I was in the need for a new bed and I decided to splurge a little and get a memory foam mattress. I have been researching foam mattress online for quite a while and have heard mostly good things about visco-elastic memory foam mattresses. All was good with these except for the price. Lucky for me my new job gave us Costco memberships…so I checked out there site and saw that they had Novaform Memory Foam mattresses in their online catalog. With a little bit more research I decided to purchase one. I would have gotten it right from the costco store, but they only had queen size beds, and I wanted to stick with a full/double size since all of my bedding was already that size. I waiting until the conversion rate between the US and Canada favored the US dollar and ordered the Novaform mattress online at costco. The price was 669.99 plus taxes Canadian, and it included shipping. Include PST and GST and the price was up around $100 more…still a bargain for a memory foam mattress regardless of brand or store!
Costco had good email communication and shipped the mattress the next day. 2 days later it was scheduled for delivery and I was ready to get the mattress. My excitement quickly turned into rage once I found out the douchebag driver at UPS decided not to drop it off that Friday night when it was scheduled. Of course here in Canada they do not do fuck all on the weekend, so I had to wait until Monday to sleep in this new memory foam bed. Well Monday I go to work and the Novaform was delivered. It comes in a giant box, it was like 3.5 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet and weighed around 80 lbs. If you purchase the queen sized bed at a costco store the price is a bit cheaper (no shipping) and it comes in a sweet box with a metal frame on the bottom with casters so you can roll it around. Well I lug this bitch into my bedroom, open the box…Inside there is this giant mylar/tinfoil looking bag that is vacuum sealed around the foam mattress. I read the instruction and carefully cut this open.
Inside is another bag containing the mattress and is also vacuum sealed. Well the second you cut this bag open it whistles as air is sucked in and the mattress starts to grow. I open it the rest of the way and the stick of toxic fumes hits my sinuses… I read reviews that the smell was intense for a few days and reminded people of gasoline…it smells more like paint thinner…and it is pretty strong. Well I unfold the bed and wait 24-36 hrs for it to completely grow. The smell goes away after a few days and the bed grows to its full 12″ thick size. For those of you that do not know the mattress is 12″ thick, 9″ of regular foam, and 3″ of high density heat sensitive memory foam. It is then covered in a removable cover. Now for the best part…the sleep. The bed is amazing, better than any bed I have ever slept on, it is firm yet soft and gives just enough support but had enough give in it to not make your neck or back hurt when you wake up. I also bought a Novaform memory foam pillow for 22 Canadian and the thing is equally brilliant.
If you cannot buy the bed, do yourself a favor and go to costco and buy the pillows…they are great. Overall the Novaform bed gets a solid 9 rating and probably a 10 for value, at least compared to other memory foam mattresses. I would be careful of the stink of the mattress and would not recommend getting it in the winter…wait until you can air the room out for a few days…the smell was STRONG, but it goes away and the sleep that you get is more than enough to make up for the smell. Another sweet feature is that if your partner gets up in the middle of the night, you sleep right through it. It is simple amazing. Do yourself a favor and go get one of these “space age” Novaform heat sensitive memory foam mattress at costco. Major Update: Check out our updated Tuft & Needle mattress review here. T&N has made some major changes since I originally published this piece. For Sleepopolis regular readers you may already know that Tuft & Needle hasn’t always been one of my favorite mattresses.
A little over 6 months ago I was in the market for a new mattress and a co-worker of mine recommended I give the Tuft & Needle a try, which I did. All things considered, it was a good mattress and a great company, but after just a few nights it was apparent that it wasn’t the right mattress for me. The mattress at the time was quite simply too firm for my back. However, Tuft & Needle has been on the warpath these last 6 months and their mattress and foam formulation has gotten a complete overhaul. Tuft & Needle listened to their consumer feedback and went back to the drawing board. Within the last 6 months the team at Tuft & Needle has made more than a dozen major changes to the mattress addressing consumer feedback, complaints, and other issues.A completely new and dramatically improved mattress. ’s most popular rated mattress. So with that said, let’s dive in and take a look at the major changes to Tuft & Needle. The biggest complaint, by far, that Tuft & Needle has received within the last several months has been around the firmness.
As I mentioned above, the mattress was just a bit too firm for me when I originally tried it. Tuft & Needle took this feedback from their customers and began to go back to the drawing board of their foam formulation. The new foam delivered the same great support that so many have raved about on Amazon, but with considerable improvement to the softness. The new Tuft & Needle has a much softer feel and is closer to a true neutral firmness. This one isn’t as much of a change, but it’s so critically important, and it’s something I wasn’t aware of 6 months ago. Unlike most mattress companies Tuft & Needle doesn’t use latex foam, Avena foam, memory foam, or any other patented foam. Because they simply don’t have as much control over the support and comfort of those foams. Tuft & Needle’s foundation isn’t in design or marketing, and they don’t have an army of venture capitalists backing them. At the core they are engineers trying to solve the problems that plague the mattress industry, all from an engineer’s angle.
And what do engineers want most? Formulaic control of their product, data driven feedback from their customers, and an experience that simply works. Since they make their own foam they have incredible control over every aspect of the feel. By changing certain variables in the formulation and/or pouring process they are able to dial in support, comfort, firmness, cooling, sinkage, and virtually every other criteria you could imagine. Hybrid foam mattresses are fairly standard in the online factory direct mattress market. In fact, Tuft & Needle itself was something of a 3-layer hybrid mattress when they first launched. Their newest model has gone from 3-layers down to 2. Instead of having two separate layers, one for support and one for comfort, they have developed a foam formulation that combines these into a single 3 inch layer. In addition to simply being softer, the new Tuft & Needle foam formulation has been designed to promote additional cooling. The foams draw heat away from your body as you sleep and expel the heat through the sides and bottom, resulting in a mattress that sleeps cool immediately and constantly, even after laying down all night.