Helix Sleep

I’m a 36m 5’10” 250lb stomach sleeper. My wife is a 34f 5’0” 130lb side sleeper.

For the past 7 years we were sleeping on an original Casper mattress which served us well until it suddenly seemed to give out and we began waking up in pain. Rotating it didn’t help. We began by replacing it with a Casper Select mattress from Costco. We found it comfortable however I began waking up nightly in back pain on it and suspected it wasn’t giving me the support I needed.

I did a bunch of research into what mattresses provide the best back pain relief and based on that we next tried a Saatva Classic. It seemed too firm and the coil on coil structure led to a huge amount of motion transfer. My wife said she hated it as a side sleeper and outright refused to even sleep on it even for one night. Back to the drawing board. Saatvas return process was good and we promptly got a refund.

Doing some more research, Wired magazine and Forbes were really praising the Helix Midnight Luxe. It seemed like it was ideal for side sleepers which gave me confidence my wife would like it. I was concerned on whether I would get enough spinal alignment as a heavy stomach sleeper. Some reviews indicated a lot of off gassing with strong smells that could last two weeks.

We pulled the trigger and ordered on Labor Day weekend. We purchased the ergo align layer and glaciotex gel cooling layer as extras. The total bill for a king after taxes was $2731. Helix shipped the mattress the next day. FedEx royally sucked with numerous false and/or no status updates and eventually dumped it in a mangled box in the middle of our driveway two weeks later. We used a dolly to get it up a few front steps which was a good idea given that this sucker was heavy!

The mattress feels medium firm, erring on the more firm side of things. The top layer seems soft and when laying on it there is only a small (about 2”) of sinkage. It feels like you’re more-so laying on top of the mattress with a small amount of cradling. What I like is the amount of support you get. The foam layers near the top and springs underneath provide instant support and pressure relief at all points on my body. I woke up without any back pain which is a big deal. Even as a stomach sleeper im sensing my spine might not be fully aligned (slightly sagging) but it’s not too bad and I’ve been happy. As a side sleeper my wife indicated she is comfortable.

In terms of off gassing there really hasn’t been much. The first night when moving around on it I got one or two whiffs but that’s been it.

In terms of cooling I was disappointed that the mattress doesn’t feel cool to the touch like some other mattresses do with cooling gel layers. That’s what I thought we were paying for with the Glaciotex add on. When laying under a duvet, our body temps feel like they’re regulated well and we haven’t been over heating. It has better heat dissipation than other mattresses we’ve been on. With that said we’ve never felt the mattress ever offer any kind of “cooling” sensation. If I had to do it all over again, I would not purchase the glaciotex add on. I suspect you’d get the bulk of the performance with the default tencel pillow top.

Motion transfer has been good. There’s a little bit of it, considering that there is 8” of springs underneath the foam, however I feel like I can move around and adjust my positions and get in and out of bed without disturbing my wife.

An additional gripe I have is that the top layer has this quilted diamond pattern that intentionally create these hills and valleys. We don’t love that feature where our ideal mattress would have a flat memory foam top with slightly more sinkage, a little more softness or memory foam feeling, and is cool to the touch.

All in all, we’re fairly happy with it. It’s offering good support and we’re getting good sleep on it. The mattress is pricey and we wish it could have checked all of our boxes but our gripes are more wants than needs.

The “free” pillows that were sent with the mattress are junk. We haven’t tried the “free” mattress protector or microfiber sheet set yet.

We haven’t had to test Helix’s customer support yet. I put this review on their website and it appears to have been removed by Helix, so I’m posting on Reddit instead.