Hi brian.r.hamilton,
I think you meant this URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgM38sisM-4, but thanks, I found it & it is helpful.
Yes ... I did but I linked the video that only had information about Sensus by mistake. I've changed the link ... thanks.
The memory foam on the Sleep Innovations mattress is initially much more supportive than the Sensus. There's just no comparison. When you first lie on the mattress, it still feels like when it was new, & is almost too firm. You wouldn't want to just fall back or certainly not face first onto this mattress! It would seriously be painful! It takes a few minutes for your body to warm the foam before it starts to obviously conform, truly feels like a melting sensation.
I understand what you are saying ... but this is not a factor of it's "support" but a factor of its perceived firmness. It's easy to mix the two up. Memory foam manufacturers use different chemical combinations to create memory foam with different qualities (there's more about this in the links I listed earlier). Visco elastic materials respond to temperature, humidity, pressure, and time. This is like honey or water where if you compress it slowly it is soft but if you slap it then it feels firm. This is why memory foam can be tricky to evaluate because there are many factors that contribute to it's perceived firmness even though if you measure them by ILD alone ... they are all in the soft range of ILD (under 20). Unfortunately the industry as a whole is moving away from the type of memory foam that you prefer and moving towards faster responding memory foam which is less temperature sensitive (has a more consistent feel and firmness levels in a broader range of temperatures). One thing that is consistent though regardless of the specific properties of any memory foam is that its density is the primary factor in how long a particular memory foam will keep the properties that were part of its original chemical formulation (higher density is the main durability factor in other words until you get past about 6 lb density or so when the more linear relationship between durability and density begins to flatten out.
I don't see any similarity between the Foamex products in that video & anything we've tested by Tempurpedic or our Sleep Innovations mattress. The Sleep Innovations & Tempurpedic are very similar. The Foamex products just seem like plain old foam with a little bit of "memory" effect.
Because what each person perceives on different materials can be very subjective and also subject to many personal and environmental variables, layer thickness, and the materials above and below the memory foam ... each person may perceive the same material in different ways. This is just the nature of things in the world of mattresses ... and also by the way why it can be risky to go by other people's perceptions which may be very different from your own.
Our "good" bed, from FloBeds.com, has latex cores that we are in the process of updating. We had 2 replaced via warranty that failed after about 7 or 8 years & are in the process of replacing the remaining 2, likely with firmer versions this time around. However, we want to find a topper, or some combination no more than about 2-3" think, that give us this "molded-clay hard" feel!
This is one of the big advantages of component mattresses like FloBeds where layers can be replaced instead of the whole mattress. If you are looking for a specific "feel" and there is a material that you know has the specific feel you are looking for (Tempurpedic memory foam) ... then it may be best to bite the bullet and by the Tempurpedic. Even if there was another material that felt similar to you ... it can involve so much trial and error to find out which one feels the same to you that it can be less costly to go with what you are familiar with than to experiment.
What specification do you think best describes this profound difference (as we see it)? How, other than by having a sample or video in hand, describe/find the foam that we want? It really shouldn't be as difficult as it has been to find what we want (as I've described above). Very frustrating.
I think it would be a combination of specifications that would all be subject to several variables. They would include response time (slower), temperature response (getting softer with specific temperature ranges but remaining firmer outside of this narrower range to give you the "sleeping in sand or clay feeling"), and density (durability to maintain the feel you like and to create a similar compression modulus which is how quickly a foam becomes firmer with deeper compression) but in most cases you won't be able to find the technical specifications that will allow you to "match" one foam to another to this level of specificity and you would be dependent on either your your own perceptions (testing other foams in person before buying) or the perceptions and descriptions of others (which may not agree with your own because of some of the many variables or even "testing conditions" involved). Again ... this is why memory foam can be much more "tricky" than other types of foam.
The memory foam toppers at memoryfoam.com (from one of your links) are even more expensive than Sensus & the specs that are posted are pretty much the same. I've been to that site & many others like it over the last 10 years. There is no obvious reason I would choose to try that foam other than perhaps your recommendation.
I completely agree with you in your case although the "specs" that any manufacturer lists for their materials are nowhere near complete enough to make exact comparisons between foams. The density of a foam is the major part of its durability but "quality" or more accurately the "qualities" of different foams are not dependent on density. Some of these qualities require more expensive chemicals or additives, more difficult production methods, or higher levels of quality control (to control foaming variances) and these too can lead to some significant differences in the cost of a foam. The cost of foam is not only dependent on its density in other words. My "recommendation" has little to do with how a foam will feel to you or anyone else and for this you are dependent either on your own experience or on the experience of others. In this case ... the return policies of a supplier may be one of the most important parts of the "value" of your purchase so that you can decide in your own experience how close a foam "feels" to what you are looking for. If you get the "feel" you are looking for ... then the advantage of having this feel in a higher density/quality foam is that it will last longer.
There are probably a thousand sites just like this selling memory foam that claim to be like (or better) than Tempurpedic. Of course searching for rock hard memory foam is useless because who would want that? Do you see the frustration?
I don't think they are claiming that their foam is "better" than Tempurpedic because you would first have to define what you mean by "better". In some cases it may be true bu some definition of "better" (for example they use some gel foams that are more costly at a production level than some of the Tempurpedic foams) but I think they are correctly claiming that they have better value than Tempurpedic based on having similar designs, similar foam quality, and a similar feel to most people. There are very few sites that put the time and energy into trying to "match" all the different factors of foam quality/durability, design, and feel. Many sites only make these types of rather misleading Tempurpedic "matching" claims based on the more subjective "feel" of a mattress (knowing that most people won't even make meaningful comparisons anyway and are only interested in price) but use lower quality materials to achieve it and the "feel" that they are claiming is similar. In many cases some of the claims are completely ridiculous and has no basis at all because even the "feel" they are claiming isn't similar and the only thing comparable in some of these claims is that they have some memory foam of some type in their mattress ... even though in many cased it is "junk".
If the price is cheap enough ... there are thousands of consumers that will "swear" that it feels exactly the same because they are so eager to justify a "cheap" purchase, because they just don't know any better, or because for a short time what they purchased will have some similarities to other mattresses until the foam starts to soften and degrade. What often happens then is that someone who is a little more aware buys the same thing based on hundreds or even thousands of "positive" reviews ... mostly written within a fe days of the purchase ... and can't help but wonder why so many people are saying what they are saying when it is clear to them that what they have bought is junk and not similar at all.
Phoenix