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We wrote in 2017 about a golden age of mattresses. So many start-ups had arisen to challenge the likes of Sleepy’s and Tempur-Pedic — Casper, Tuft & Needle, Leesa, and Saatva, among many others. Since then, the mattress-sphere has only gotten more crowded, with more new brands launching and existing ones rolling out new models and phasing out older ones. Meanwhile, the essential question — “What mattress should I buy?” — has become trickier to answer. Steel Compression Spring

To help make sense of it all, our staff has been trying these beds out ourselves and making note of how they feel to actually sleep on in real life. We’ve tested more than 35 mattresses since 2018 and we’re still going strong, with several newer mattress models in our current testing queue. All the mattresses here are some of the best-reviewed on the market, so there are no duds. But rather than name the “best mattress for everyone,” which we’re convinced doesn’t exist, we set out to judge each on its own terms. That’s because determining which mattress to buy will always depend on you — your sleeping position, temperature, firmness preference, and budget — and the perfect mattress only becomes obvious once you’ve actually slept on it.

Still, we hope these reviews serve as a baseline for how firm, springy, or cushy a brand’s other products might be. If you don’t want to scroll through all of the options, you can click any of the links below to jump to their corresponding mattresses — or read on for how we tested and what we looked for.

High Tension Spring A couple of things to note: Unless stated otherwise, the starting prices we’ve listed are for queen-size mattresses. In some cases, for companies that offer more than one mattress design, we tested only one option. We’ll be testing more mattresses in the future, but for now, here’s our answer to that question about which mattress you should buy.