Eddie Munson might not know what the stains on his mattress are from, but I sure do. My mattress paints a picture of all the nights I’ve sweat through my sheets. I’m a hot sleeper — even in the dead of winter — so I was curious if a cooling mattress would actually make a difference for me.
I spent a little over three weeks sleeping on a queen-sized Nectar Premier Copper hybrid mattress ($2,249), and unsurprisingly, it’s a huge step up from my $300 memory foam mattress from Wayfair in both comfort and temperature regulation. But it wasn't as cooling as I hoped it would be.
First impressions of the Nectar Premier Copper mattress
The Nectar hybrid mattress is in fact a beloved boxed mattress. The delivery man graciously brought it up five flights of stairs to my apartment, and then I unboxed it and let it expand for a few hours.
The first thing I thought after it reached its full size was Oh, this thing is large. At 14 inches high, it’s much taller than my regular mattress and sat extremely tall on my lifted bed frame. I’m 5-foot-1, so I had to do a little hop to sit on the bed, and I could no longer reach my phone charger cable. But honestly, I kind of liked being that lifted. It had the complete opposite vibe of a single man with his mattress on the floor.
Height aside, I didn’t love the design of the mattress. It has a thick, orange trim around the perimeter that is quite clunky. I have light bedding to help keep me cool, and I could see the outline of the trim through my duvet. I could also see the copper spotting through my cream-colored sheets. Though, admittedly, that might be because they’re pretty cheap sheets with a thread count that Schmidt from New Girl would disapprove of.
Does the Nectar copper mattress actually keep you cool?
Copper has high thermal conductivity, which means that the copper in the Nectar mattress is designed to absorb body heat and diffuse it to keep you cool and refreshed. The mattress top also features heat-absorbent polyethylene fibers to help wick body heat.
I was shocked at how cool the mattress felt right out of the box — it almost felt wet. I lay down on the bare mattress to see how it felt on my whole body, rather than just my hand, and it did have a nice cooling effect.
However, it came up a little short for me when I actually slept on the mattress with my bedding in place. Let me first say that I did notice a difference from my previous memory foam mattress — I definitely slept cooler on the Nectar. But it wasn’t enough to be mind-blowing or life-changing. I still woke up hot some nights, and the mattress definitely wasn’t up for the task of a sweaty midday nap.
On a positive note, falling asleep was easier because I wasn’t immediately hot. The mattress just couldn’t keep me cool all night and my tower fan still had to be part of my bedtime setup.
Truthfully, though, after also trying out the Tempur-Pedic cooling mattress (the three-degrees cooler model), I’m a little more impressed with the Nectar mattress. The Tempur-Pedic mattress was better, but not so much better that it would warrant the $2,250 price difference. So, if you’re a somewhat hot sleeper but don’t absolutely drench your sheets, the Nectar copper mattress is a solid choice.
I was still hot whether I slept on the $2,249 Nectar Premier Copper mattress or the $4,499 Tempur-Pedic Tempur-breeze mattress, so maybe I need to resort to some more advanced tech like the Eight Sleep Pod 3 cooling mattress cover that uses an external hub to physically cool down the bed.
Let’s talk comfort
I tested the hybrid version of Nectar’s copper mattress, meaning it had springs to give it support and a memory foam top for that body-hugging effect. The top half of the mattress was softer than my all-memory foam mattress, but I liked it. It had that true “sinking into bed” feeling. But if you like a firmer mattress, this might not work for you. The Premier Copper mattress is also available as fully memory foam if you don’t like the feeling springs bring to a hybrid mattress.
Sometimes when you sleep on a new bed, you can really feel it the next morning. But I felt great after my first night on the Nectar. I have some hip pain from years of cheerleading, and this mattress provided nice pressure relief for my joints.
I had a couple of my friends try out the bed to see how other people felt about the softness, and one said she loved it while the other would’ve preferred it to be firmer. So, just reiterating: This mattress is definitely on the softer side.
Is the Nectar cooling mattress worth it?
The $2,249 price tag is pretty standard for cooling mattresses from the brands we know and trust. And the all-memory foam Nectar Premier Copper mattress is even cheaper at $1,949. There are obviously some outliers that are significantly cheaper, like the $1,099 Layla memory foam mattress, or way more expensive, like the $4,499 Tempur-Pedic Tempur-breeze mattress. So I don’t mind where Nectar falls on the price scale. It has a pretty decent bang for your buck.
For me personally, it wasn’t cooling enough. But for someone who sleeps hot but isn’t a straight-up furnace, the Nectar Premier Copper mattress will do a fine job.
