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Beautyrest
Smart Foam Pad Mattress Pillows
The
worst nightmare you have on
your new mattress may be reliving the ordeal of buying it.
Unlike buying, say, a car, where makes and models are clear-cut
and where comparisons abound, the mattress live in their own super plush world of shifting prices, baffling
brand names and fuzzy claims. Consider this description of
the Beautyrest Smart Foam Pad Plush set: "one layer luxury
Beauty foam, one layer firm Beauty foam ... and a 96 h. p.
power flex element." That's more horsepower than in some
Suzukis. Does all that h. p. mean you'll have to bring it
back for a tune-up? Nah, says Kurt Ling, a Simmons executive.
The "h. p." stands for "high profile"
and the "power flex element," he says, is a "torsion
bar" in the foundation. In a car, a torsion bar can increase
carrying capacity and reduce body roll. We can only assume
it performs a similar function in a mattress.
Worse
yet, no independent studies of what make a good Beautyrest
Smart Foam Pad exist. Even quantifiable differences such as
the number of coils, the thickness of the metal in those coils
(called gauge) and the height of the mattress itself don't necessarily translate into a better bed,
although understanding those specifications can help you decode
the name game. Start with the much-ballyhooed "coil count."
Premium bedding, costing $500 or more for a queen-size mattress
and foundation (also called the box spring), usually offers
a high coil count (600 or more). And good mattress promise that all those coils will provide independent
motion, so if your partner rolls, you won't be rocked. But
keep in mind that each manufacturer offers its own technical-sounding
coil design, and all of them promise roughly the same things:
firm support with no sagging, firm edges and independent motion
among the coils. Coil count is only a rough indication of
condition and durability, so think of it as a starting point.
But you're
not shopping for a system of interrelated coils. You're after
a Beautyrest Smart Foam Pad that feels good, and that is a
very subjective judgment. To find the right one for you, kick
off your shoes and stretch out on some floor models. Look
up into the fluorescent lights on the showroom ceiling and
see how relaxed you feel.
Roll over onto your side if that's the way you sleep. Bring
your partner (if you've got one) and see if the bed quakes
when one of you rolls over. Hug the edge and see if it is
so soft that you feel as if you might slide off. Identify
how much padding you like. Super firm? Plush? Super plush?
Don't let the jargon influence you. One salesman wryly dismissed
the jargon on his own sales floor: "The more jibber-jabber
you put on the sign, the better the mattress." ONCE YOU'VE
determined what type of mattress feels most comfortable to
you, you're ready to comparison shop. But brace yourself:
The system is stacked against you. Retailers demand unique
names from manufacturers (and they may tweak some features,
like color) for the brand-name mattresses they sell. That
exclusivity makes it difficult for you to compare prices and
raises the odds that you can't collect on and "blowout"
sales--which run almost all the time--cloud the picture even
further.
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