22 Best Mattresses in a Box to Buy in 2023

Despite recent conjecture otherwise, you don’t need a chemistry PhD to find a mattress that works for you. These days, you’re usually looking for the best mattress in a box. Not only can a shippable internet mattress be yours in a few clicks, but you can also avoid all the snafus that come with perusing brick-and-mortar mattress stores: high prices, scheduling deliveries, creepy sales people asking increasingly invasive questions about how you sleep, etc.

There’s just one catch: You can’t try it out first before having the thing shipped to your house and lugged up the stairs. Thankfully, most bedding companies that are truly worth their salt offer no-risk returns (more on that below), even a full calendar year after your purchase date. But it’s always nice to have a clear sense of what you’re getting into before you add an expensive, hemmed-and-hawed-over mattress to cart. 

Which is where we come in. Over the past few years, we’ve actually built our own mattress emporium exclusively from mattresses in a box. 

The Best Mattresses, at a Glance

Better sleep awaits, and if you’re in a hurry to secure the bed of your dreams, cast a weary eye over our top recommendations here, all tried and tested and beloved by our staff.

Oh, and if you want to skip down to a certain section of our listings, we’ve made it even easier: The Best Hybrid Mattresses, The Best Mattresses for Combination Sleepers, The Best Memory Foam Mattresses, The Best Mattresses for Fine-Tuning Your Sleep, The Best Budget Mattresses, The Best Eco-Friendly Mattresses, The Best Cooling Mattresses, The Best Soft Choices, The Best Super-Firm Choices

• The Best Hybrid Mattress: Helix Midnight Luxe, $2,099
• The Best Mattress for Side Sleepers and Back Sleepers: Casper Wave, $2,895
• The Best Memory Foam Mattress: Thuma, $1,095
• The Best Mattress for Fine-Tuning Your Sleep:  Eight Sleep Pod Pro, $3,395 $3,295
• The Best Budget Mattress: Allswell, $349 
• The Best Eco-Friendly Mattress: Birch Luxe Natural, $3,124 $2,499
• The Best Cooling Mattress: Cocoon by Sealy, $1,699 $1,099
• The Best Soft Choice:  Soft WinkBed Mattress, $1,799 $1,499
• The Best Super-Firm Choice: Brooklyn Bedding Plank Mattress, $1,332 $999

How we tested

We sent GQ staffers, the sleep-indifferent and sleep-obsessed alike, to put the mattresses through the same paces they would if they were buying them at a store. Everyone’s favorite activity? Testing the responsiveness and bounce by running across all of the mattresses (in clean socks, of course). 

By bringing all the mattresses in the same room, and bringing editors of all different sleeping types and mattress expertise levels, it became a lot easier to articulate differences in the small things, like, “Where is the line between feeling swaddled in memory foam and feeling like you’re drowning in it?” and “Does this mattress sleep hot, or is it just me?” 

Everyone tested for qualities like edge support, heat retention, motion transfer, bounce, and comfort, taking note of additional and unusual perks for the price point, and how well each model held up to the promises in its branding. From there, each person used their sleep preferences to choose which mattresses to test (firmer spring coil models for back sleepers, for example, or pure memory foam for stomach sleepers who prefer some pillowy cushion to sprawl out on), the way you would if you were shopping for your own mattress. 

We’ve even taken a couple home to really get a sense of how they hold up under scrutiny, because it’s hard to replicate the lived-in feel of sleeping and sweating on a mattress for months, or navigating spatial dynamics with a bedfellow. After comparing and testing upwards of 30 mattresses from the internet, we can assure you that the risk is worth the reward.

What to look for in a mattress

Despite all the differences in mattress preferences, a clear through-line emerged. Two factors came up again and again as priorities: The best mattresses in a box should be comfortable and supportive. That’s it. Everything else (the materials, the cooling and heating properties, whether or not it offers reclining opportunities so you can prop your feet up like you’re lying on a La-Z-Boy) are just icing on the cake. Things to add-on to your mattress wish list as secondary bullet points. 

Types of mattresses

Springs? Foam? A combination of both?! In your search for a mattress, you’ll come across three general types of mattresses, each with their own set of pros and cons. Here’s how each fares for different kinds of sleepers.

Foam/Memory Foam: If you want to sink into your bed like it’s a cloud, foam and memory foam is something you’d probably like. It cradles your body, offering a type of soft support that can ease achey joints, while providing excellent body contouring (so it molds to your body). Foam is notoriously bad for hot sleepers because it traps heat, but brands continue to develop new ways to give foam some sort of cooling features to relieve some of that pent-up warmth.

Innerspring: Innerspring mattresses offer harder support than memory foam mattresses, and it’s really good for back sleepers. Cheaply made innerspring mattresses will lose their springiness quickly and even cheaper mattresses will make an annoying squeaking sound. This type of mattress is also not the best for couples because they don’t do a very good job at reducing motion transfer, so if you’re a wild sleeper, your partner might easily be awoken by your movements.

Hybrid: Get the best of foam and springs with a hybrid mattress. Not all hybrid mattresses are expensive, but in general, going the hybrid route means you’ll spend a little more money than a full foam or innerspring mattress. You get a softer feel than an innerspring mattress without the quicksand-feel of foam, and it’s easier to customize a hybrid mattress (depending on what certain brands offer) to suit your preferences. 

How to measure comfort and support 

Comfort is easy to conceptualize. How comfortable does it feel to lay on this? How hot does it get? Do I like the cradling of the foam, or the bounce of a coil spring mattress—or a little bit of both?

The support part is harder, and really boils down to your body type. Hammocks and bean bags are comfortable, but let us know how supported your back feels after sleeping in them for a year. Generally, thicker mattresses and denser materials will be created with multiple layers of support to them (like layers of foam, some spongier and others harder, as you’ll find in a mattress like the Casper Original). Others, like “hybrid” models, replace the popular spring support models of yore with a combination of bouncy coils on the bottom and soft supportive foam or gel layers on the top that provide additional comfort and support.

How you interpret what’s supportive and what’s not has a lot to do with how much you weigh and your preferred sleep position. If you are an average-sized male adult, for example, you already have some options eliminated for you. A medium-soft or soft mattress likely won’t provide enough support for your frame, and you’ll probably prefer something on the firm to medium-firm side of the spectrum. Side sleepers, whose hips and shoulders dig into the bed and create uneven pressure, might lean toward soft but supportive medium options that have some give but still keep the spine aligned and pressure even.

With all that in mind, we’ve created this guide to help take the guesswork out of buying the best mattress in a box online. To make sure we bring you the best and most up-to-date mattress reviews in 2023, we’ll keep testing new ones all year round. When combined with our favorite sheet sets, pillows, and comforters, these mattresses provide what we think is the best possible sleep experience you’ll ever get. (And if you can’t pull off a new bed, you can try upgrading what you have with our favorite mattress toppers.) Without further ado, here are the best mattresses in a box for every price and every sleeping style.

The Best Hybrid Mattress: Helix Midnight Luxe

At its onset, Helix made fully customized mattresses, which we wrote about a couple years ago. In those days, every company had a one-size-fits-all solution, so this was a revolution. And as the one-size-fits-all brands became, okay, a-few-sizes-fit-all brands, Helix changed too. Helix offers six different versions of mattresses at two price points (a “standard” and a “luxe”), giving a solid option for just about every type of sleeper. It more recently expanded its collection to include a “Plus” mattress for big and tall sleepers, plus a smaller size for kids. In fact, even if you don’t buy a Helix, it’s worth taking this nice mattress quiz just to get a better sense of what type of mattress will work best.

The Helix Midnight Luxe, a hybrid mattress with a coil base and a luxurious memory foam top, was a runaway favorite among GQ staffers. It’s just so damn comfortable (“nice pillow top, but not too soft, with a healthy but forgiving spring,” noted one enthusiastic tester). Several staff members also praised the mattress’ coolness, which can be attributed to a breathable woven stretch knit cover that keeps it from overheating.

If you’re someone who has slept on memory foam mattresses for a few years, you might have forgotten the appeal of a coil base, which adds a little bounce and, maybe just as importantly, a little familiarity for those new to the memory foam mattress world. The mattress is medium firm and perfect for stomach and side sleepers: just enough “give” to distribute the pressure on your shoulders and hips, but not so much that you feel like you’re in sinking sand. Still, we found that a range of types of sleepers enjoyed it. The obvious downside is the price, but if you’re looking for the most comfortable bed, start here.

Two Other Great Hybrid Mattresses

Aviya may not be a household name in the bedding market yet, but its beds are favored by a number of five-star hotels that help weary travelers get a stellar night’s sleep before rising and grinding the next day. As right of center medium-firm hybrid models, these beds use a springy foundation of innerspring steel coils covered by multiple layers of soft, but dense foam. The result is a blissfully bouncy, yet supportive sleep experience, which is made even sweeter by enhanced edge support in case your partner or relentless cat ends up pushing you right to the furthest corner. We tested the luxury firm option, though you can also opt for slightly more plush or firm alternatives, too. Our tester, who has slept on this mattress for a number of years now, has never had any problems with it sagging or losing its buoyancy, but if for some reason you do, the mattress is guaranteed for 10 years against the odd loose spring. 

Saatva specializes in high-end mattresses, and its luxury firm option feels every bit as ritzy as the name implies. Shipping wasn’t the speediest (a week to two weeks), but the brand’s free white glove delivery service got the bed easily up to our tester’s third floor walkup without any snags or odious off-gassing upon arrival. We tested the brand’s crowd-pleasing, medium firm model—which uses a bed of pocketed innerspring coils topped off with three inches of plushy pillowtop—though there are options if you’d prefer a firmer foundation. 

Our tester appreciated that the queen size mattress provided ample space for himself, his partner, and 30-pound Goldendoodle, with little to no motion transfer upsetting their sleep in the middle of the night. Combined with the striking off-white color of the bed, he called this mattress a stylish, “dreamy combination of cushion and support,” one that didn’t trigger any back pain and allowed him to sleep comfortably on both his back and his side. Blessedly, the mattress comes with a lifetime warranty for tuneups down the line, plus a full year’s worth of testing to put it through its paces.

The Best Mattress for Side Sleepers and Back Sleepers: Casper Wave

Casper is the mattress brand that first sparked the online mattress revolution. But what began as a “one size fits all” mattress has evolved into an entire line of sleep solutions offered at a lot of different price points. For your next bed upgrade, you could do a lot worse than just to pick whichever Casper mattress works with your budget and sleeping preferences. But if you’re not coming to the mattress game with a hard budget, we recommend the hybrid Casper Wave. After testing many of Casper’s mattresses, it emerged as a clear favorite. The Wave is a medium-firm mattress that’s extremely supportive. One of our testers slept on one for a few months, and, while the additional firmness was initially a little jolting, they adjusted quickly and, reportedly, “slept like a king.” For side-sleepers, the Wave, like many of the higher-end mattresses, will do a much better job cushioning your shoulders and hips, without making you feel like you’re sinking.

Sure, it costs a lot and probably makes the most sense for those with support issues or an extreme dissatisfaction with their previous $1000 mattress. It’s important to remember that at $2,600, you’re not buying a mattress because it’s twice as good as a $1000 one; you’re spending $2,600 because even marginal improvements in support and sleep are worth the extra $160 a year over its 10-year warranty. 

Another Supportive Alternative for Combination Sleepers

Dreamcloud’s been around since 2017, and in that time they’ve released three mattresses that aim for a luxury experience at a manageable price point. The latest two are variations on the brand’s original hybrid mattress, which typically runs for around $1300, but is on sale for far less during the Memorial Day weekend.  For a mattress that’s a combination of foam and innerspring coils, it’s not surprising that this one falls in that medium-firm sweet spot of being just comfy enough to keep most average-weight people happy, and just supportive enough that your lower back won’t stage a protest in the mornings. It’s most likely a fit for someone who’s a side sleeper or a back sleeper (or both). Our tester called it a “a dreamy combo of pillowy and supportive,” with a design that’s “nice to look at even before you put the sheets on.” 

It’s taller than a lot of mattresses out there at 14 inches, which is a boon for people who want a little more elevation (but also a disadvantage for sliding fitted sheets on without a struggle, as our tester found). There’s a plushy cashmere cover to it that feels soft to the touch, but if you’re worried about overheating with that kind of material, know that there’s also a gel memory foam layer right beneath it that’s designed to keep you cool. We also tested one of the brand’s upgrade models below, but if you’re looking for a first-rate mattress for less than $1,000 (on sale, at least), we think this has the best value of them all and still offers great support for combo sleepers. 

The Best Memory Foam Mattress: Thuma

Part of the appeal of the Thuma experience is that your choices are limited. Thuma’s classic mattress is offered in only one variety: a foam slab (comprised of two layers of polyurethane foam, and one cushy latex subsection on top) all sewn up in a quilted Tencel cover. In this case, less is more. The mattress is an optimal blend of soft and supportive, and our tester reports that laying on it really does feel like sinking into a cloud—but a cloud with seriously firm underpinnings. The foam embodies all the good qualities of an innerspring/memory foam duet, except with none of the bulky heft that such mattresses typically carry. And it sits perfectly atop the Home Award-winning bed frame the brand offers while neutralizing the effects of body movement.

At around $1,000 bucks, it’s around the same price as the Leesa below, but we sense that its medium firm foundation will sit better with most combination sleepers than the slightly softer cushion of the latter. Best of all, the thing is ridiculously easy to set up. Arriving in three separate boxes, our tester notes that assembling the bed takes as little as 10 minutes and “offers the satisfying sensation of building a Lego set.” Even if, like him, you happened to miss the instruction manual that arrived in one of the boxes, assembly is so intuitive that it can still be completed in minutes without any head-scratching involved. 

Two Other Great Foamy Options

Like the Thuma, Leesa’s best-selling original mattress is composed of three layers of foam, but doesn’t feel anything like the cheaper bricks of memory quicksand. It provides the best parts of the material—solid support, a really comfortable give—while staying cool and keeping just a little bit of bounce. This one feels like a true medium, plushy yet supportive in a way that made our brains want to fall asleep the moment we laid on it. If you’re looking for something with a slightly firmer foundation to it, we’d suggest either the Thuma above or the Tuft & Needle below. 

At around $900 for a queen size, Tuft & Needle’s Original Mattress is a great value. Made with two layers of foam: a comfort layer of softer foam and a base layer of denser foam, it strips out all the bells and whistles and gives you a luxurious bed at a comfortable price. One of our side-sleeping testers who has suffered from shoulder pain in the past found the Tuft & Needle to be the ideal combination of give and support. The mattress’ foam contains a cooling gel to keep things from overheating, too (but don’t worry, this does not actually feel like a waterbed of goo). 

That top layer of foam leans on the firmer side, which makes it just a hair less preferable for the way most people sleep (a combination of side and back), but your weight might also play a role in how much “firmness” and sinkage you really feel with it. Tuft & Needle’s offerings are available at some Lowe’s stores, at least, which might make it easier to go out and lay down on one if those 100-day trials strike you as bothersome.

The Best Mattress for Fine-Tuning Your Sleep: Eight Sleep Pod Pro

One of our Fitness Award winners last year, the five-layer foam mattress Eight Sleep Pod Pro edged its way into the fitness category purely based on the sleep tech baked into it that rival those of a smart watch. The Pod Pro includes medical-grade sensors that chart data like your heart rate, respiratory rate, and movement, which are easy to pore over during your waking hours via Eight Sleep’s app if you’re wondering why you look so worn out despite a supposed eight hours, for example. For the person who wants to get extra precise with fine-tuning their sleep preferences, the mattress also includes heating and cooling capabilities (between 55 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit) that each individual sleeper can adjust based on whether they tend to burn up or get the chills at night. The mattress even includes a built-in alarm that gently wakes each person with chest-level vibrations and a gradual temperature change, which sure beats the blare of a traditional alarm. 

The Best Budget Mattress: Allswell

It’s easy to forget that what you’re sleeping on is just fine—or that it was just fine before it got a little old and lumpy. It might feel like your only options are to stay with your old mattress or upgrade to something that’s close to $1000. But there are a range of cheaper options that are worth considering for your starter apartment or mostly abandoned guest room. If you’re on a shoestring budget, we’d suggest the Allswell mattress. At $329, it offers the best value in mattresses that you’ll find anywhere. Allswell, a brand run by Walmart, is a hybrid consisting of an innerspring base and a memory foam top. It’s thinner and less supportive, but, surprisingly, it’s still pretty comfortable. Nearly all our testers were shocked when they discovered how affordable this mattress was. “This is the kind of bed you’d be excited to jump on if you were a kid,” said one editor who visited our mattress showroom. That a mattress this cheap comes with a limited 10-year warranty and a 100-night risk-free trial, is well, crazy.

Another Great Budget Option: Spa Sensations Serenity 

Most mattresses that fall under $200 are a hard-as-rock innerspring or a tremendously saggy hunk of foam, the kind of thing you impulse buy for your guest room and forget about until a snoring partner gives you reason to get acquainted with it. Not this one. The Spa Sensations Serenity mattress is all killer, no filler, and a sister brand to the affordable mattress kings over at Zinus. It’s one that came to us via word of mouth (as many of reviewers will attest, it’s the kind of thing that’s so criminally cheap for the quality, you just have to pass it on). 

As the top-selling mattress at Walmart, you don’t just have to take our word for it, but if you want to, our tester described it as an expensive-looking, abundantly cushy mattress that’s “lightweight enough to haul up six flights of stairs.” He’s owned it for a decade, and has never needed to cash in on the 10-year warranty. It’s just that good. 

The Best Eco-Friendly Mattress: Birch Luxe 

Our team of testers wasn’t blown away by the original Birch mattress, finding it a bit too squishy for its firm-leaning promises. But we returned to give the eco-friendly brand another go, and came away with a much rosier outlook on the souped-up Birch Hybrid Luxe). 

Unlike the OG, this model is made up of a few layers of organic cotton and wool piled over a synthetic latex pad and innersprings, like someone stretched your favorite low-pile oatmeal fleece over your bed. Oh and did we mention there’s a little bit of cashmere in there, too?  “It’s nice and nubbly to run your hand over, and that actually gives your fitted sheet some extra stabilization that I appreciate,” our tester noted, adding, “This is the menswear head’s mattress!” 

Combined with the solid edge support and the baked-in lumbar-contouring layers that kept him comfortable sleeping on his stomach, there’s also a very generous 25-year warranty to fall back on should you run into troubles down the road. If you’ve been hunting high and low for a bed that combines high quality design with all organic, premium fabrication—mister, you’re looking at it. 

The Best Cooling Mattress: Cocoon by Sealy

For hot sleepers who tend to wake up with the sheets and blankets piled around their ankles in the morning, a set of cooling sheets might not be enough to stay comfortable. That old mattress that traps body heat in its upper layers could use an overhaul, too. True to its name, the Cocoon by Sealy Chill Hybrid bills itself as a mattress aimed at curing your overheating woes. It bears some similarities to our favorite mattress, the cooling hybrid Helix, offering adaptive memory foam and innerspring coils that give you a supportive-yet-bouncy feel with less pain on your pressure points. Our testers felt chill as a cucumber dozing off on this bed, but for a cool $200 upgrade, there’s also an “extra chill” hybrid version that promises enhanced cooling technology and an even brisker cover. 

One tester called it the “perfect combination between squishy and firm,” noting that it had good edge support and a great foundation of fabric-encased coils for reducing motion transfer. “We used to wake each other up multiple times during the night with our tossing and turning. But this mattress allows us to sleep without being disturbed by the other person’s movement.” As an added bonus for people who like to experiment with their elevation, Sealy also sells a Tempur Pedic-like base for $949 that raises and lowers your head or feet area if you want to relieve pressure on your back.

Another Great Cooling Mattress

Nectar’s mission is to create the most comfortable bed possible, and currently offers six variations of its cooling beds to soothe your sticky limbs in humid weather. We took the brand’s premier hybrid mattress for a test drive, a firm-leaning model with seven layers of contouring support that offer pressure relief and stability, topped off with a breathable cover. Our tester noted that the design of the bed is “incredibly intuitive,” enough that she could assemble it all on her own. And though there was some offgassing, any “new mattress” smells dissipated in about two days. 

She previously conked out on a Cocoon mattress, and adds that the cooling effects are very similar. Between the two, the only factors that create a little more distance are pricing and extras: In this cooling category, we think the Cocoon offers a little more wiggle room in terms of “extra chilled” add-ons for your mattress, and can be found for a cheaper price than the Nectar when on sale. Still, either are excellent choices if you’re getting nervous about the sweaty summer days just on the horizon. 

The Best Soft Choice: Soft WinkBed Mattress

Folks who like quite a bit of extra squish to their mattress do exist (though they may be outnumbered), and the much-hyped WinkBed in its softest variation is one for the job. Combining an extra plushy pillow top, gel-infused foam, and innersprings zoned out to support your body, there’s plenty of cushion here to cradle you to sleep without your limbs completely getting sucked in during the night. 

Our tester calls this an immediate “marshmallow effect” and says it’s something he’s been plagued by after sleeping on other DTC mattresses almost exclusively over the last couple years. “Honestly, I have not had that issue with the WinkBed, which has sturdy sides and stays level from end to end,” he says, and describes its plushness as a big plus, not a burden. He adds that he gets a high-end, hotel feel from this bed: “It’s comfortable enough to feel special and, although I’ve only had it a few months, seems hardy enough to stick around for a while.” Plus, if you hate it, there’s a lengthy trial period to tide you over and a lifetime warranty that’ll step in if your mattress turns to mush over time. Which, we think, it probably won’t!

The Best Super-Firm Choice: Brooklyn Bedding Plank Mattress

True to its name, Brooklyn Bedding’s The Plank is for a back sleeper who wants the firmest bed possible short of laying on the cold, hard floor. While most internet options are either medium or medium-firm, Brooklyn Bedding offers plenty of truly firm options, and the Plank is billed as its firmest. You actually have two options, a .75” top layer or, when flipped over, a slightly-less-firm 1.5” top layer. It’s not for everyone, but you’ll know immediately if it’s for you.

6 Other Mattresses We Like, With Some Reservations

Ever wanted to just buy a customized, bespoke bed rather than fork over a rent check for any old mattress-in-a-box? Well, the folks at Stearns and Foster have one edge on their competitors with a bed that’s tailored like a Savile Row garment: hand-sewn, hand-layered, and wrapped up in a cooling Tencel outer that’s embellished with velvet edging and embroidery. Lots of mattress brands offer some variation of a “luxe hybrid,” but this one truly deserves the title. Our tester likened its design to a bed you’d find in a fancy boutique hotel. “Whenever I slip into bed, I still marvel at how the softness mixed with the support provides the sensation of a hug,” he said. Still, for the price, our tester (who tried it in medium firm) felt like the mattress encouraged a bit too much sinkage on the sides.

Another downside? Because these are hand-sewn mattresses, that artisanal production is going to cost you. The Stearns & Foster is certainly the priciest mattress on this list, and it will also take quite a bit of time for the company to manufacture your bed to your liking and ship it out. Our tester found the entire shipping and delivery process to be a headache, but the beautiful bed that eventually rocked up far outshone the 11-year old mattress it replaced. If you’re itching to buy a fancier bed and have the patience to wait for it, this one’s a great investment.

Bear’s a family-owned mattress brand that’s been around for 25 years, starting out with this original mattress and branching out into other styles and options for kids, RVs, and trundle beds. The OG Bear is its most basic model at less than a grand, offering up three layers of foam at various densities (with cooling gel layers close to the top to keep you from kicking off the covers at night), all ensconced in a breathable quilted cover. Though foam mattresses have a reputation for being overly squishy, our tester felt that this Bear skewed more to the firmer end of things, with ample support for your persistent back issues. 

After a few weeks sleeping on it, though, he ultimately came away with mixed feelings about it. Compared to the Tuft & Needle foam mattresses he’s used to sleeping on, he felt that this one wasn’t nearly as comfortable or cooling. Still, if you’re just looking for a supportive, affordable mattress around $500, we still think it’s a solid pick for that neglected guest room. 

The DreamCloud Premier Rest takes everything we love about the original DreamCloud hybrid and dials it up: Sumptuous fabrics (peep the cashmere cover!), a cooling topper, and a layer of innersprings sandwiched between foam and a dense support base. Compared to its predecessors, the Premier Rest model  throws in another layer of comfort foam and adds another inch to its “spinal alignment transition layer.” All of this nets out to a mattress that the company touts as its most comfortable, supportive, and cooling model ever, one that our tester says magically alleviated her back pain accrued while sleeping on an Ikea model. “I think the cushy to supportive ratio is great, and the mattress provides solid back support with a plush feel,” she added. She also highlighted great edge support if you’re dangling off the edge, and a hassle-free shipping and delivery experience.

The only drawback is that all those layers add up. The 16-inch height is not ideal for most sheet sets (and you may have to invest in a deeper fitted sheet to comfortably suit yours up). There’s also the elevated price point that lands it upwards of $2,000. Considering that the cheaper original hybrid model we tested from Dreamcloud was already such a hit, we think you’d do just fine with any of its beds. If you did want to scale up to this bigger mattress, though, there’s a dynamite sale going on during the Memorial Day weekend that will substantially cut costs.

Awara’s Hybrid mattress offers a lot of the same advantages of the Casper Wave. Like the Wave, the Awara contains a bottom layer of thick innersprings, which gives it a bit of bounce and substantial supportive. But the top layers are very different from the Wave’s. The Wave employs a lot more tech, like a layer of gel memory foam, to make the mattress feel cooler to the touch and help with pressure relief and back pain. The Awara mattress is, in contrast, much simpler—there is a thick layer of latex foam on top of the springs and a cover made with wool and cotton on top of that. That’s it.

This composition makes the Awara feel less supportive, but it also makes it feel much more cloud-like than a conventional hybrid mattress. Our tester called it “soft, yet sturdy.” That might be the perfect trade-off if you’re a combination side and black sleeper who wants to be cradled to sleep by your mattress.

The Purple mattress was the most polarizing mattress tested. It’s made out of a proprietary polymer and designed, basically, like an egg crate. A big, purple egg crate. It’s a weird mattress, but if you’ve always been dissatisfied by your traditional mattress options, it’s certainly worth checking out. As one staffer noted, “it’s comfortable, but might be better suited for a space shuttle.”

It’s billed as a medium-firm mattress, but it feels softer, probably because it’s so unlike the memory foam and spring mattresses we’ve experienced. It distributes pressure evenly while feeling nice and cushioned—like memory foam, but a little more responsive. One of our testers said laying in it made him feel “like I’d just fallen into one of those trapeze nets.” Other staffers thought it slept hot and did feel like you were sinking into it. If you’ve got the time and the curiosity, a 100-night trial makes trying out something new like this much, much easier.

The Novosbed is a unique bed with an adjustable hardness. You order the bed in soft, medium, or firm. If you find that firmness not to your liking, the company will send you a firmness adjustment kit that allows you to change the density of the top layers. Our tester, who prefers a firmer mattress, found that the comforter did a really good job of dissipating her body heat. But she also thought that the high-density foam in the “firm” setting wasn’t quite firm enough, and she felt like she was sinking into its all-foam construction.  If you prefer the feeling of a memory foam bed to an innerspring mattress, though, you’ll likely appreciate the ability to adjust the hardness of this one.