During our seven-plus years of testing mattresses, our team has refined a strict testing process focusing on key characteristics, including firmness and feel, construction and design and performance. Performance includes qualities such as edge support, motion isolation and temperature regulation.
Our team of mattress testers and certified sleep coaches includes individuals of varying genders, heights, body types, sleep positions and preferences. We thoroughly analyze each bed with all kinds of sleepers in mind and use our extensive experience to compare and contrast all the mattresses that enter the doors of our testing facility.Firmness and feel
Firmness and feel
Aside from the bed’s general appearance, firmness and feel are the first elements we assess. These elements will help narrow down which beds are most suitable for you.
Simply put, firmness is how hard or soft the mattress is. The industry standard for rating mattress firmness is a scale of one to 10, with one being the softest and 10 being the firmest. Our team measures this in both subjective and objective ways. We find the objective firmness level of each bed using our super cool Mattress Smasher 9000 machine, designed by the engineers at CNET Labs. We run each bed through the device multiple times, taking the average as the final objective score and comparing it to our subjective analyses.
The Mattress Smasher gets ready to smash a bed and provide us with an objective firmness score.
Below are the objective firmness levels of the best hybrid beds on this list, sorted from softest to firmest.
Feel is where we get handsy with the mattresses. What does it feel like when lying on the bed? Does it bounce back quickly when we move around on it? Does it have the traditional feel of dense, sinking memory foam, or is it more responsive like latex foam? We thoroughly examine and review the firmness and feel of each bed in our reviews so you can picture exactly what it feels like to lie on it, since we know you can’t test the online bed-in-a-box mattresses before buying one.
Construction and design
We can estimate the durability and performance of a mattress based on what it’s made of. Individually wrapped coils help hybrid mattresses last longer than all-foam mattresses because they have a more solid structure that won’t degrade or break down as fast. All-foam mattresses are generally more susceptible to sagging over time, but many higher-end bed brands now use high-density foams that will last 7 to 10 years or beyond if taken care of properly.
We examine the construction of each bed by removing the mattress cover.
Depending on the mattress’s design, we unzip the cover to analyze and assess the layers inside. This helps us better understand how the bed performs and its expected longevity.
Edge support
When we say edge support, we’re talking about how strong the perimeter of the mattress is. Hybrid mattresses tend to perform well in this category. While testing, we lay on each edge of the bed to determine how sturdy it is. It doesn’t have good edge support if an intense roll-off sensation makes it feel like we’re fighting gravity to stay on the bed. Many mattresses have coils around the perimeter to provide extra reinforcement, ideal for those who share the bed with a bed-hogging partner, kids or pets.
Motion isolation
Solid motion isolation is key for people with restless partners who move around at night. You don’t want that movement to wake you up. We jump and bounce on the bed to test how much movement travels across the surface. We also place a glass of water on the mattress, rolling toward and away from it to see if it will slosh or tip over due to the transfer of movement. Beds with dense memory foam layers perform best in this category, while more responsive and bouncier mattresses tend to have worse motion isolation.
CNET mattress expert Dillon Lopez tests the motion isolation on the Beautyrest Black Hybrid.
Temperature
Sleeping hot is one of the most common annoyances people face at night. We assess the materials and construction of a mattress to determine how hot or cool the bed sleeps. Certain materials, like gel memory foam and phase-changing covers, can help prevent you from heating up too much at night.
Read more about how CNET tests mattresses.
