Our nine mattress experts have been testing and reviewing mattresses for years. from beds on travel pillows on sleeping headphoneswe have experience across the board. At this point, our team has collectively tested nearly three hundred mattresses. Eventually, we established a testing procedure that every mattress goes through in our Reno testing facility.

Read more: Here’s How We Test Mattresses

Our team of experts includes people of different genders, body types and sleeping positions, which helps us ensure that we represent all types of people.

Strength

Firmness is one of the most important factors we need to do mattress reviews for you. When testing, we rate and record two strength scores: Subjective and objective. the subjective stability is the experience of our bed team. When I lie in bed, I try it in every sleeping position and notice how my back, hips and stomach feel. The whole team did it, and we rated the bed.

After the team tested and found a subjective rating for the mattress, CNET used the Mattress Smasher 9000 for an objective score. This impressive orange machine objectively measures how firm a bed is based on the force of a 160-pound person.

Isolation in motion

Motion isolation describes how well a bed dampens surface movement. If you sleep with someone who moves around a lot or have a furry friend who jumps on the bed, you know how important it is to move around alone.

We try to separate the movement in two ways. First, I lie on the bed and close my eyes. Then, a teammate moves around next to me, varying the level of movement to get the full picture. Second, we did the water test, which involved rolling towards and away from a glass of water at the edge of the bed. We notice how much the water moves and when the glass is covered.

Edge support

Side support is the strength of the perimeter of the bed. This is a big factor if you are like me and always sleep on the edge of the bed. To test the edge support, we sit and lie on the edge of each bed and try and rate how much it feels.

temperature

How well a bed regulates temperature is especially important for warm sleepers. To ensure consistency, all CNET mattress testing takes place in a temperature-controlled room. In addition to rating our first-hand experience with the bed, we also checked its construction to see if any cooling properties were included.