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| Image screenshot credit: http://www.casper.com |
First, some background. As a teenager I had a crummy old mattress. I remember when my mom bought the bed from a run-down old furniture store; it came as part of a set, dresser and all. Cost her around $300. Old spring mattress that hardly held up under pressure, but let me tell you something. There had been a grand total of 6 people sleeping in that bed over the time span that I owned it, and each and every one of them said it was the most comfortable experience they'd ever had. From an old mattress.
Fast forward to my older years. The mattress industry began to move away from the old style of metal coil spring mattresses that were reversible and flipable, to a model where the springs were there but only on one side, or there was instead foam, latex or some other material in an attempt to improve comfort. In some extreme cases there was a combination: foam and spring, latex and foam, etc. Or, a straight air mattress which largely replaced the old waterbeds of yesteryear. Between when I left my parents' home and now, I've owned a total of 6 separate mattresses:
- A $200 inner spring firm mattress that I bought on a whim as I had no other furniture when I moved out, with boxspring
- A $500 Dormia memory foam mattress that was a warehouse wholesale deal
- A $400 standard no-name memory foam mattress
- A $300 standard firm pillowtop spring mattress
- An $800 Sealy Euro Pillowtop Plush foam mattress that came discounted with a platform I bought (and still own) and
- A $400 Sleep Master Euro Box top spring mattress from Amazon (!)
And each of them had upsides and downsides. The problem is my body shape, and it is body shape that will determine the best mattress for you. In my case I have more muscles on my lower body, waist down, then my upper body, meaning more weight. My upper frame is broad and has a lot of sharp edges; shoulders and whatnot, meaning more pressure but not necessarily weight. I'm a side sleeper, meaning my spine has to be kept in line with my neck and everything, and my neck can't bend more than a certain degree or it gets stuck that way. I also have a tendency to sleep hot. Not warm, hot. To the point I sometimes have to pull back the sheets to release some of the heat because I've woken up sweating on more than one occasion.
I've found that foam mattresses provide the general body support that I need, but memory foam's downside is that it traps heat and uses it to soften the foam, letting the person sink down into the mattress. This would be fine except for 100% foam mattresses; you sink all the way down into a crevice that then is radiating heat back at you, plus it's cranking your neck that is still above the crevice. It just doesn't work. Maybe for someone under 120 lbs who doesn't sleep hot, but definitely not for grown 150+ pound adults who do. Plus, don't plan on sitting up in bed on a foam mattress to be a comfortable experience.
Spring mattresses are a lot more comfortable in this regard as they don't react to the heat. The problem with spring mattresses is that they will wear down over time, creating a "spot" in the mattress that you get stuck in as you sleep. While this may seem comfortable, it isn't good for the mattress and definitely not for your body, especially when you travel to some hotel and your body gets shocked at this undented mattress trying to force you into a different shape.
Enter Casper. The Casper mattress attempts to address the "too firm vs too hot" argument with a combination mattress, sort of like a Neapolitan icecream bar. A fairly decent graphic is available on Casper's website at https://casper.com/faq. In summary, it takes latex, another bedding material that is firmer than memory foam but does not sink as much due to heat, and memory foam and combines them into a layered experience, topped off with a deflection layer. (Deflection layers are common to memory foam mattress to try and offset greater-than-usual heat.)
The price for this mattress is not abnormally high nor is it unusually cheap, and the company offers a 100-day return policy: if you don't like it, you can return it within that period. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I went ahead and placed the order for a Queen mattress to replace the Sealy I was using.
The order process is interesting to say the least. It's somewhat like ordering from any other web store, except that you can at least partially control the shipping. You don't pay for shipping; as a net result you can't get it shipped any faster, only via UPS Ground. However, you can choose to require a signature or not. This was an unexpected pleasure; a lot of retailers do not offer this as UPS attempts to streamline the process. These days, even if you order some expensive something from Amazon or some other retailer, UPS will happily just drop it off on your doorstep and you have no way of accounting for it should someone decide to pick up and take off with it while you're at work. I really appreciated being given the choice, and hopefully others take notice.
There was a negative though. I noticed that tracking was never updated to show progress of delivery. It always just said that the shipping label was generated, assumed to arrive on a given day (yesterday) but it never changed between order day and delivery day. Customer service just gave somewhat iffy assurances that "...they never scan the label" and that my mattress "...will almost certainly arrive on time". Not good when you're dealing with a product that's nearly a grand - UPS is usually very good about scanning labels throughout, so this seems to be a logistics problem with Casper. On shipping day, the status changed to Out for Delivery, which means someone scanned it, and my usual UPS driver dropped it off for me, requiring signature as I had requested. It was there, watching him scan it a final time, that I saw what the issue was. Someone at Casper had covered the UPS label barcode!
The other issue with this, is if you're a UPS MyChoice customer, the MyChoice web and mobile applications track deliveries based on the initial scan. So if your package doesn't get scanned, you won't get notified by UPS about it. By the time they do the final scan, it's already en route and your options are limited; you can't change to a different day, for example. If I haven't beaten a dead horse enough, they (Casper) really need to fix this: find the warehouse rep that's putting stickers over the barcode and tell them to stop it for remote deliveries.
The package itself weighs between 60 and 70 lbs, so if you're not up to the task, you might want to enlist help. It wasn't a problem for me to lift it up a flight of stairs, but might be for others. Remember, this is a highly compressed mattress in a box, and memory foam and latex in general are very dense materials, thus the weight. It's not like a standard spring mattress that is essentially hollow.
Opening the package, there is a welcome kit on top with some basic information about the mattress:
Beneath this is the actual mattress. It is encased twice - in an outer wrap, which keeps it from expanding, then in plastic, which keeps it folded in half but allows it to expand to nearly full. I would suggest for simplicity sake (because it's hard to get a good grip to lift this out), laying the box on its side and pulling opposite to let the roll come out.
Notice the letter opener that is given to you in the welcome kit - this can be used to cut the packaging without damaging the mattress. Casper even notes where you should cut, although I would offer that the placement, shape and size of the sticker is extremely confusing (it should be on an end as a long line sticker).
Once you've cut the outer wrap, the mattress will lay out and begin expanding. I calculated this process to take no more than 2 minutes at the outside. Note that the Sleep Master mattress I purchased had a similar packaging as did the no-name memory foam; in the no-name memory foam's case it took upwards of an hour to get to full girth, so the Casper's speed was a pleasure. Again, at this point the mattress is still folded in half, so don't let the size throw you.
Once this stage has hit full expand, the plastic can be hand-ripped apart at the seams you see on the edge. This will allow the mattress to fold out into the fully expanded position.
You will no doubt note that the mattress is quite slim. If you're used to pillowtop mattresses you know that the pillow top can make a mattress taller by up to 50%. That isn't the case with the Casper. It's as flat as it gets, as slim as it gets, and as such is really designed for platform beds. It will work on regular foundation beds, just that from a design perspective it's a better fit with a platform. But you should also keep this in mind when buying fitting sheets; some sheets assume a pillow top, so you may have some slack to deal with. In my case there was so much slack that I might as well have just folded the sheet over (I didn't).
I next lifted the mattress onto my platform. This is where I hit a very annoying point: the mattress does not have any handles at all. None. Means it's extremely difficult from a leverage perspective when you're trying to pull the mattress into place because you can't get a good grip. Note to Casper: handles do not adversely affect the experience. Consider them in future product revisions.
Setting that minor annoyance aside, as well as fighting with my bed skirt, I got the mattress in place. It was then that I noticed this tag. Good to know - and goes back to what I was saying about design.
The finished product looks kingly. (I did buy some higher-end sheets and blankets and such to improve the sleep quality.) Forgive the comforter, I hadn't adjusted it on the other side yet.
From order to final setup took 8 days total. Again, you can't speed that up any. If you're local to NYC, you can pick up the mattress or it can be couriered; if you're in a different state it will ship UPS Ground, no faster. The only real issue with the order process was the UPS tracking problem and Customer Service' iffy responses. Beyond that I had no complaints.
Keep tuned for my next updates as I will share what the sleep experience is/was. No photos, obviously.
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