Allswell Mattress Review

Keep in mind that what mattress companies call “firm” or “soft” is a purely a preference. All mattresses should be supportive and promote healthy spinal alignment. Whether a mattress is fluffy and squishy (what mattress companies call soft or plush), or less so (what companies call firm), is purely down to your personal needs and preferences.

We classify the Allswell mattress as a Firm in terms of softness overall.

Not sure what softness is best for you? Take our Mattress Match Quiz and find out.

This refers to how deeply you sink into the mattress or feel cradled or hugged, versus a feeling of floating on top of the bed. The Allswell mattress certainly give you more of a floating-on-top feeling, with not much conformance. As you can see in our bowling ball test below, even the 16-pound ball is resting right on top, not sinking in as much as with softer mattresses.

Responsiveness refers to how quickly a mattress recovers its shape after being compressed. When you press your hand into the mattress, for instance, then remove it, does it take several seconds for the mattress to return to flat, or does it recover immediately?

While the Allswell mattress does have a layer of memory foam, it really does not have any of that recognizable memory-foam feel, where after compressed, your hand print takes several seconds to disappear (some describe this as a slow, melting into the mattress feeling). Rather, the Allswell bed is quick to respond, recovering its shape almost immediately.

This also translates to bounce, which we test in two ways. When we dropped our 16-lb. bowling ball in the mattress, it bounced a couple of times, and when our tester dropped his weight onto the bed, he did not bounce at all. This was actually a surprising result, as we typically see beds with a pocket spring support unit to provide some deep bounce. But the Allswell and the Allswell Luxe Hybrid were two of the least bouncy innerspring mattresses we've tested.

In our evaluations, the Allswell mattress provided very good back support for back sleeping and stomach sleeping.

We did not, however, think that it would be a good match for most side sleepers, except perhaps those who really prefer a very firm mattress. It's worth noting that we found the Allswell Luxe Hybrid a better choice for side sleepers and for pressure relief.

The key to good back support is maintaining proper spinal alignment while you sleep. This means that the mattress should hold your spine in roughly the same position it's in when you're standing. The ability of a given mattress to do this will generally depend on your weight, sleep position, and body shape. 

While our tester was on his back, he commented "I feel great here." Lumbar support in this position was excellent, and we felt that most back sleepers both lighter and somewhat heavier would also experience good back support in this position. If we had any concerns, it would be for those in the higher end of the weight scale, perhaps over 250 lbs. or so, who might experience too much softness in the hip area and experience some hammocking effect.

Side sleeping was not ideal for our tester. His shoulders did not sink in enough to achieve good spinal alignment. While the Allswell may be okay for those who only sleep only occasionally on their sides, we really would not recommend this mattress for those who sleep predominately on their sides, with the possible exception of much heavier people, who might be able to compress the mattress enough in the shoulder area. Note that the related Allswell Luxe Hybrid performed much better in this respect.

Achieving good spinal alignment for stomach sleepers can often be trickier as the hips can tend to sink down too far with some mattresses, but our tester felt well supported in this position, and we felt most other stomach sleepers would have a similar experience. A possible exception might be those much heavier than our tester, who could possibly experience some over-sink and hammocking.

Beyond the preference-based characteristics of comfort and feel, and the body matching for spinal alignment and pressure relief, a mattress will have a number of other attributes that can make it a better or worse choice for you. We call these "priority-based characteristics" because they are areas in which a mattress can be better or worse, but that will have differing amounts of importance to each sleeper. So, determining how much importance to give to these features will be entirely a matter of your own personal priorities. As always, we apply the same ratings standards to each mattress so you can more easily compare apples to apples.

With a bowling pin standing upright on the Allswell bed, we tested motion isolation by dropping a 16-lb. bowling ball on it, as well as the whole weight of our 200-lb. tester.

In both tests, the pin wiggled a little, but never seemed in danger of falling over. If you're sensitive to a partner's movements, or if you have kids or pets that tend to jump into bed, we think the Allswell would be a good choice.

For most people, we do not think the Allswell mattress will feel hot. Memory foam has a reputation for heat retention, but in the case of the Allswell bed, the memory foam layer is fast responding, and you just don't sink very much into this mattress.

The top layer of foam on the Allswell mattress is infused with copper, gel, and graphite, intended to help draw heat from the surface of the bed, but we aren't able to provide or disprove whether this works. In any case, we don't think this mattress will feel hot to most people.

If you like to sit on the edge of your mattress, or if you tend to sleep right on the edge (or get pushed there by kids or pets), then edge support may be a priority for you.

While sitting on the Allswell mattress, our tester noticed a lot of "dip" or "sink" but he didn't feel unstable. When laying on the edge, he felt very stable, and didn't feel he was leaning off at all.

If you tend to move and change positions a lot over the course of a night, ease of repositioning will be a priority for you. Our tester did not experience any issues, and we don't think most people will.

For mattress shoppers concerned with the use of natural materials, sustainable manufacturing practices or the like, we offer our subjective evaluation of any efforts taken by the company to make the mattress more green, healthy, or safe. 

In the case of the Allswell mattress, the company makes no claims about the use of natural materials or sustainable manufacturing. All of the foams used are certified to the CertiPUR-US standard, which verifies that a material has low VOC off-gassing as well as a lack of chemicals and other substances regulated by the CPSC.

We always test mattresses on our adjustable base, as this type of foundation is becoming more popular among people of all ages. We especially look at how the mattress performs when the bed is fully articulated (bent).

With the Allswell mattress, we didn't notice any weird bowing or bulging, or uncomfortable bunching of the cover. It conformed very well at the foot of the mattress (sometimes challenging for mattresses right out of the box). However, when our tester got out of the bed, the mattress popped right up -- it didn't stay conformed to the curves of the frame as better performing mattresses will do.

So while the mattress is fully compatible with an adjustable base, it had conformance issues.

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