Hi dbergan,
When you are testing a mattress locally then ILD specifications aren’t important to know because they are a comfort specification that is a relative measure of firmness but is only one of the factors that can affect the firmness or softness of a single layer (not the mattress as a whole) and your own careful testing (hopefully using the testing guidelines in the tutorial) will be a much more reliable way to know whether a mattress is “comfortable” or is a good match for you in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and your Personal preferences) than knowing ILD information.
The specifications you would need to know to make an informed choice are the ones that can affect the quality and durability of the mattress and are listed in this article.
Unless you have a great deal of knowledge and experience with different types of mattress materials and specs and different layering combinations and how they combine together and can translate them into your own “real life” experience that can be unique to you (which would only be a very small percentage of people) … I would tend to avoid using individual specs such as layer thicknesses or ILD numbers or other complex combinations of specifications to try and predict how a mattress will feel or perform for you and focus more on your own actual testing and/or personal experience. When you try and choose a mattress based on complex combinations of specs that you don’t fully understand then the most common outcome is information overload and “paralysis by analysis”. Choosing a mattress based on “comfort specs” would be among the least reliable ways to choose a suitable mattress.
This is one of the parts of the videos you linked that I would consider to be inaccurate or misleading.
There is more about the different types and blends of latex in post #6 here but latex is among the most durable foam materials in the industry and I (and many other manufacturers that have been making latex mattresses for decades) certainly don’t share his opinion. It’s possible that they were only using softer versions of 100% natural Talalay which can be less durable than blended Talalay so their experience with latex in general may have been more limited.
There is also more detailed information about the many variables that can affect the durability and useful life of a mattress relative to different people and body types in post #4 here and the posts it links to.
I completely agree that videos can be very helpful and there are many forum posts that link to various videos that I find informative and helpful all over the internet. As you mentioned some of the member companies also have great videos that are well worth watching (such as the Beducation series of videos here) so there would be little point to adding them to the site when they are readily available already.
At some point I do plan to include some videos on the site itself as well (and my fiance is very knowledgeable about video production) but that is most likely a year or two away as there are other “competing” priorities involving the ongoing development of the site over the next year or two that are already “in process” that are more important for now and it’s difficult to add any more hours to my days when I already spend 12 - 16 hours a day 7 days a week on the research, phone conversations, and forum replies that are part of my “normal” days :).
Phoenix