Review of Tempur-Pedic ® Mattresses
November 27, 2011
Its hard to imagine that I've been involved with memory foam for over 17 years.
But one thing hasn't changed over the years. Tempur-Pedic ® is still the biggest name in the memory foam mattress field with their mattresses in thousands of mattress retail stores. And because most people's expreience with memory foam begins with Tempur-Pedic ® one way or another (either in a store, through their infomercials, etc), I get a fair amount of questions about Tempur-Pedic's ® mattress line.
One of the hardest questions I get is what I think of the various Tempur-Pedic ® mattresses. First, I'm not an unbiased observer. I carry a 10" Memory Foam Mattress, that gets rave reviews from our users (94% would recommend our 10" Memory Foam Mattress to a friend) which compares favorably to that which Tempur-Pedic ® touts -- and ours is about half the price of the comparable Tempur-Pedic ® mattress (the Tempur-Cloud Supreme (TM).
But I will try to put my biases aside to give you my best shot at a buying guide to the current mattress line-up from Tempur-Pedic ®.
First, let me say this will be a general guide to their mattresses. Back when they offered a few models I had a pretty good handle on each and their positives and negatives. But now that they are up to 11 models, I just don't have the same familiarity with the nuances of each model.
Also, in 2011 they replaced many of their historical best sellers (the Deluxe(TM), The CelebrityBed(TM), The Classic(TM)) with a new line called the Contour Collection.
So I've had a hard time keeping up, and my expertise these days is limited to my long standing experience with Tempur-Pedic ® mattresses, lying on the new ones a bit at a store, and picking the brains of the store sales guys on their current experience with Tempur-Pedic ® (we talk shop, and they share things with me since I'm part of the mattress sales club).
One of the things that I was very surprised by was the recent move by Tempur-Pedic ® to bring out their Cloud collection. Why was I surprised? Because, for years they believed that any memory foam under their Tempur's density of 5.3 lbs just wasn't up to snuff.
So when they came out with the Cloud(TM) collection, with their new ES(TM) foam with a 4 lb density, it was a drastic change in their philosophy.
Which seems to have paid off extremely well. From what I gather, the Cloud(TM) line has become a big seller, and I can see why. The foam has a soft inviting nature at room temperature that is quite in contrast to the often hard feel of the original Tempur(TM) foam (which often needs your body's heat to soften).
I think this new line really represents a new direction for Tempur-Pedic ®, and so when you are shopping, it is important to try one of the Cloud(TM) line as well as one of the Contour(TM) line. These will have dramatically different feels due to this difference in the memory foam, and I'm guessing one or the other line will be much more appealing.
Once you've decided which of these two lines is your cup of tea, then you can begin to test within this line and see which particular one you feel is the most comfortable.
One thing I can't advise you on is the overall relative firmness of any particular bed. That is because Tempur-Pedic ® doesn't disclose the density or firmness of the core foam used in any of their beds. I really have no idea if the core foam used is the same in all, or somewhat different densities and firmness in different mattresses to vary a particular bed's feel.
So back to sorting through the mattresses. Once you've made this initial sort and come to a mattress in the Cloud(TM) or Contour(TM) line you feel you like, then there is one last step.
I purposely set up the initial choice between the Cloud(TM) and the Contour(TM) line since they are so different. So it should be fairly easy to see which type of feel you like due to their great disparity in feels.
But the middle ground, I feel, in the Tempur-Pedic ® line up is their HD(TM) collection. Their HD(TM) foam seems, in feel, to be a middle ground between the Tempur(TM) and the ES(TM) foams.
And so I think it makes sense to look at the HD(TM) line once you've settled the easy question (hopefully) of Cloud(TM) or Contour(TM).
Here it may get hard to figure out which one you like better or worse. This is one of the problems with having such a large amount of choices and options. They just become progressively more difficult to distinguish, and in fact each might have its own good value proposition. That is one reason I've stuck to carrying one or two mattresses at most over the years. I just think that this level of complexity can be a bit overwhelming, and that often it can be difficult for someone in a store environment to discern between these choices that offer similar, but yet different, feels.
This is usually where I would tell you that, given that a few minutes in a store just won't give you necessarily a good indication of how a mattress really sleeps over time, that the best way to get a feel for the real performance and feel of a mattress is to read the online reviews.
And I stand behind this -- at least as far as our 10" Memory Foam Mattress is concerned. Because I have worked hard to put up reviews that are in the vein of Amazon reviews. That is, reviews from all points of view, that aren't cherry picked, and with basic overall rating information up front. Given that I offer a 1 year money back trial on our mattresses, I don't have the incentive to cook the reviews -- for if they weren't giving people an accurate view of our mattress, I would just end up getting huge returns that would sabotage my business.
Tempur-Pedic ® does offer reviews on their site as well, although not ones that offer the comprehensive overview of the reviews you can find in ours or Amazon. And while there aren't many reviews offered, as I write this, for their new Contour(TM) collection models, there are a fair amount for the Cloud(TM) and HD(TM) collection.
I don't have any inside knowledge about these reviews. But I don't think Tempur-Pedic ® has any reason to cook theirs either, given that they offer a money back trial of at least a few months. Also, I do think they make a good product, albeit at a dear price point for many, and so I'm not surprised that overall they get good reviews.
So I would urge you, once you've settled on a particular Tempur-Pedic ® mattress or two that you are interested in, to read these particular products' online reviews on the Tempur-Pedic® site, as well as any others on the net you might come across (Epinions is a good place to start when researching this sort of thing).
Hopefully, if you spend some time reading through these reviews, you will get a better feel for what particular model, of the various ones you narrowed it down to in the store, might best suit your needs.
As for getting the best deal on a Tempur-Pedic ®, this really shouldn't vary from store to store. So the best I can offer is to buy from a store that you believe will back you up on your money back trial. This can really vary from store to store, so it is vital to understand what that particular store is offering (how long the money back trial is, whether it is a full money back or just store credit, etc.)
I hope this information on the Tempurpedic ® mattress line has been helpful.
If you are interested in the feel of memory foam, but are interested in looking at options less expensive than the Tempur-Pedic ® line, I hope you will check out our 10" Memory Foam Mattress -- it offers all the comfort of the "leading brand", with 94% of our customers saying they would recommend our mattress to a friend. But at about 1/2 the price.
If you have an interest in the option that we offer, you can find out all about our mattresses on our
Healthy Foundations 10" Memory Foam Mattress page. The Healthy Foundations 10" Memory Foam Mattresses are about 1/2 the price of the Tempur-Pedic
®* and we've gotten just a terrific response from our customers on the quality and comfort of our mattresses.
I believe in the Healthy Foundations Memory Foam Mattresses so much that I offer an unmatched 365 day money back trial on the mattress. And our Healthy Foundations 10" Memory Foam Mattress does come with a non-prorated 10 year manufacturer's warranty.
If you would like to find out more about our Healthy Foundations Memory Foam Mattresses, see our 10" Memory Foam Mattress page.
*Price Comparison is of Healthy Foundation 10" Memory Foam Mattress to the Tempur-CloudTM Supreme, which has a similar construction of 2" of 4 lb memory foam (they call their memory foam TempurTM foam), 2" of 5.3 memory foam, with 7" of base foam.
To be clear, I am not saying that our mattress duplicates the feel of the Tempur-CloudTM Supreme, only that this is the mattress that most closely compares to the specs of our Healthy Foundations 10" Mattress.
