Mattresses just haven’t been a huge priority for me. Up until last fall I was sleeping on the same mattress I’d had for a decade—the same mattress which spent who knows how many years at my parents’ house before I took it over. The National Sleep Foundation says the average lifespan of a mattress is eight or so years. Suffice to say that I had not been sleeping well. The old mattress felt, well, like an old mattress, meaning whenever I shifted, I’d sink all over the place. The firmness was nonexistent, and I’d often wake up with new aches or pains. My sleep also felt less restorative, in that soreness I’d go to bed with—I’m an avid runner and weight lifter—didn’t really tend to diminish much during sleep time.
I knew I needed a change, though, when my partner’s shoulder and back really started bothering him as a result of terrible nighttime sleep. So we went to a mattress chain and picked up a decent, cheapish model to hold us over until we were able to move out of our tiny apartment. It was a big help—but still, sleeping wasn’t really great for either of us.
So when mattress testing at SELF came up, I was eager to offer my services. I was excited to try Casper’s Wave Hybrid Mattress, which, right on its website, promised exactly what we were looking for: “less aching, more sleeping.”
How I Tested
After about a month of sleeping on the Casper Wave, I can honestly say we’re getting the best shuteye we’ve ever had. I used SELF’s mattress buying guide, which is based on criteria recommended by sleep experts. Read on for my full Casper Wave Hybrid Mattress review and thoughts.
READ RELATED: This is Natalie Portman's Exact Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
Initial Setup
I thought the online ordering was a huge plus (since I always feel a little awkward around pushy salespeople who try to upsell). It’s great to be able to choose a mattress in the privacy of your own home, without any pressure to order something more expensive than you wanted.
Once it arrived, though, it got a little tricky. While Casper is a mattress-in-a-box brand, it’s still in a big, rectangular cardboard box that weighs over 100 pounds. The box had no handles on it, making it difficult to maneuver up my steep and narrow apartment stairs. Even if I tried to drag it up step by step, I definitely would not have been able to get in up there by myself. I had to wait for my partner to come home to get it up, who described it as “moderately difficult” due to its weight and unwieldy shape. He got it up by himself, but it’d be best done as a two-person job. (For comparison, our previous mattress arrived looking like…a mattress, with accessible handles on the side. So even though it was heavy, I was able to drag that one up the stairs myself.)
Once we got it out of the box—again, a two-person job—we had to remove the plastic wrap around the mattress and lay it flat so it could unfurl and “inflate.” Once the plastic wrap is gone, it starts to take on mattress form pretty quickly, so we really had to rush to get it to lay it flat in our cramped space.
Sleep Quality
My sleep quality so far has been really great on the Casper. The main thing I noticed was less time waking up when my partner shifted, which allowed me to sleep uninterrupted throughout the night. That meant more time to get into a deep sleep, which, according to my fitness tracker, is something I tend to struggle with.
Source: SELF
