We’ve found the perfect internet mattress for every kind of sleepy guy.
These days, to find the best mattress, you’re usually looking for the best mattress in a box. Not only can you order your choice in a few clicks, you can also avoid all the problems 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. 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. 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.
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.
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 2021, 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.
Helix Midnight Luxe: The Overall Favorite
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-night trial, 15-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium
Type: Hybrid foam and innerspring coils
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 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. We found all types of sleepers enjoyed it. The obvious downside is the price, but if you’re looking for the most comfortable bed, start here.
Casper Element: The Best $600 Mattress
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-day trial, 10-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium-firm
Type: Foam
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. In early 2020, Casper expanded its line of mattresses to include five different base models that you can get in a total of eight different configurations. The cheapest is the Element, a two-layered all-foam mattress.
The bottom layer is dense, so that it forms a solid base. The top layer is more forgiving, with perforations that encourage airflow. You sink into the mattress a little bit, but you won’t be cocooned so much that you overheat. Our testers—a variety of side, back, and stomach sleepers—all found the Element to be a comfortable and supportive medium-firm mattress. For an affordable mattress, the high-quality Element punches way above its weight.
Editor’s note: The Casper Element is currently sold out, but other comparable budget alternatives are the Tuft & Needle below, or the Allswell hybrid mattress that follows.
Tuft & Needle: A Slightly Firmer Affordable Alternative
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-day trial, 10-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium-firm
Type: Foam
At around $900 for a queen size, Tuft & Needle’s Original Mattress is a great value. As with the Casper Element, it’s made with two layers of foam: a comfort layer of softer foam and a base layer of denser foam. Basically, it takes all the bells and whistles out 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 (don’t worry, this does not actually feel like a waterbed of goo).
That top layer of foam feels more firm than the Casper Element, which makes it just a hair less preferable for the way most people sleep (a combination of side and back), but not so much that you’d really notice unless you hopped between the two in one evening. And, unlike the Element, Tuft & Needle’s offerings are available at some Lowe’s stores, which might make it easier to go out and lay down on one if those 100-day trials strike you as bothersome.
Leesa Original: The Best Mattress in the $1000 Range
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-day trial, 10-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium
Type: Foam
At $1000, you have a lot of different options for mattresses. And the Leesa Original is our favorite. It’s 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 firm, so plush and supportive that it made our brains want to fall asleep the moment we laid on it.
Eight Sleep Pod Pro: The Best Mattress for Fine-Tuning Your Sleep
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-day trial, 10-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium Firm
Type: Foam
As one of our Fitness Award winners this year, the five-layer foam mattress Eight Sleep Pod Pro fell into the fitness category based on the sleep tech baked into it that tracks metrics—similarly to how a smart watch would. The Pod Pro includes medical-grade sensors that chart data like your heart rate, respiratory rate, and movement, which are easy to monitor during waking hours with Eight Sleep’s app. For the person who wants to get really precise with fine-tuning their sleep preferences, the mattress also includes heating and cooling capabilities (between 55 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit) that you can adjust for each individual sleeper based on whether you tend to burn up or get the chills at night. To sweeten the deal, the mattress even includes a built-in alarm that gently wakes each person with chest-level vibrations and a gradual temperature change, which is a nice alternative to the blare of a traditional alarm.
Allswell: The Best Mattress for the Budget-Savvy
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-night trial, 10-year limited warranty
Firmness Level: Medium
Type: Foam and innerspring coils hybrid
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 very good cheaper options, too. If you don’t have a lot to spend, we’d suggest the Allswell mattress. At $329, it offers the best value in mattresses that you’ll find anywhere. Allswell, a new-ish brand run by Walmart, is a hybrid mattress (like the Helix Midnight Luxe) 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 $345 mattress comes with a limited 10-year warranty and a 100-night risk-free trial, is well, crazy.
Zinus Hybrid: A Softer Mattress for Sleepers on a Budget
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-night trial, 10-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium-Soft
Type: Foam and innerspring coils hybrid
Zinus has been a big player in the cheap sleep universe for years. Its solid foam mattresses and bed frames. Last year, the company released a bunch of new mattresses, including this hybrid. It’s constructed in a very similar way to the Allswell, with a foam top layer supported by an innerspring bottom, though the Zinus is a full two inches thicker. That thickness, which mostly comes from a thicker super soft top layer, makes the high-density mattress feel a little bit more like a traditional memory foam option. You really sink into it. It still feels supportive, but we think that most sleepers will find the Allswell more comfortable in the long term.
Casper Wave: The Best Mattress for Side Sleepers and Back Sleepers
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-night trial, 10-year limited warranty
Firmness Level: Firm to Medium-Firm
Type: Foam
You could do a lot worse than just to pick whichever Casper mattress works with your budget and sleeping preferences and buy that one. But if you’re not coming to the mattress game with a hard budget, we recommend the hybrid Casper Wave. After testing all of Casper’s mattresses over the last several months, 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.
Awara Hybrid: Another Supportive Alternative for Combination Sleepers
Warranty/Guarantee: One-year trial period, lifetime warranty
Firmness Level: Medium Firm
Type: Foam and innerspring coils hybrid
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, true, 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.
Dreamcloud Luxury Hybrid: A Cheaper Alternative for Combination Sleepers
Warranty/Guarantee: One-year trial period, lifetime warranty
Firmness Level: Medium Firm
Type: Foam and innerspring coils hybrid
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 luxury hybrid mattress, which typically runs for around $1500, but has a sale price of $999 during Black Friday. 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 can be helpful for people who want a little more elevation (and also a disadvantage for getting your fitted sheets to slide 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.
Avocado Green: The Best Eco-Friendly Mattress
Warranty/Guarantee: One-year trial period, 25-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium Firm
Type: Foam and innerspring coils hybrid
The standard mattress from Avocado is a relatively simple hybrid mattress in design. It’s made with foam and contains coils arranged in five distinct zones. The effect of these zones (the contouring!) wasn’t felt as strongly by reviewers as some of the engineered support layers of mattresses like the Casper Wave or the Leesa Legend. The result is something on the firmer side. It doesn’t exactly cradle your body, but will provide enough density for back sleepers to rest comfortably.
You can get this from a lot of cheaper mattresses, including the Allswell mattress and the Leesa Original. But neither of those companies are as specific about the sourcing of their materials. The latex foam in an Avocado mattress is organically certified, as is the organic cotton and wool that covers the foam. For you, that might be worth paying a premium.
Birch Natural: An Eco-Friendly Runner-Up
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-night trial period, 25-year warranty
Firmness Level: Soft
Type: Hybrid latex and innerspring coils
The Birch mattress is actually made and designed by the same team behind our all-around favorite mattress, Helix. Unlike the Helix mattress, the Birch comes in a fixed firmness that is not endlessly customizable. That firmness isn’t really firm at all. Our tester described it as “very plush.” That might make the mattress less than ideal for any back and side sleepers, but it might not be a dealbreaker for stomach sleepers or someone who wants something with an extra coziness factor. Like Avocado’s organic mattress, the Birch is also made from certified organic latex and wool. We think more people will find the more supportive Avocado mattress to be a better choice over time, but if you value softness in your bed-in-a-box, the Birch is a good option.
Cocoon by Seely: The Best Cooling Mattress
Warranty/Guarantee: 100-night trial period, 10-year warranty
Firmness Level: Medium-Firm
Type: Hybrid latex and innerspring coils
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