Latest news with #OttyOriginalHybrid
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ikea Valevåg mattress review: a brilliant budget buy or too cheap for comfort?
My expectations for the Ikea Valevåg were, to be polite, limited. Ikea's mattress is less than a fifth of the price of a Simba Hybrid Pro – but somehow comes with the same 10-year guarantee. Seriously? Expecting a decade's worth of blissful sleeps from a Valevåg sounds like an attempt to wear the same £8 Primark jumper every day until 2035. But when I tested the Valevåg alongside several more expensive rivals, I realised it's not the mattress equivalent of fast-fashion tat. Its price belies a well-constructed product with pocket springs that provide consistent support and snoozable comfort. It can't compare with the pricey Simba or the best-in-show Otty Original Hybrid for ergonomic cosiness, but it's a brilliant buy for a guest room or a young person's bedroom. To make sure, I enlisted the help of my 22-year-old niece, Alex, in testing the Valevåg. Her reluctance to give it to charity after two months of sleeping on it – sorry Alex, them's the rules at the Filter – reassured me that it's a genuine bargain and not a false economy destined for landfill. View at Ikea *** I took delivery of a medium-firm Ikea Valevåg in a double size in December. I shared it with my husband for three nights before delegating responsibilities to Alex, who slept on it for two months. Together with other family members, we rated its firmness and overall comfort side by side against five other mattresses, and I ran lab-style tests to measure factors such as sinkage, edge support and heat retention. You can read more about our mattress testing exploits here. *** View at Ikea The Valevåg is one of seven sprung mattresses made by Ikea. It falls roughly in the middle on price, costing from £149 for a single to £359 for a super king, all available in firm or medium-firm tension. The double size I tested costs £219. The Ikea is the only pocket sprung mattress I've tested so far. All the others are hybrid mattresses that contain multiple layers of memory foam and springs. It does have an upper layer of polyurethane foam, which I measured to be 5cm deep, but with a density of 33kg/cu.m, it's not elastic enough to be classed as memory foam. Instead, it's 'reflex foam' and adds much-needed resistance and support above the springs. It also helps to create a flat sleeping surface beneath the polyester fabric cover, which isn't removable. Under the foam layer, the Valevåg has 249 steel springs per square metre, adding up to about 640 in a double size. Each spring is wrapped in a fabric pocket to help it move independently and isolate motion – in other words, so the whole thing doesn't bounce too much when you move around in bed. There's also a layer of felt below the springs to help maintain the mattress's structure. At 24cm deep, the Valevåg is the thinnest mattress I've tested, and this has a couple of advantages. First, it's much lighter than the chunky hybrids. Moving it up and down stairs on my own still took effort, but it's much easier to manoeuvre than its more luxurious counterparts. It's also perfect for a standard fitted sheet – a relief after I failed to squeeze my sheets on to the likes of the 31cm-thick Origin Hybrid Pro. Related: How to choose a mattress: the features worth paying for – and the ones that aren't Ikea's mattress would be relatively easy to flip over, but you don't have to. The Valevåg has a distinct top (sleeping) side and bottom side, more like a hybrid than a conventional sprung mattress. Instead of flipping, rotate it 180 degrees every few months to prevent indentations where you sleep. Ikea's description of the Valevåg as 'medium-firm' is spot on. My family scored it an average 6.8/10 for firmness, similar to the Simba Hybrid Pro. In my lab tests, the Valevåg sank a maximum of 34mm under 7.5kg of weight – closer to the softest mattress I've tested (the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, which sank 40mm) than the firmest (the Origin Hybrid Pro, a mere 18mm). Both these mattresses are advertised as medium-firm, too. You can test the Valevåg's firmness at Ikea, but bear in mind that many other shoppers may have had a go before you, with a softening effect over time. If you'd rather test your own new version, Ikea gives you a 365-night free trial. Keep it in good condition with a mattress protector if you hope to avail yourself of the refund offer. *** Type: pocket sprungFirmness: advertised as medium firm, panel rated as 6.8/10Depth: 24cmCover: not removableTurn or rotate: not neededTrial period: 365 nightsWarranty: 10 yearsOld mattress recycling: £40 via the Mattress Recycling PeopleSustainability credentials: 2025 target of 20% recycled content in all Ikea mattress foams *** I expected my Valevåg to arrive fully expanded and ready for napping on, but Ikea has adopted the vacuum-roll packing style initiated by online 'bed-in-a-box' companies such as Otty. This means it's machine-compressed in the factory, then wrapped tightly in metres of plastic to stop it from expanding en route to your door. My mattress was delivered by Ikea's own team, a nice change from the third-party couriers that handled my other test samples. Delivery took only three days, and Ikea kept me informed with text alerts, a four-hour window and a link to track the driver on a map. Unwrapping the Valevåg was marginally easier than the other roll-wrapped mattresses because there was no cardboard box, but the thick layers of plastic were, as ever, a pain to remove. Scissors are essential, as is a careful hand to prevent damage to the mattress. The mattress emerged from its wrapping looking quite flat, but it took much less time than its hybrid rivals to expand to full size. Ikea recommends you allow 72 hours for your mattress to fill out, but mine rose to the occasion within a day and a half, and its relative shortage of foam content meant that any 'off-gassing' chemical smell was reassuringly brief. *** View at Ikea There's plenty to love about the Valevåg: value for money, easy manoeuvrability, plump supportiveness and unpretentious composition (does a mattress really need eight layers of variously dense memory foam, infused with graphite and bamboo?). The key to a successful mattress, though, is good sleep – and my sleep tester had few complaints here. I spent a few nights on the Valevåg before handing over to my niece, Alex. I was used to sleeping on the Simba Hybrid Pro and then the Otty Original Hybrid, both superb high-end mattresses, so I was spoiled. It took me longer to get to sleep on the Ikea, and my husband and I were more aware of our movements. However, it offered consistent support and a degree of comfort that belied its price. Alex was even more impressed. You might expect a 22-year-old drama student to be unfussy about mattress quality, but during our initial family mattress-rating session, Alex worried that the Valevåg wouldn't be firm enough for her. Once the sleeping began, however, she liked its overall body support, which was balanced by enough 'give' for her hips and shoulders when lying on her side. She also praised the reflex foam layer, which made her feel 'lifted up, not sinking in the middle' – and bounced back when pressed. Mattresses containing a lot of memory foam can soften significantly in their first year or so, but this is unlikely to happen with the pocket sprung Valevåg. The breathability of the surface and pocket springs proved a hit. Alex had voiced her dislike of the 'moist spongy' feel of foamy mattresses, such as the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, but found the Ikea 'more naturally bed-like', and this helped her sleep well on it from the first night. In my heat-retention tests, it cooled down faster than any mattress other than the pricier Panda Hybrid Bamboo, which is specifically designed to stay cool. The Valevåg would be a great choice if you experience night sweats or struggle to sleep on warm nights. Two months is not enough to judge a mattress's durability, but we had our ways. We walked all over the Valevåg to see if the springs would give way (don't try this at home – it invalidates many warranties), but it remained robust and supportive, with no twangs. There was no sagging in the sleeping surface after two months. *** When I slept on the Valevåg, I could feel the difference between it and the more expensive hybrids. It's firm enough, but it doesn't offer much ergonomic pushback. The combination of memory foam and springs in the Otty and Simba makes you feel powerfully supported in all the right places, and that's worth paying for if you need to improve your sleep quality and reduce aches and pains. Alex had no trouble sleeping on the Valevåg, but she does enjoy reading in bed for hours on end, and it didn't fully support the concentrated weight of her bottom when sitting up. Edge support is shaky, too. It doesn't completely give way when you sit on the side, but it would benefit from high-density foam around its perimeter. Another weak spot is motion isolation, so it wouldn't be a relaxing choice if you share your bed with a restless partner. Related: Otty Original Hybrid mattress review: the best hybrid mattress you can buy – and also one of the cheapest The fabric cover isn't removable for washing in the machine, which is a pity because it gets dirty easily. My cat Iggy sees test mattresses as giant scratching posts, and the Valevåg's claw marks are more visible than any others. Our walking on the Valevåg didn't seem to do much damage, but the easy wear and tear of the outside makes me wonder how robust the inside is. *** Compressing mattresses for delivery means they use less space in the warehouse and van. With more than 12m mattresses sold by Ikea every year, the resulting decrease in transport emissions must be significant. However, I wouldn't call it a sustainability win. The amount of plastic involved is enormous and doesn't feel justified, although that's true for all the mattresses I've tested. Doorstep recycling services generally don't collect soft plastic, so we had to take it to the local refuse and recycling centre to dispose of ours responsibly. Having to do this for every mattress I tested was a chore, but most customers will only have to deal with the plastic from one mattress at a time. The Valevåg's steel springs, polypropylene pockets and polyester fabric are widely recycled, although again, you'd have to get them to a suitable recycling hub. The non-biodegradable polyurethane 'reflex foam' layer is more environmentally challenging. As with most mattress-makers, Ikea will collect and recycle your old mattress (whether or not it's an Ikea), and its £40 charge is fairly typical. I was impressed by the extent of information Ikea publishes about this process, including how each component is recycled or repurposed. Mattress recycling is just one of the services Ikea offers as part of its green goals, which are set in line with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Others include using zero-emissions vehicles for more than 90% of home deliveries by 2028, electrical recycling, and a platform for reselling your preloved Ikea furniture – although mattresses are excluded from this. *** The Valevåg is unarguably a brilliant buy. Its 10-year guarantee and 365-day free trial show that Ikea has confidence in its durability, although we'd recommend using a protective cover or three. This is no ergonomic, orthopaedic wonder mattress, but at a squeak over £200, it provides more than your money's worth of support, comfort and good sleep. View at Ikea *** Jane Hoskyn is a freelance consumer journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
The Guardian
24-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
When plastic reality meets consumerism
On 10 March, you reported on a study showing that microplastics may impact plant photosynthesis, putting hundreds of millions at risk of starvation, part of your continuing important coverage of the damage caused by plastic. A few days later, on 14 March, an article suggested ways to reduce your use of plastic: 'Get milk delivered and always buy refills: 20 simple ways to cut down on plastic (and save money)' . All well and good. However, a few days after that, on 17 March, there was a glowing five-star review of the Otty Original Hybrid mattress . This uncritically noted that the mattress is compressed in the factory and delivered in a box, 'encased in metres of sturdy plastic' to stop it expanding during transit, but this fact was not mentioned again, even in the section purportedly examining the sustainability of the product. There seems to be a lack of coherence here: a clash between reports on the reality of pervasive plastic pollution and the often superficial nods to 'sustainability' that form part of contemporary BruceMitaka City, Tokyo, Japan Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Is the Simba Hybrid Pro mattress worth the hype? I slept on it for three months to find out
I put in months of hard sleep to test Simba's flagship 'bed-in-a-box' mattress, and for the most part, I found it so comfortable that I told everyone it was the best mattress I'd ever reviewed. It ultimately lost that crown to the Otty Original Hybrid but, goodness me, it gave me some glorious sleep along the way. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. As with other hybrid mattresses, the Simba Hybrid Pro combines pocket springs with various types of memory foam to offer a balance of support and softness. Its outstanding motion isolation makes it a particularly fine choice for couples who need some peace from each other's nocturnal fidgeting. Given its price of £1,149 for a double, you'd hope it would provide the sleep of your dreams – but it's hard to find out for yourself until you actually buy it because Simba doesn't have showrooms. You can follow expert advice on choosing your ideal mattress and avail yourself of Simba's 200-night free trial period, but you're still buying blind. Here, I'll try to shed some light on the matter (… ess) and reveal why I think it's a worthy investment. View at Simba I slept on a Simba Hybrid Pro double for three months, alongside my husband, on our slatted bed base. As with all the mattresses I've tested for the Filter, I tracked its impact on our sleep quality and other factors, such as body aches, night sweats and disturbances from tossing and turning, and ran tests to measure things like sinkage and heat retention. I also enlisted the help of our locally based family to assess its firmness, comfort and value for money. View at Simba The Hybrid Pro is the middle child in Simba's Hybrid range, which all have pocket springs and different types of memory foam. It sits halfway between the averagely pricey Hybrid Essential (£599 for a double) and the outrageously expensive Hybrid Ultra (£2,799 for a double). The Pro merely costs 'a lot', starting at £799 for a single and rising to £1,349 for a super king. You get what you pay for in terms of sophisticated construction. The Hybrid Pro's eight layers exceed the usual five or six in a hybrid mattress, and its spring count is more than four times the typical 1,000. There are up to 4,800 springs in a king size, individually wrapped and with a layer of 'micro springs' to add bounce and durability. The largest foam layer is a high-density base for support and durability, while more technologically advanced layers include one made from open-cell graphite-infused foam to encourage airflow. There's also a top layer of natural wool for cushioning and temperature regulation and a fabric cover you can unzip and wash in the machine. Simba describes the Hybrid Pro as 'medium firm', and my tests with weights suggested it's about right. During my first month of testing, the Hybrid Pro sank a maximum of 29mm under 7.5kg of weight – halfway between the firmest mattress I've tested (the Origin Hybrid Pro, which sank 18mm) and the softest (the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, 40mm). The Simba Hybrid Pro isn't the heaviest mattress I've tested but it is beefy, measuring 28cm deep and weighing about 40kg for a double. Luckily, you're not supposed to flip it, but you should rotate it from head to toe once a month to avoid indentations where you sleep. A 10-year guarantee covers manufacturing defects and there's the 200-night trial – during which you can return the mattress for a full refund if you don't get on with it. Type: hybridFirmness: advertised as medium firm, panel rated as 7/10Depth: 28cmCover: unzip to wash at 40CTurn or rotate: rotate once a month for first three months, then every three monthsTrial period: 200 nightsWarranty: 10 yearsOld mattress recycling: £50Sustainability credentials: Simba is B Corp certified and aiming for net zero by 2030. Hybrid Pro foam is CertiPUR approved The Hybrid Pro, as with most of the mattresses I've tested, was delivered by third-party couriers (Expert Logistics, in this case), and I had to be at home to receive it. This worked well enough, with regular text alerts from Simba, a driver tracking link and a four-hour delivery window. Simba claims it will deliver your mattress to any room you want, but this was never presented as an option by the delivery team. The boxed mattress was heavy, weighing more than 40kg, so I'd recommend asking the drivers if they'd carry it upstairs if needed. In the event, my husband and I unwrapped the Simba downstairs so we could run tests and let our family try it, later ferrying it upstairs with some effort and the odd bleepable word. A new mattress often requires an adjustment period, so I've had a few sleepless nights reviewing mattresses (I know, it's a tough job). The Hybrid Pro, however, had me sleeping soundly from the start. I woke up feeling refreshed, and there was no sign of the lower back pain I'd suffered with some firm beds. The surface feels cosy without being too soft, and supportive without being too firm. In the mattress game, that's bullseye. In the words of my 22-year-old niece, 'It has squishiness but it's surprisingly firm when you actually lie on it.' The hint of softness is ideal for us side sleepers because our hips, shoulders and knees need cushioning, but I also felt a reassuring pushback when I laid on my back and front. I felt fully supported when I sat up to read in bed, too, and the support continued right up to the edge and corners of the bed. That's a distinct advantage over the cheaper Otty Original Hybrid. Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion The Hybrid Pro's motion isolation is excellent, absorbing our movements to help us both sleep in peace. I also liked the feel of the natural wool layer immediately beneath the sleeping surface, although I was torn on its supposed cooling powers. More on that in a moment. At 28cm deep, the Simba is chunky enough to look and feel luxurious, but slim enough to accommodate our non-stretchy fitted sheets, albeit with an effort to get all the corners snug. The 31cm-deep Origin Hybrid Pro, by contrast, is too big for any standard-depth fitted sheet. With a collective firmness score of 7/10 from our panel, the Hybrid Pro won't be firm enough if you love the solid pressure relief of a hard mattress. This may be especially noticeable if you're a larger person and you sleep on your back, but my husband (a back and side sleeper) and sister (side sleeper) – perfectly average-size, middle-aged people, if they'll forgive me – felt it was slightly too soft. My niece and I, who agreed with the 7/10 firmness measure, awarded 9/10 for overall comfort. Clearly, firmness preference is subjective. Less subjective is the sinkage effect of foam. All mattresses that contain memory foam soften in their first few months. After I'd slept on the Hybrid Pro for three months and rotated it as instructed, the central section of the sleeping surface felt noticeably softer. I whipped out the weights again and, sure enough, the central area now sank 41mm under 7.5kg instead of 29mm. This alarmed me at first – especially considering the issues some customers have had in the past – but apparently it's quite normal. Simba claims a 'dip tolerance' of 25mm in the first six months, and my October and December measurements were well under 25mm. That initial sinkage is a bit like wearing in cushioned shoes and hard to avoid, so be aware of it – especially given that you can't flip a hybrid mattress to get a freshly firm surface. Memory foam also tends to hold on to body heat, and this can spell misery if you suffer from night sweats like I do. I didn't get sweaty while sleeping on the Simba, but it was autumn and winter. My tests with a heat pad, thermometer and my husband's bottom found that it hung on to body heat marginally longer than the Otty Original Hybrid, the Origin Hybrid Pro and the airy-but-much-less-robust Ikea Valevåg. Bed-in-a-box delivery is an environmental challenge in itself. Like its rivals, the Hybrid Pro is vacuum-packed into a sausage-roll shape and wrapped tightly so it can't expand en route to your front door. This requires metres of plastic that you probably won't reuse unless you're decorating and need a dust sheet. Most household waste centres will accept it for recycling, but bin collections won't. Then there's memory foam used in hybrid mattresses like the Hybrid Pro. Viscoelastic LRPu (low-resistance polyurethane foam), to give it its full name, is made using energy-intensive processes, and is not biodegradable. Simba, like many of its rivals, has made notable green efforts, perhaps in a bid to compensate. Simba's online Sustainability Hub declares its aim to be net zero by 2030 and says it's the UK's first sleep brand to be certified by global body B Corp, which demands strict and constantly monitored environmental and social standards from its members. All its foam is certified by CertiPur to minimise the impact on health and the environment. Simba runs a mattress recycling service and, again, this is common among bed-in-a-box companies. It's not free – it charges £50 to take away your old mattress and recycle it, whether it's a Simba or not – but it does at least offer peace of mind that it'll be handled by specialists. I gave the recycling service a try. Simba sent me a collection bag (essentially a thick, mattress-size bin bag) and then dispatched third-party couriers to collect it. 'Oh no, it's a mattress,' they lamented. Interesting that they'd not been forewarned, and it made me wonder for a moment where my old mattress might end up, but Simba guarantees that its collected mattresses are recycled responsibly with UK recycling partners. The Hybrid Pro is a sumptuously comfortable mattress that improved my sleep from the first night, offering the luxury of softness without sacrificing support. Its price is pretty deluxe, too, and it's worth being aware that memory foam can soften in time, though if you treat it well this mattress is a worthwhile investment. View at Simba Jane Hoskyn is a freelance consumer journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Otty Original Hybrid mattress review: the best hybrid mattress you can buy – and also one of the cheapest
I've been reviewing mattresses for about four years and suffering from broken sleep for three times as long. The right mattress can markedly improve sleep quality, but switching between them so regularly seemed to feed my insomnia. Then I met the Otty Original Hybrid and I was blissfully dead to the world. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. The Original Hybrid is the flagship 'bed-in-a-box' mattress from UK company Otty Sleep. It combines thousands of pocket springs with multiple layers of memory foam – some soft, some thumpingly firm – to offer robust ergonomic support without sacrificing comfort. At less than £680 for a double, it's among the cheapest bed-in-a-box hybrids (meaning a combination of memory foam and springs) you can buy, and after testing several I'm confident that it's the best buy. The Otty is one of only two mattresses that I tested – along with the more expensive Simba Hybrid Pro – that resulted in an excellent sleep from night one. After weeks of marvellous kip, a mattress-scoring family session and rigorous lab-style tests later, it replaced the Simba as the mattress I was most reluctant to give up. Here, I explain why. View at Otty I slept on a double Otty Original Hybrid for several weeks, alongside my husband, on our robust slatted wooden bed base. As with all the mattresses I tested, I tracked the Otty's impact on our sleep quality and other factors, such as body aches, night sweats and disturbances from tossing and turning. I also ran tests to measure factors including sinkage and heat retention, and I enlisted the help of my locally based family to assess its firmness, comfort and value for money. View at Otty The Original Hybrid is one of Otty's slate of nine mattresses, all but two of which are hybrids. As with all hybrid mattresses, it combines pocket springs with various densities of foam to strike a balance of support (mainly from springs) and cushioning (mainly from foam). Topping off these layers is a soft cover that you can unzip and machine wash. Prices for the Original Hybrid start at £499.99 for a single and rise to £874.99 for an emperor size (200 x 200cm), with a double costing £674.99 (a double Simba Hybrid Pro is £1,149, although it is on offer for £942.18). Indeed, none of Otty's mattresses is wildly expensive. The cheapest Aura Hybrid costs £474.99 for a double, while the priciest hybrid double is the Pure+ Hybrid 4000 (£874.99). At 25cm deep and with six layers, there's less of the Otty than the 28cm eight-layer Simba Hybrid Pro. Its 2,000 spring count lands midway between the Simba (which has nearly 5,000) and the budget Ikea Valevåg (fewer than 300), although the Otty's springs are particularly tall at 16cm. The Otty also includes a couple of layers of high-density foam to enhance the support from the springs. Its largest foam layer is a dense base for support and durability, and there's another robust layer just above the springs to limit bounce and improve motion isolation. Other memory foam layers include a heat-regulating layer below the washable cover, which I found gave the mattress a lovely breathable feel. Otty describes the Original Hybrid as 'medium firm', but that term is a movable feast so I used a set of weights to find out where it really ranked. During my first month of testing, it sank a maximum of 25mm under 7.5kg of weight – closer to the firmest mattress I've tested (the Origin Hybrid Pro, which sank 18mm) than the softest (the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, 40mm). According to that, and the impressions of my family, the Hybrid Pro is at the firmer end of medium firm. All memory foam softens over time, however, so you should rotate the mattress from head to toe once a month to avoid indentations where you sleep. You're not supposed to flip the mattress. As with all bed-in-a-box mattress companies and their lack of showrooms, you can't try the Original Hybrid before you buy it. But if it doesn't hit the spot for you, you have 100 nights to sleep on it (using sheets to protect it) before deciding whether to keep it for good. During that time, Otty will collect it for free and give you a full refund. I tried this service five years ago with an Otty I'd bought, and it worked as promised, no questions asked. You also get a 10-year guarantee that covers manufacturing defects but excludes damage you may have caused by 'standing on or jumping on the mattress'. How Otty would know you'd done this, I'm not sure. It makes me wonder about the solidity and durability of a mattress if you're banned from standing on it, but this is a common warranty condition for hybrids. Type: hybridFirmness: advertised as medium firm, panel rated as 8/10Depth: 25cmCover: unzip to wash at 40CTurn or rotate: rotate once a month for first 12 months, then every three monthsTrial period: 100 nightsWarranty: 10 yearsOld mattress recycling: £40Sustainability credentials: foam is CertiPUR- and Europur-approved for environmental standards As with all the mattresses I've tested for the Filter, the Otty was packaged and delivered in bed-in-a-box fashion. That means it's vacuum-shrunk by machines in the factory, encased in metres of sturdy plastic to keep it from expanding, and then delivered to your home in a big cardboard box. Delivery of all my test mattresses was a near-identical experience. The Otty, like most, was handled by third-party couriers (ArrowXL in this case; only the Ikea Valevåg was delivered by a manufacturer-branded team) and took less than a week. I had to be at home, but I was kept fully in the loop by text alerts from Otty the day before and of delivery, with a pleasingly tight two-hour window and a link to track the driver on a map. Otty charges £10 to deliver your mattress to a room of your choice, but I plumped for having it left in the hallway. I then needed my husband's help to remove the frankly insane amount of packaging (standard for bed-in-a-box mattresses, sadly). Otty does make it easier than most, though, with a special plastic-slicing tool that helps avoid nicking the mattress. I wouldn't sleep on the expanding Original Hybrid after a few hours as Otty says is possible – it just won't be comfortable – but ours had fully expanded after about a day and a half. This was faster than the more sumptuous Simba and slower than the cheaper pocket-sprung Ikea Valevåg, which suggests that a higher memory foam content requires a longer expansion time. Sleep doesn't always come easily to me – I've been known to need two baths and several bowls of soup to help me nod off – but the Otty worked like a sleeping pill in mattress form. The sleep tracker on my smartwatch also revealed that I woke up briefly in the night (microarousals) less often than usual. I put this down to the Otty's outstanding balance of ergonomic support, cushioning and breathability. Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion Pre-sleep, I'd asked my panel (otherwise known as my family) to come over and rate the Otty alongside five other mattresses. They rated it as less firm than I did, putting it at 8/10 – near the middle of the pool for mattress firmness. For overall comfort, however, they ranked it the best, with an average score of 8.3/10. 'Can we have this one?' asked my sister, noting that the Otty is surprisingly light and manoeuvrable for such a robust mattress, and would be relatively easy to transport across town to her house. Having designated myself lead tester, I had to put my foot down. The Otty was ours, at least until testing was over and it was collected for charity. My husband, Alan, and I slept on it for two months and both found its supportiveness to be a relief after some more challengingly soft and inconsistent sleeping surfaces. It's not too firm for comfort, though. As a petite side sleeper, I need a bit of cushioning to accommodate my shoulders and hips, and I get lower back pain on very firm mattresses – but this didn't happen with the Otty. Its motion isolation is also excellent. Sharing my bouncy old sprung mattress with a fidgety sleeper was less fun than it sounds because the springs seemed to amplify his (and my) tossing and turning. The Otty doesn't completely lack bounce, especially on my bed's slatted base, but its foam layers absorb movement beautifully to help me sleep in peace. A big downside of memory foam is that it can trap heat, but I don't find this to be true for the Original Hybrid – at least not any more. A previous iteration of the Otty Hybrid, which I tried in 2019, felt … clingy. There was no breathing space between the fabric and my skin. Today's Otty Original Hybrid rectifies this with a cosy-but-cooling feel. Asked for their impressions of its breathability, my family awarded 8.3/10: less airy than the pocket-sprung Ikea Valevåg, but more than the Simba. I've yet to try it out in summer, but my lab tests suggested that the Otty works well to stop you from overheating at night. Using a heat pad, a thermometer and my husband's bottom, I discovered that the Otty cooled down faster than rivals that contain more foam, including the Simba and the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid. Another gold star for the Otty was its snug fit for my fitted sheets. At 25cm deep, it's not a thin mattress, but it's slim enough for a secure fit. As a fan of a perfectly flat cotton sleep surface, I regard this as an absolute must. The 28cm-deep Simba is a tighter squeeze, and the 31cm Origin Hybrid Pro is so big you can't use standard-depth fitted sheets. There's little I don't love about the Otty. The only other mattress that felt as instantly comfortable, the Simba Hybrid Pro, costs much more and didn't seem to retain its consistent supportiveness as well as the Otty over the months of testing. Some people will find the Otty too firm for comfort, though. My 84-year-old dad was alone in our testing panel to find the Otty too hard on his joints – a sensation I experienced with the firmer Origin Hybrid Pro. Memory foam softens over the months, however, and I noticed a slight sinkage in the sleeping surface over my two months of testing. The sinkage was less pronounced than with the Simba, and it didn't stop me from sleeping and waking in comfort. The Otty betrays its relative cheapness in a few ways. Edge and corner support could be much improved. 'Do the springs even go right to the edge?' asked Alan, alarmed by the way the mattress flattened beneath him when he sat on the side. Its relatively nimble weight also gives the Otty a less extravagant feel than the Simba, Eve or Origin, and may point to more limited durability. Two months is long enough for me to test its impact on my sleep but it's too short to judge its stamina, and I suspect that its less sophisticated construction will see the Otty retain its consistent supportiveness for less time than its more expensive rivals. Bear that in mind if you're trying to spend more wisely by investing in homewares that will last many years. The metal springs and polyester fabric used in the Otty are easily and widely recycled, but memory foam is another matter. The memory foam used in mattresses is viscoelastic LRPu (low-resistance polyurethane foam) – polyurethane that's been chemically treated to make it elastic and dense in various degrees – and its energy-intensive manufacture is more complex than its pronunciation. It is not biodegradable and, despite the best efforts of industry bodies, it's hard to paint it as sustainable. To its credit, Otty has striven to make its mattresses as sustainable as possible given the materials used. All its foam is certified by Europur and CertiPur and made in line with EU legislation to minimise any health and environmental impact. No ozone depleters, TDCPP, mercury or lead are used in manufacturing and every foam batch is tested to ensure it's non-toxic and hypoallergenic. Otty runs a mattress recycling service, charging £40 (plus £20 for each additional one) to take away your old mattress and recycle it, whether it's an Otty or not. This is cheaper than rivals, with Simba charging £50. I haven't tested Otty's recycling service and can't confirm what actually happens to collected mattresses, but the company says 'they are responsibly recycled, with materials like foam, fabric and metal springs being repurposed to minimise waste and protect the environment'. The Otty Original Hybrid is a comfortable and wonderfully supportive mattress that improved my sleep from the first night. It's less heavy and less expensive than some rivals, but it outclassed them in my tests. It may prove to be less durable than them, but its 10-year warranty reassures me that it's good for thousands of superb sleeps. View at Otty Jane Hoskyn is a freelance consumer journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
