” suggestion I can make is to make sure you have more detailed conversations with each of them and then follow the direction you are “leaning” the most strongly because there won’t be any “clear winners” between them no matter how much technical information you are able to find out.
Phoenix