Casper Portable Mattress
Robinette Ith
I typically sleep on my back or side, and the multiple layers of foam did an excellent job of relieving the pressure that I sometimes feel around my hips. When I occasionally slept on my stomach, the firm surface similarly felt supportive throughout the night.
After unboxing and setting up my new mattress, the off-gassing smell was quite strong. While I waited for the mattress to fully expand, I kept it free of any bedding and made sure to open the bedroom door for circulation. (I would have opened the bedroom windows, but unfortunately, it was the middle of winter.) In total, I waited several hours before sleeping on the mattress, and luckily the smell had become less pungent.
Most mattresses need time to breathe and fully expand, so we let it sit for several hours while we went grocery shopping and cooked dinner. Later that night, we were finally able to sleep on the mattress for the first time.
Hot sleepers may want to try one of the cooling mattresses that have AirScape technology (the same perforated foam on the Original bed), a cover that uses cooling yarn and other cooling elements. The Casper Snow is priced under $2,000 and claims to keep users 5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler on average.
The Casper Original Mattress is an excellent choice for most back, side, stomach and combination sleepers who want a quality foam mattress for an affordable price. It has zoned support, meaning there are three distinct zones to encourage proper spinal alignment at night. (The foam is softer near the shoulders and firmer around the lower back and torso.) The edge support, ease of movement and minimal motion transfer also make this a great choice for couples.
I slept on the Casper Original Mattress for a little over a month. In addition to sleeping on the mattress, I paid close attention to things like pressure relief, motion transfer, edge support and the overall feel of the mattress. My fianc also slept on the mattress and weighed in on the firmness and feel, among other features. Sleep is a deeply personal experience, so I took into account our preferred sleeping positions and statures to determine how sleeping on the mattress might feel for someone else.
On an otherwise average Tuesday, an email popped up in my inbox from Casper, asking if I'd like to test their new Wave mattress. Duh, I wanted to try its "groundbreaking mattress" with a "patent-pending support system [that] actively mirrors the shape of your body at 36 specific points for the deepest, most restorative sleep." I know, being an editor is a super tough job. Fast-forward a month. I've been sleeping on the Casper Wave for a little more than 30 days, and so. much. has. happened. Since I interview people for a living, it only made sense for me to tell this tale by interviewing . . . myself.
I had told the Casper representative I wanted my old mattress taken away when the new one came, because apparently I have no loyalty when it comes to sleeping surfaces. (My IKEA mattress was seven years old anyway, and The Better Sleep Council says that's exactly when it's time for a replacement. Yes, I looked this up after the fact to make myself feel better.) But I found out that there was no mattress removal request on file after all, which meant I needed to move the old mattress myself, which turned into me paying the delivery man to help me drag the way-too-heavy thing down the stairs. I questioned everything in life for 20 minutes, but it all ended with me watching the Casper Wave puff up to full size on my bed frame, an admittedly very satisfying experience.
I don't know why you wouldn't trust my very official opinion, but if you're skeptical, I asked my roommate and my boyfriend to sleep on the mattress (on different nights!) and tell me what they thought. Here's their feedback, verbatim and also very official:
Boyfriend interrogation via text:
Boyfriend: I feel like you don't toss and turn in it. It's so dense that it's too much work to toss and turn.
Me: Are you saying that's a positive?
Boyfriend: Yeah.
Yes, as if life wasn't already complicated enough, apparently your pillows can one day decide to turn against you. But this revelation happened to reveal a silver lining: Casper had sent me its pillows, remember?
You know those hypnotic ASMR videos of slowly expanding foam? Unboxing a Casper mattress is just as satisfying; it gradually puffs up once you slide it out of the box to reach its full, queen-sized potential like a Magic Castle trick.
You can buy memory foam mattress toppers for a few hundred dollars that are a few inches thick, but the Element Pro is a whopping 10 inches of memory foam with a top layer of something called AirScape foam that is meant to promote airflow and keep you from night sweats. No wonder it feels like the La Mer of mattresses.
? Throwing out my Casper Mattress: Foam mattresses are easy to ship, but horrible for thermoregulation. I switched back to my old spring mattress and my night sweats stopped.
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I first came across Casper when I was doing some research for this blog post about the brand's focus on the customer. I had no intention of actually buying a mattress at the time, but I was particularly interested in the fact that Casper does extensive testing with real human sleep subjects in order to develop their products (they must be good then, right?).
Because my own mattress was over ten years old, I began browsing their offerings on casper.com, including watching some of their highly informational product videos and reading through the hundreds of customer reviews on the site. I ended up setting up an account to earn a coupon code for first-time buyers.
Now that Casper had my email address, they were also able to identify me on my various social accounts, like instagram and facebook. Again, I was not disappointed by their content. I actually followed the brand on instagram, and I'm treated to pictures like this the day we moved the clocks forward this spring (check out the relevant, timely caption):
I've also interacted with the Casper chat functionality on the website and via text message (I was psyched to see I could text the brand). I got prompt responses in both channels, and after I made my mattress purchase, I was promptly texted a confirmation and tracking number that I could respond to with questions.
Clearly Casper has put a lot of resources into creating a valuable digital experience for its customers. Entertaining "snoozeletter" content and instagram images kept me engaged during my earlier browsing phase of my buyer's journey. When I was actually in the market to shop for a mattress and needed to research the brand and its products, I had informational videos, product reviews and a handy chat/text feature to talk to a real human on the brand's website.
Again, Casper did not disappoint. The website invited me to "schedule a nap" at the store nearest me. In other words, I was invited to sign up for a 30-minute time slot to come test out their beds. But visiting the store to test out their beds was a complete 180 from visiting traditional mattress retailers:
In fact, my trip to the Casper pop-up store was a fun experience that helped me decide that I wanted to start by trying the original Casper mattress. I even texted my husband while I was laying on it and asked: "Would you kill me if I bought one of these today?"
The one thing that I think Casper still needs to polish is their integration of the digital and physical experiences. I had done lots of interacting with the brand online before I visited their store location. I even signed up for a time slot to take a nap, so they knew exactly who I was and when I would be arriving at the store. Yet the store associates did not give any indication that they knew who I was or what digital conversations I had been having with the brand before I arrived.
Casper could have taken any number of data points about me and my online behavior to personalize my in-store experience. For example, I had chatted with an associate online about the nap situation. Am I actually supposed to take a nap? Do you change the bedding between nappers? I was a little confused about the process. The store associate could have used that information to say something like, "I know you had some concerns about our nap process. I just want you to know that we change all of our pillow cases between customers, and you're welcome to actually fall asleep if you'd like."
Further, after I left the store, the associates could have logged information about my visit (such as the fact that I preferred the original model and was also interested in the sheets). Casper could have provided me with more information about either of those products in a follow-up email, a social ad, or the next time I showed up on the website (or all three of these channels, for that matter).
For about the last 10 years, sleeping has become an extremely painful experience for me. You can tell on my face in the morning, I am SO groggy and feel so awful. Not getting good rest ages you quickly!
We bought the set on a Friday night, and it was delivered within a week. They even remove your old mattress for you! We added the risers that are included with the purchase to make the bed taller. The adjustable frame can sit inside a bed frame as well, so we will be shopping for that as we redesign our bedroom.
2nd night // On day 2, I woke up and felt slightly more rested. My lower back felt less stiff and I made it again sleeping through the whole night on my back at zero gravity. This time with a neck prop, no pillow. And no insomnia. Mark got up around 6am. But he also said he slept at zero gravity and felt mostly better. Both of us confirmed less pain the next day.
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