Best Mattress Overall

Helix Sleep Midnight Luxe Hybrid Mattress (14-Inch)

FROM WIRED: 
Former WIRED editor Jeffrey Van Camp tested several mattresses over the years, but this is the only one that put him to sleep immediately after just a few minutes of lying on it. Helix's Midnight Luxe has a plush cushion top and a medium-firm feel that's relaxing whether you're a side, back, or stomach sleeper. (He's most definitely a stomach sleeper.)

Helix mattresses are hybrids and have a base of individually wrapped inner springs that are firmer in areas that need more support to prevent back pain, like your lower spine. On top is a stratum of cooling gel foam and denser foams. In all, there are six layers and the mattress is more than 13 inches high. It's cozy, and Helix has a variety of other mattresses that cater to different sleeping positions and firmness preferences. Helix is almost totally vertically integrated—the springs are made from bales of wire cut in the company's Arizona factory, where it has recently started pouring its own foam.

FROM WIRED: 
This is a true runner-up in comfort to our top pick. It's one of the best mattresses on the market, hands down. We love the silky diamond-textured cover of Leesa's Sapira Hybrid Mattress almost as much as its soft-yet-firm, pressure-relieving feel. It didn't whoosh me away to dreamland like the Helix Midnight Luxe, but it was a mattress we kept coming back to during testing—sometimes for comparison and a few times because it felt so cool and cozy.

Like a lot of our top picks, this is a hybrid mattress. It has a layer of springs sandwiched between five layers of foam in various densities, including a 1.5-inch top layer of airy, cooling Avena foam. The layers blend together well, gently hugging my body while offering proper support.

Leesa Sapira Hybrid (11-Inch)

Runner-Up

Best for Side Sleepers

Bear Elite Hybrid (14-Inch)

FROM WIRED: 
Most people are side sleepers. The stats vary by study and how you define side sleeping, but between half and three-quarters of people sleep mostly on their side. For them, it's important to find a mattress that strikes a perfect balance between cushion and support. The Bear Elite is a five-layer hybrid mattress that is a full 14 inches thick and firmer than most other side sleeper mattresses. Your initial impression might be that a squishy memory foam mattress is better—my experience is that sinking too much gets old after a while.

The Bear's top layer is a quilted pillowtop made from a cooling fabric that sits above a layer of cooling copper-infused foam. There's a single layer of springs of varied rigidity so your hips can sink a bit without your back coming out of alignment. It's a sturdy mattress and comes with a 120-night trial period (plus a lifetime warranty). Read our Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers guide for other picks.

FROM WIRED: 
WIRED editor Adrienne So likes a firm mattress. And by “firm” she means “rock hard.” She finds sleeping on a quarter-inch of foam over dirt to be both relaxing and good for her back. The Plank's high-density support foam took a few hours to fully inflate, which left both So and her spouse with a misleading initial impression of too much softness. But after a few days, the mattress firmed up considerably. The 0.75-inch quilted top is barely perceptible. It's like sleeping on a clean wooden floor (this is a good thing).

If this is too much for you, you can also flip it over to sleep on 2 inches of comfort foam on the underside. But let’s be honest, if you’re ordering a mattress called the Plank, you probably don’t want to do that. The foam also doesn’t move laterally at all, meaning kids can hop in and out of the parental bed with minimal shaking. Her one complaint is that the edges could use a bit more support; she has slipped off the sides a few times while putting on her socks.

Plank Firm Mattress (13.5-Inch)

Best Firm Mattress

FROM WIRED: 
Our top pick, Helix, has an Elite collection that consists of six new mattresses along a spectrum of softness. Those hybrid mattresses come in two separate boxes, each heavy enough to require help lifting. The firmness is dictated by the foam density of the upper layer, which zips into a larger support system. In theory, this makes the mattress adjustable if you end up regretting your order. The bottom section has two separate layers of tiny springs called microcoils. Helix says you need to pair this with a bed frame that has slats (not a traditional box-spring frame).

Helix advertises the Elite as "the tallest mattress on the internet," and at 16 inches, it is indeed the Shaq of boxed mattresses. I spent a month sleeping on the softest model from the Elite line, dubbed the Sunset, and appreciated the deep cradling effect. Most people prefer a mattress that cools them as they sleep—like many on this list, Helix claims to use a special fabric that dissipates body heat, and it indeed remains remarkably cool even when you're settled in. Helix offers a 100-day trial period on all of its mattresses.

Helix Elite Mattress (16-Inch)

Best Mattress Upgrade

Best Organic Mattress Upgrade

Birch Luxe Natural Mattress (11.5-Inch)

FROM WIRED: 
Birch's high-end Luxe model is a great side-sleeping mattress, just like its standard model, but its medium-firm feel and structured support make it a better pick for a variety of sleeping styles. It's also an organic mattress and is GOTS-certified, using natural latex with no polyurethane-based foams.

The Luxe mattress employs multiple layers of wool, plus a layer of individually wrapped coils, which provide support and some cushioning. It has a pillowy Euro top, which is an extra layer of blended cashmere that helps with temperature regulation, and the coils provide full lumbar support while maintaining a satisfyingly stiff edge on all four sides. My sleep rings have been spinning themselves closed during my month of testing this mattress.