It's also impossible to comparison shop because most people buy them once a decade, you don't really break them in for weeks, and sleeping is so subjective it's impossible to take anyone's word for it.
I bought a queen for around $600. It's fine. Improving sleep has been more about exercising more often, decreasing screen time, and reading/meditating before bed.
I was doing some research because I'm going to have to buy one for a vacation house later this year. On the one hand, I don't want to just randomly choose an expensive purchase. On the other hand, truth be told, I spend a quarter to a third of nights in various hotel rooms and they're mostly "fine."
And I've personally had everything from a waterbed to a (high-end) futon in my own house.
So I know I don't want something really crappy but so long as I don't go off in some weird direction or really cheap out, I'm sure I'll be just fine.
Well according to some of the other comments you can shop around for a "free" mattress because it's not worth returning. Just make you destroy it by leaving it somewhere, maybe like a vacation home.
There is I think a little bit of an ethical grey area in buying, trying, and returning a thing in the hope that it’s not worth their effort to ship it back.
I can’t really say that taking a company up on a free trial counts as wardrobing.
Yeah, I bought an expensive umbrellas for my backyard. It came without a pin in the hinge so it wouldn't open/close properly.
I told them, they said to throw it away and they would send me a new one. They sent me a new one but I repaired the other one - it seemed line a terrible waste to toss it. It crossed my mind that I could claim similar things for other objects even when they weren't broken.
That said, they both broke within a year. Taught me another lesson: buy cheap, replace yearly. Better than buying expensive and replacing yearly. Now I buy $50 outdoor wooden umbrellas.
I'm no ecowarrior, but perhaps I am a contradiction-warrior
... You started out saying throwing one away seemed a terrible waste, and now you, by plan and forethought, do so annually?
Both of those broke in a way that couldn't be repaired in a year. So instead of buying a $600 umbrella that unfixably breaks every year, I buy a couple $50 ones. The $50 ones are actually more repairable since they're wood instead of metal.
Yeah I get it, and would probably do the same (I'd rather pay more for lasts, as I gather you would, but if that isn't working then sure cheap and replace).
It was just the discrepancy between the initial reluctance to throw away, (even though it had been replaced, implying to me ecological /'this is still fundamentally sound and repairable' reasoning) and the ultimate conclusion to throw away every year.
No judgement, just confusion.
On a tangent, I dislike more and more the unrepairability and complexity of things. I'd love to be capable of making everything for myself, from basic components (not necessarily scratch). Still not for eco reasons, it may be worse (less efficient) in some cases in that regard, but just to know how everything worked and was put together, and be able to fix it all because I built it in the first place.
I'm not sure I would count on that :-) I'm also not sure how I feel about the foam mattresses. That's one type of mattress I don't have a lot of experience sleeping on and my initial reaction in the store was it was "different" to a degree that I wasn't sure what to make of it.
Also, I tend to be hot generally including when sleeping. From what I've read, a foam mattress may not be a great choice given that.
If you sleep hot, memory foam is what you want to stay away from. You sink down into it and it molds around your body.
Non-memory latex foam lets you sleep much cooler because you don't sink into it so much. I also tend to be too warm and have used latex foam mattresses for the last 20 years. They have been fine, unlike memory foam.
I went with ikea for the vacation house. It is perfectly adequate (for us -- I know this is subjective) and realistically we only spend perhaps 50 nights a year there.
I bought a queen for around $600. It's fine. Improving sleep has been more about exercising more often, decreasing screen time, and reading/meditating before bed.