Hi Ejackson,
I would completely agree with Jeffs comments that the first step is to find the knowledgeable and experienced retailers in your area that have your best interests at heart and can provide you with the information about their mattresses that you need to make an informed choice in terms of suitability, durability, and “value”. They will also be able to provide you with factual and meaningful information about the materials in their mattresses to help you decide which types of materials and mattresses you tend to prefer (latex, memory foam, innersprings etc). This is why choosing which retailers/manufacturers to visit is step 3 in the tutorial and comes before testing mattresses which is step 4. If you follow all the steps in the mattress shopping tutorial one at a time you will have the best chance of success and as Jeff mentioned who you choose to deal with can be one of the most important parts of a successful mattress purchase.
As you can see in the guidelines here … I would tend to avoid the major brands and chain stores (such as Sleepys) but Comfort Sleep Systems would certainly be well worth including in your research. They are one of the members of the site which means that I think very highly of them and I believe that they compete well with the best in the industry in terms of their quality, value, service, and transparency.
There are also some other good options in the area as well and the list of the better options and possibilities I’m aware of in the Connecticut area (subject to the quality/value guidelines here) are listed in post #2 here.
Phoenix