Mattress Face-Off: Tuft & Needle vs. Purple
These two foam mattresses are popular, but how did they perform in CR's exhaustive tests?
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Mattresses-in-a-box from online-only retailers have surged in popularity, so we decided to do a face-off with two of the most highly searched brands: Tuft & Needle and Purple.
“Buzzy doesn’t always mean top performance when it comes to mattress-in-a-box beds,” says Christopher Regan, the project leader in charge of our mattress testing program at Consumer Reports. “But, rest-assured, you can get a mattress-in-a-box that’s on a par with one you would have shipped from a store. We’ve found products that offer good support no matter how they're shipped.”
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Vitals
Tuft & Needle: The Tuft & Needle Mint mattress is made of three layers of foam with two layers of the company’s “adaptive foam” in the mix. It’s called the “Mint” because Tuft & Needle claims that gel beads and a layer of graphite on the top of the bed helps keep you nice and cool. It seems to work; in our tests, we found this mattress didn't retain warmth. The Tuft & Needle earns a 4 on our firmness scale from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the firmest). Its dimensions are 81 inches long by 61 inches wide by 12 inches tall.
Purple: The Purple mattress is made of two layers of foam and is built with a purple-colored "hyper-elastic polymer" grid layer that is purported to keep the mattress cool and improve support so that "your shoulders and hips are cradled.” Purple says the grid layer helps the mattress sleep cooler compared to memory foam. And in our tests, this mattress does stay cool. The Purple is a tad softer than the Tuft & Needle, earning a 3 on our firmness scale. We measured its dimensions to be 78 inches long by 60 inches wide by 9 inches tall.
CR members can read on for details about of how these two mattresses perform in our tests, in which we assess support, stability, durability, and features.
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