What’s the best mattress for back pain? Should you get a memory foam or a spring mattress? We’ve found the best bet for most people is a hybrid mattress. Hybrids combine the best of both worlds to offer a truly comfortable night’s sleep. Of all the mattresses we’ve tried, the best hybrid mattress by far is the Saatva. Let us explain why in this Saatva memory foam hybrid mattress review.
Saatva Memory Foam Hybrid Mattress Review
The Basics
The Saatva comes in all the usual sizes and is compatible with bed frames, platform beds, adjustable bases, or foundation/box spring setups. It’s of a medium firmness that’s perfect for side sleepers in particular, but it also works for back sleepers and people who move around a lot. The firmness level also makes it suitable for couples trying to find a good compromise when firmness preferences don’t align.
As a hybrid, the Saatva offers pocketed coils that give good responsiveness and allow you to move easily, while the foam layer on top contours to your body and offers pressure relief. The Saatva has all the basics well covered.
The Best Hybrid Mattress: Above and Beyond
To be the best, a mattress has to do more than just cover the basics, and the Saatva delivers above and beyond performance:
Cool
What’s the biggest downside of foam? It sleeps so hot, but that’s not an issue with the Saatva classic. Saatva has developed a special cooling system to deal with this issue. On top, you have an organic cotton cover that breathes, and the foam layer has a wavy design unique to Saatva, which allows for better circulation of air.
The memory foam is also infused with a cooling gel that draws heat away from your body, to be moved away by the wavy foam and the specially designed coils underneath.
Responsive
Too often, mattresses are all or nothing. Either you get deep comfort and responsiveness, but the slightest motion on your part makes your partner feel like you’re jumping on the bed, or you get motion isolation at the expense of comfort. The Saatva solves this problem by attacking it in a couple of ways. First, the memory foam offers deep contouring, with pressure relief that works no matter how you prefer to sleep.
Meanwhile, underneath, there are supportive coils, but the key is that these coils are kept in pockets. By isolating the coils in pockets, Saatva has made it so the coils can’t just be spread apart. At the same time, the pockets also keep the coil movement from spreading. If you’re the one moving, you don’t feel “locked” into one position; if you’re the one who gets annoyed by a partner moving, you feel much less motion when your partner flips over.
High-Quality
Saatva has also gone the extra mile in making sure everything about this mattress, from manufacturing to shipping, is of the highest quality. Each mattress is handcrafted: it’s not made until you order it. Then, it’s delivered straight to you from the factory and never shipped in a box. Saatva takes it to you, sets it up for you, cleans up everything afterward, and even takes away your old mattress for free.
Shipping mattresses in boxes can ruin them. Stuffing them into boxes can literally break the foam or over-compress the coils. Some brands try to fix this by designing their mattresses to go in boxes, deliberately using thinner foam and coils so they’ll fit. That means less comfort, support, and durability.
Hypoallergenic and Safe
Mattresses need to be fire-resistant: it’s the law, and it’s important for safety. But the brominated flame retardants, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and tetrabromobisphenol A used by most mattress manufacturers have been linked to everything from decreased fertility to cancer, immune system problems, thyroid issues, and even birth defects.
Saatva uses a flame-retardant barrier made entirely of natural wool and thistle pulp. It works, and it won’t make you sick. Meanwhile, the cover is organic cotton, and the foam is CertiPUR-US® certified. The second layer has been treated with a non-toxic, botanical antimicrobial to keep mold and other allergens at bay.
Best Mattress for Back Pain
We’ve saved the best for last, really, because if you’re struggling with back pain, you know how much this means. Most mattresses offer the greatest support around the edges. Once you get away from the bolstering effect provided at the edges, the mattress doesn’t offer the same support. Yet that unsupported middle is precisely where the heaviest parts of our bodies lie when we’re sleeping.
The Saatva classic solves this with the coil pockets combined with their patented Lumbar Zone® quilting right in the middle, to give the strongest support where you most need it.
The Saatva classic does all the basics well, and then it truly goes above and beyond. Shop the Saatva Classic here and see why it’s our favorite!