As a sleep editor, I'm often asked: 'are box mattresses actually good?' I can understand the cynicism. It's hard to believe that a mattress can be stuffed, sealed, and vacuum packed into a cardboard box, shipped thousands of miles across the country and delivered to your door without emerging a little worse for wear.
Before I started work as a mattress tester, I was a skeptic, too. Now that I've unwrapped and inflated my fair share of beds-in-a-box, I'm a believer. A good box mattress can offer the same (or even superior) comfort and support as a traditional mattress, for a fraction of the cost.
