I recently went bought a Casper. I didn't like it. It gave me a sore back and neck and didn't get any better until I switched. So next I ordered a Leesa. But that had the strong chemical smell. And I left it unpacked in a room with ventilation for two weeks and the smell didn't stop. Then I ordered a Tuft and Needle, and despite being the cheapest of the three (I think?) it had no odor issues and was surprisingly the more comfortable. I'm very happy with it. The return on the other two mattresses was completely painless and easy, so I highly recommend taking advantage of their 90-100 day trials.
I bought a Nest, and the “return” process was anything but painless. You have to donate the mattress to a charity on your own, except the vast majority of charities don’t want used mattresses for public health reasons. Most of the ones that do accept mattresses won’t pick them up. So if you don’t have a truck then you have to figure that part out as well.
Nest finally sent out a guy to pick the mattress up, but after going over it with a Maglite he declared that the side that was touching the bed frame was dirty, and thus the mattress was unreturnable. Complete scam. I eventually wound up paying someone else to take it to a charity, and the charity had no problem with it.
In comparison, my return with Purple was easy and hassle-free. I didn’t like their product, but at least I have faith in the company.
Bought a mattress from them two years ago. Liked it. Last month there was an odd bump that seemed to be a defect. Called them, emailed some pictures, and within a few days a new one was delivered to my home, and they took the old one to donate for me. Painless.
I had a similar experience to you. I did find a charity to pick it up, but it took 2 months.
the surreal thing was the CEO of Nest emailed and called me. Ordinarily a CEO calling to provide customer service would be great, but this guy was a jerk, and went on and on about what a stupid decision I was making. The customer service folks were nice and helpful, but it would be better for the company if CEO just hid in his office and didn't talk to customers.
Curious: Did you consider the Purple? I tend to get pretty hot at night (no AC) and that one seems to boast the best marketing jargon with regards to cooling. Can you speak to the breathability of the others you've tried?
I haven't tried Purple, so I can't speak to that, but I have ordered 2 mattresses and returned them both (Helix, Leesa), and I'll second that the return process was easy for both of them. The Helix support actually convinced me to try a different variant of their bed which I'm trying next, which should show you there is no judgment on their end when you try it and return it.
Obviously check reviews and everything, but I've found that as helpful as the reviews are, nothing is even close to your experience with the mattress and how you sleep on it. So if there is some brand of a bed that interests you, you should just get it and then return it if you don't like it.
One note though: The return process is easier if you buy it directly from the company and not through Amazon.
We bought a Nolah mattress a few weeks ago, partly because one of its selling points is that it's "made without the heat-trapping viscoelastic chemicals used in memory foam."
I'm still not entirely sure what differentiates its material -- which it calls Air Foam -- from memory foam, because it feels very similar to other memory-foam mattresses. And the website doesn't do a very good job of explaining precisely how the materials differ.
It hasn't seemed any warmer than our old spring mattress, though, so I guess its "100% temperature neutral" claim holds up.
But as OP's post points out, the mattress review sites are very little help. It seems like they're all affiliate-link driven. I spent a good long while trying to find a review site that seemed trustworthy and that didn't make its money through referral links, and I finally gave up and decided I'd just have to try my best to evaluate each company's claims on my own.
Speaking of referral codes, it seems as if for Nolah, there's an almost constant $100 off code that is advertised on the site itself. Nolah also runs a customer referral program, where if you use my referral code, you get $75 off and I get $100 for the referral. Which is crazy. Why would you ever choose the $75 discount instead of the $100 discount? It's almost like you have to be willing to screw your friends over to participate.
That said, if anybody wants to PM me and obtain my $75 referral code, I will be donating any proceeds to the Trappist Caskets Child Fund, which provides caskets free of charge to families who have to bury a child: https://trappistcaskets.com/child-fund/
We bought a Purple and gave up on it after three nights. The foam portion of the mattress compresses a lot and the purple grid on top has this weird property where it holds weight up to a point and then collapses completely after that point - there's no progressive compression property in that grid. Those two aspects of the foam + grid amplify one another to result in something that has deep valleys where you have your most weighted points of contact (for example hips and shoulders for a side sleeper) and peaks where you don't. For me this meant that my legs would be coming at an uncomfortable angle out of the hip valley placing weird stress on my knees and my core/torso would similarly be forced into a weird curve over the peak between hips and shoulders. I woke up every day feeling like I'd been mildly beaten up and my wife compared it to a torture device - she has never experienced back or neck pain in her whole life but three nights on the Purple were close to debilitating for her.
The telling aspect of their marketing/FAQ is they actually tell you to expect this: they claim that years of sleeping on poor mattresses has conditioned your body to the wrong position and so it will be painful for 1-2 weeks while it corrects to their one true mattress. This seems like a load of bs. I've slept on hundreds of mattresses across the spectrum, from quarter inch closed-cell foam pads on top of rocks/roots to various hotel luxury mattresses and everything in between - and never experienced this level of painful need to "get used to a good mattress".
The past few years I've just been buying T&N mattresses. Simplified my life since they are cheaper and, to be honest, I've never actually noticed anything I would consider better.
My boss has a Purple and loves it. I just bought a mattress and had considered getting one. I shopped quite a bit before I made my decision, but after doing hours of research I’m of the opinion that mattresses in general are overpriced and pretty easily fall victim to marketing hype. I looked at Casper, Tuft & Needle, Purple, and several others and finally decided on a $350 CoolGel king from WalMart. Works perfectly. I’d bought a Contura queen, also from WalMart for $275 6 years ago and it’s sitting in our guest room right now working gloriously and we always get compliments on how comfortable it is. We went with the CoolGel because the Contura sleeps a little bit hot and we live in a warm climate. The Contura is fantastic in the winter, but we really only get about two months of winter here.
Bottom line takeaway, and many might disagree, you can get a perfectly sleepable great mattress for less than $500 and anything more than that is straight up marketing cost or at the very least severe diminishing returns on your value.
I just recently bought a Purple pillow. Good god, I love this thing! I've tried every kind of pillow to help alleviate my neck pain and sweating and while some got pretty good at eliminating the sweatiness, none did squat for my constant neck pain...until the Purple pillow.
The only issue (and it's a very slight one at that) is the weight of this pillow. I think the shipment said it was just shy of 10lbs. The best way I can think of to describe this pillow is that it's like a sack full of ass fat.
I ended up with a mattress from Novosbed. For anyone who is in the market, stay away from Nectar. They are a horrible company to deal with. They will ship late, ignore your emails, and refuse to honor their own return policy.
