My Partner and I Can’t Agree on a Mattress. Will This $4,000 Beautyrest Bed Be the One?

This review delves into our experience sleeping on the Beautyrest Black Hybrid Series Three (2024 Edition). Last month, we were on the Nectar Premier Hybrid. If you want to learn more about that bed — which was Dillon’s favorite — check out our article review and YouTube video.

So, does Beautyrest live up to its name and help us get the rest we crave? Will we become more beautiful? Read on to find out.

Video: We Slept on Beautyrest for 30 Nights

Watch us review the Beautyrest Black Hybrid mattress on YouTube!

Initial thoughts on the Beautyrest Black Hybrid mattress

The Simmons Bedding Company has been around since 1870, and its flagship brand, Beautyrest, sold its first mattress in 1925. Based on the company’s historical impact alone, I was eager to test a Beautyrest bed.

Dillon and I had similar reactions when we first saw the Beautyrest Black Hybrid at our mattress testing facility. We both loved its sleek black look and the pretty diamond cover design. It’s an extremely dense bed, weighing nearly 160 pounds for the queen-size. An average queen-size mattress weighs anywhere from 90 to 160 pounds, making it the heaviest bed we’ve tested so far in our 30-night series — which is only worth noting if you move quite a bit. Overall, we were impressed by how luxurious it looked.

Lying on the mattress for the first time, Dillon and I agreed that it felt firmer than medium, leaning into medium-firm territory. Since my preferred sleeping position is on my stomach, I was happy about this, as firmer beds offer more support for keeping the spine aligned. As a side sleeper, Dillon wasn’t sure it would be soft enough for him — a running theme we’ve seen throughout our mattress-testing journey.

Temperature

We immediately noticed that the cover of this bed felt cool to the touch. Beds with memory foam typically sleep warmer because the denser foam tends to trap and retain your body heat as it forms around your curves. Beautyrest tries to combat this by adding the “Sleep Climate Surface” with cooling yarn and diamond particles infused into the memory foam. Many mattress brands claim their beds are cooling when often they aren’t, so as two hot sleepers, we were excited to test these features.

Feel

Lying on the bed for the first time initially felt quite firm and supportive. As I slowly began to sink into the layers, it softened up a little, providing that body-conforming quality of viscous memory foam. When I got up, I noticed that the materials snapped back surprisingly fast at first and then more slowly, seeming to offer a balance between dense and responsive. I was interested to see how it would actually feel while sleeping on the bed — would it be predominately dense and memory foamy? Would we be able to switch positions easily throughout the night, or would we feel stuck in the layers?

Our thoughts at the end of the trial

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience sleeping on the Beautyrest Black Hybrid mattress. After a few nights of sleeping on Beautyrest, I wrote in my notes, “I love this mattress so much. I don’t feel like I’m overheating and don’t wake up sore, even after sleeping on my side. It’s supportive for my back and stomach.”

Firmness

Though the model we tested is Beautyrest’s medium profile, it felt firmer than that — around medium-firm. This was confirmed by our fellow mattress reviewers and Mattress Smasher 9000, which scored the bed at 7.5 out of 10 (more on that below). 

Hybrid design

This mattress’s primary support system is a tall layer of individually wrapped coils, which provides enhanced durability and breathability as it allows for more airflow. On top of that is a layer of micro coils, which improves the bed’s motion isolation. This hybrid design also means it can withstand quite a bit of weight and pressure, making it suitable for all body types, including heavier individuals and couples.

Temperature regulation

Above the micro coils is what the brand calls “Micro Diamond Memory Foam,” intended to keep you cooler by drawing heat away from your body. Pairing that with the “Sleep Climate Surface” of the cover (which also has the micro diamonds), this mattress has impressive cooling capabilities — especially given its memory foam design.

Typically, beds with dense memory foam sleep hotter as the foam surrounds you and retains your body heat, but the Beautyrest Black Hybrid does a great job of preventing this. I thought I would feel much hotter on this bed than I did. I wouldn’t say it was overly cooling, but we slept temperature-neutral and hardly ever felt warm — which is awesome since Dillon and I are pretty hot sleepers.

Foams

This mattress’s pressure relief comes primarily from Beautyrest’s “ContourFit Form HD Material,” a fancy way of saying comfort foam. This layer cradles your curves and joints, while the supportive latex layer provides a responsive bounce-back sensation. Beautyrest’s foams are CertiPur-US certified, meaning they’re made without harsh chemicals, formaldehyde or heavy metals. While it’s becoming the industry standard among mattress brands, we appreciate that Beautyrest’s beds have this certification. 

Motion isolation

Scoring the Beautyrest Black Hybrid mattress

At CNET, our sleep experts use an objective, standardized system to score mattresses. For this 30-night series, Dillon and I created a customized system to subjectively rate the features and qualities we seek in a mattress. Feel and firmness are scored out of 20 points, while the other characteristics are scored out of 10 for a total possible score of 100. We rated these factors preferentially, meaning what we liked or didn’t like on a personal level. 

Read more: How CNET Tests Mattresses

After completing the 30-night trial, Dillon and I rated each characteristic and offered a brief explanation. Here is a breakdown of our final scores.

Dillon’s scoring breakdown

• Firmness: 12/20
  I could get by on this bed. However, the firmness keeps me from my preferred side sleeping position and forces me to sleep on my back and stomach, so I have to knock off a few points.
• Feel: 18/20
  I love the overall feel. This bed has a denser feel than Nectar Premier, the last bed we were on. That bed had a lighter and more airy memory foam feel, while this has more of that traditionally dense memory foam feel, which I still really like.
• Motion isolation: 10/10
  This mattress has super great motion isolation. I’m giving it 10/10. I only felt Aly move when she was kicking me in her sleep.
• Edge support: 8/10
  I never felt like I would fall off the side, even though I sleep on the edge quite a bit. There is solid edge support.
• Temperature: 7/10
  I didn’t necessarily feel like the bed was actively cooling through the sheets, but I also never overheated. It keeps you temperature-regulated.
• Construction/design: 10/10
  It’s got coils. It’s got micro coils. It’s got latex foam. It’s got memory foam. It’s got a little pillow-top feel. The Beautyrest Black Hybrid is undeniably luxurious and high-quality.
• Brand policies: 5/10
  The trial period is the baseline for mattress brands. I would like to see a more extended trial period. I appreciate the free returns and white glove delivery. The price is on the expensive side, even for how luxurious it is. I don’t see many people wanting to pay that much, but I do think it could be worth it.
• Sleep quality: 8/10
  I can’t argue with the numbers. I slept almost as well on Nectar (just four minutes less on average). However, I did spend more time snoring on Beautyrest because I had to lie on my back, and it was too firm to stay on my side long. 

Aly’s overall score: 8.3/10

How we tracked our sleep

Dillon used his Apple Watch to track his sleep, and I used my Whoop band. They provided similar health data and sleep metrics, allowing us to compare our overall sleep quality with the previous beds we’ve reviewed in this series.

Learn more: Using Tech to Test Beds: Say Hello to Our Mattress Smasher 9000

Brand policies: shipping, trial period and warranty

Beautyrest offers a 100-night trial period and a 10-year warranty. These policies aren’t as impressive as those of other brands offering 365-night trials or lifetime warranties, but 100 nights should still be enough time to decide if the mattress is right for you. 

Given its hefty construction and hybrid design, this bed should definitely last up to ten years or longer if properly cared for.

In addition to free shipping and returns, Beautyrest offers white glove delivery and free mattress removal. This is an awesome service to take advantage of if you aren’t sure what to do with your old mattress.

The founder’s son, Zalmon Simmons Jr., went on to create and sell the first Beautyrest mattress in 1925, featuring Simmons’ patented Pocketed Coil technology. This premium mattress was more expensive, retailing for $39.50 at the time (valued at around $720 today). The company used an innovative campaign featuring testimonials from “celebrities” like Henry Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt and Thomas Edison to advertise. This successful marketing tactic generated an estimated $9 million in sales by 1929.

The Simmons Company also first developed king and queen beds. Prior to this, most mattresses were either twins or doubles. To this day, Beautyrest is the brand’s signature mattress and one of the most well-known in the industry.

Pricing

The Beautyrest Black Hybrid is not what we would consider an affordable mattress today. At $4,000 for a queen size, it is well out of our budget — and if we hadn’t had the opportunity to test this bed through CNET, Dillon and I would probably not have considered it. That said, this mattress is truly luxurious. The Beautyrest Black Hybrid could be worth the investment if you’re in the market for a high-end mattress like this, and it checks all your boxes. I do not doubt this bed will offer supportive, contouring comfort for a decade or longer if properly cared for. 

Additionally, Beautyrest frequently offers this bed at a discount. Right now, it’s $600 off, bringing the price for a queen down to $3,400.

Firmness

I do spend some time on my side at night, so I thought I might get away with a medium to medium-soft mattress since that’s what Dillon prefers. That led us to try the Nectar Premier Hybrid last month, where I struggled to get comfortable and felt like my spine didn’t have enough support. It confirmed the notion that it was simply too soft for me. Sleeping on this Beautyrest bed, which lands around medium-firm, solidified that I need a firmer mattress. I was much more comfortable on this bed and felt supported all around.

The opposite rings true for Dillon — as a side sleeper, he was more comfortable on the softer Nectar than the firmer Beautyrest (though we were much closer to agreeing on this bed than any in this series so far). Though Beautyrest was dang close, we still have not found the “perfect” mattress for us both.

Next, we will test the Sleep Number ClimateCool mattress. This smart bed has adjustable firmness and temperature control on both sides, allowing Dillon and me to have personalized settings for each of us. Will it be enough? Stay tuned to find out.