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The Beautyrest Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top is a high-quality luxury from one of the bedding industry's most well-known brands. But is it right for you?
Founder of GoodBed, Leading Mattress Expert
The Beautyrest Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top is a versatile mattress well suited to a wide-range of sleepers that’s positioned near the top of Beautyrest’s flagship Black Collection. We think this is pretty close to a "perfect medium” option in the Black Collection, and is an especially good option for side sleepers and lighter back sleepers.
We found the Series 3 Medium Pillow Top to be a good fit for a wide-range sleepers, although we think it’s particularly well-suited to side sleepers. The soft comfort materials in the pillow top allow for a lot of contour and cushioning depth, while the underlying pocket coils provide a resilient and supportive base. While lighter individuals might do well in all positions on this mattress, heavier individuals will likely find that it’s best for side and back sleeping.
We also thought it offered excellent pressure relief. The Series 3 Medium has a lot of memory foam which creates a lot of pressure relief. However, this is balanced by the deeper layers in the mattress, which include a somewhat firm HD poly foam and latex. The combined effect is pressure relief at the surface, but deeper stability and support.
In terms of Softness, we agreed with Beautyrest’s title and think the Medium Pillow Top is just about a flat Medium. That said, we conceptualize softness/firmness slightly differently than most mattress brands and divide this into two subcategories: Softness and Cushioning Depth. We use Softness to refer to the initial feel at the surface of the mattress, and Cushioning Depth to refer to the deeper sense of how much your body deflects the comfort layers and where it “settles” within the mattress. In this case, we thought the Beautyrest Black Collection all had a bit more Cushioning Depth than surface Softness. The combined effect is a pleasant, balanced surface with a slightly deeper level of contour for side sleeping.
The Beautyrest Black Medium Pillow Top also has a fair number of other notable features. First, it is noticeably cool-to-the-touch and built with highly-breathable foams to maximize airflow. It’s also made with a unique combination of materials, including natural latex. If you’re unfamiliar, latex is a highly-durable and very high-quality type of foam created from the sap of the rubber tree. It is somewhat rare in the broader industry, and we always like to see it in luxury mattresses. Finally, the Black Medium functions well on an adjustable base and has good edge support.
The Beautyrest Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top is a luxury mattress from Beautyrest’s flagship Black Collection that checks all the boxes for pressure relief, cooling features, and high-quality foams. We think it’s an excellent option for most side-sleepers and lighter combination sleepers.
This review is related to the Beautyrest Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top. Learn more about this model:
The “feel” characteristics of a mattress cannot be universally better or worse. They can only be more or less desirable to you, based on your personal preferences. For this reason, we call these “preference-based” attributes. Our ratings here are based on objective measurements that we apply to a consistent scale for products from all brands.
We thought that the Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top was right around a "Medium" on our scale. This a balanced, nearly universally preferred firmness that provides both pressure relief and enough surface support for multi-position sleeping. This sense of balanced comfort is created by a combination of soft and yielding memory foams at the surface of the mattress with deeper levels of resilient poly foam and latex to aid in repositioning.
We found the Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top to have more Cushioning Depth than surface Softness. This means that the initial surface of the mattress feels somewhat solid, but eventually relaxes and settles to allow for a significant amount of conformance. In other words, the Black Series 3 Medium has more of a "sleeping-in-the-mattress" sensation, rather than sleeping on top of it. In out opinion, the microcoils used in the comfort layers really help with this.
The Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top is more responsive than expected of a mattress with a significant amount of memory foam. In this case, it's because the memory foam is effectively balanced by the underlying latex layers and the robust triple-stranded pocket coils. We found it easy to reposition on the mattress and didn't think it felt "dead" in the way of some other memory foam mattresses.
The key to good back support is for the mattress to support your spine in a “neutral” position while you sleep, meaning that the shape of your spine is roughly the same as when you're standing. The ability of any given mattress to do this will vary by sleeper, depending on its “fit” for your weight, body shape, and preferred sleep position(s).
The Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top is well-suited to side sleepers of every body type. The combination of a Medium feel with slightly deeper than average Cushioning Depth is ideal for this position.
Back Sleepers are also well-suited to the Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top. It's just soft enough for comfortable side and back sleeping, but not so soft that you lose alignment in this position. Some heavier back sleepers may find that it's a touch too soft for this position, although we still think it's a great option for most cases.
Stomach sleepers are probably the only category of sleeper where we'd advise some caution here. Generally speaking, stomach sleepers do best on Medium-Firm to Firm mattresses to maintain optimal spinal alignment in a somewhat contorted position. We think the Black Series 3 Medium is a touch too soft for most stomach sleepers, although lighter-weight individuals still might do well in this position.
Inadequate pressure relief from your mattress results in “pressure points,” which can be a source of pain, soreness, loss of circulation, restlessness, and other problems. Pressure relief requirements will vary be sleeper, with side sleepers needing the most. Likewise, the amount of pressure relief that a given mattress provides will also vary by sleeper, depending on its “fit” for your weight and body shape.
We generally thought that the Beautyrest Black Medium Pillow Top was Very Good in terms of overall Pressure Relief. It has a lot of pressure-relieving material and memory foam just at the surface of the mattress. However, it doesn't exactly feel like a classic memory foam hybrid, as this pressure relief is balanced by the underlying firmer and more resilient layers.
With the “features” of a mattress, performance will tend to be consistent across all sleepers – without regards to your body type or preferences. However, these attributes have differing levels of importance to each sleeper, which is why we consider them “priority-based” characteristics.
In terms of Motion Isolation, we also thought the Beautyrest Pillow Top was Very Good. Pocketed coils do an excellent job at motion isolation, and the additional layers of pressure-relieving memory foam further help with this. If there's any motion transfer at all in this mattress, it is likely due to fabric tension of the quilt and the use of slightly firmer transition layers.
We've recently incorporated lab-measured heat retention testing into all of our mattress reviews.
We use a device that measures initial coolness-to-the-touch AND all-night temperature regulation and evaporative capacity. In the case of the Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top, the performance was good. The cover feels noticeably cool-to-touch, although we found that this sense of surface coolness tends to be pretty short-lived on most mattresses that advertise this feature. In general, we didn't think it was an overly warm mattress.
We thought the overall Edge Support was Very Good. Edge Support can often be lacking with Pillow Tops, but we didn't really notice it here.
We also thought the Black Series Three Medium Pillow Top made repositioning easy. The responsiveness of the underlying latex layersmeans that it's easy to reposition and move around, even with the memory foam layers up top. We did not have any issues here.
We wouldn't say that there are many Green Features per se with the Black Series Three Medium Pillow Top, although there is at least one layer of natural latex in the construction. The other layers, however, are made from synthetic materials (as are most polyurethane foams).
The Series Three Medium performed very well on an adjustable base. We did notice just a bit of fabric bunching at the quilt layer, but this is quite common with quilted mattresses. The underlying pocket coils are able to flex and function well in all positions.
The Beautyrest Black Series 3 Medium Pillow Top is a quilted mattress comprised of eight overall layers:
The Beautyrest Black Pillow Top is a quilted-top mattress that uses poly foam, memory foam, and latex.
At the top of the mattress we have a quilted cover made with high-density "cooling" fibers. This is a traditional quilted cover made from two layers of fabric that are sewn together with layers of poly foam and memory foam in between. Just underneath this layer, there's a 2" layer of fast-acting memory foam and then a thin layer of a slightly denser "Micro Diamond" memory foam. After this, there's a layer of microcoils and then a kind of combined "transition layer" of firm poly foam and latex.
Underneath the comfort layers, we have Beautyrest's classic "triple-stranded" pocketed coil that we see on all of their Beautyrest Black models
The Series Three Medium Pillow Top has a "cool-to-touch" cover made with a high-density yarn of polyethylene fiber. This high-density yarn means that the quilt has a high overall heat capacity, and is able to effectively absorb heat and pull this away from a sleeper. It's also quite soft and comfortable to the touch.
The “value” of any mattress is both subjective and personal – reflecting how well it meets that person’s unique sleep needs and preferences, relative to their budget. As a result, our ratings in this area are focused on more objective factors like quality and longevity.
We've recently incorporated scientific lab testing for durability into our mattress reviews. We use a machine that simulates ten years of regular use and checks the mattress for height and firmness loss not only at the end but also at several intervals throughout those ten years of simulated use.
We rated the durability of the Black Series Three Medium to be Very Good. We attribute this to a combination of materials (including latex) with a highly-durable triple-stranded coil at the support layer. We expect this to last for many years, although sleepers may notice slight softening during the initial break-in period. This is common and expected for most mattresses.
We also think that it's an Excellent value. It is a bit more expensive than other mattresses on the market, but it comes with a full set of luxury features including a cooling cover, microcoils, memory foam, and latex.
Beautyrest mattresses are sold in mattress stores and department stores. You can also buy them directly through Beautyrest, and orders through Beautyrest.com include free white-glove delivery and removal of your old bedding. A 100 night trial period is included, with a full refund should you decide to return the mattress. See: Beautyrest shipping and returns info.
Otherwise, delivery and returns policies will vary widely depending on where you buy your mattress.
Warranty information for each mattress is included on the mattress "Law Label" at the store, and vary depending on the model. Be sure to talk to your salesperson about warranty terms, and particularly about the body impression warranty, which will tell you how much of a permanent depression may form to be covered under warranty. For these Beautyrest innerspring mattresses, it's 1.5".
To obtain warranty service, you will be responsible for shipping the mattress back to the company or retailer. See: Beautyrest warranty info.
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