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A closer look at the Casper Hybrid mattress

I'm thinking about writing a screenplay about the history of mattresses.

If you're sceptical, you might like to watch Joy, the Jennifer Lawrence movie about one woman's mission to design a mop (I'm summarising somewhat, there's a bit more to it than that).

My mattress movie will include a dramatic scene about the introduction of the 'bed in a box' mattress which shook up the market which had mostly been a choice of pocket springs, open coil springs or memory foam until then.

New brands like Casper, Eve, Leesa, Nectar Sleep, Emma, Bruno and so on, turned up with one mattress each which combined various types of foam. They had a number of things in common, such as offering a long risk-free trial so you can try it out at home over several months. They also arrived squashed into a box, to make it easier to deliver and to get it up the stairs.

I imagine I'll cast Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as young entrepreneurs setting up their own mattress company and falling in love along the way.

These bed-in-a-box mattresses shook things up because loads of them won awards, most notably from Which? but also from various experts online (which is why we feature some of them on this site). Many of them also got very good customer reviews too.

The sequel to my mattress movie will cover what seems to be the next phase in the market where these one-mattress brands start offering a wider choice of mattresses.

Casper is one such example, which now offers three different mattresses depending on your budget and desires:

At one end of the range is The Essential, which is a little bit firmer than most and is 18cm deep with two layers of foam. According to the website, it got a rave write up from Which? experts who said it was 'one of the best mattresses we've ever tested' in 2019.
The original Casper mattress (just known as The Casper) has four layers of foam and is 24cm deep. Most reviewers consider it to be a medium firmness mattress. It also got a Best Buy award, in 2015.
Finally, there is the newest Casper mattress, called The Hybrid which we've been trying out. It's the luxury option which currently sells for £900 in King Size and it's also 24 cm deep.

They all come with a 10 year warranty and a 100 night risk free trial

So what's the difference between The Casper and The Hybrid?

As the name suggests, the big difference is that The Hybrid is a mix of springs and foam whereas The Casper is entirely foam. This is quite a big deal for mattress enthusiasts like me, because bed in a box companies mostly offer foam mattresses rather than springy ones.

The key thing with this mattress is that the springs are buried beneath three layers of foam so you get the feeling and support of foam along with the springs which add a bit of 'bounce'.

The Hybrid also has 'zoned support' with 'firmer springs under hips, softer springs under shoulders'.

As with The Essential and The Casper, The Hybrid aims to make good use of memory foam with some clever construction techniques.

In previous years, most memory foam mattresses had a layer of the stuff on the top. The more you paid, the thicker the top layer.

On the plus side, various experts and reviewers have concluded that memory foam offers a really good level of all over support. The negative side is that many customers find that memory foam makes them feel too hot as it hugs them closely. In some cases you can end up with a bit of a person-shaped dent, although in theory they should bounce back.

More modern mattresses, like those made by Casper and other bed in a box companies changed things round by putting the memory foam as the second layer with a breathable layer on top.

The theory is that you don't get quite the same 'sinking feeling' or overheating issues as memory foam but you still get the consistent support that you don't get from sprung mattresses.

Personally I've become a fan of this approach in recent years and haven't had any issues with getting too hot on The Hybrid or on The Casper.

Of course, the other advantage of this type of mattress is that you have 100 days to make your mind up, rather than spend 30 seconds in a showroom feeling a bit awkward.

Sweet dreams!

We were sent a free mattress by Casper. The words are our own.

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