The best time to buy a mattress is a holiday. Pick a holiday, any holiday. Is Amazon Prime Day a holiday? If it wasn’t a holiday would there be Amazon Prime Day mattress deals including the best price we’ve ever seen on the best mattress we’ve tested?
As with all of WIRED’s Amazon Prime Day deals coverage—including our absolute Best Prime Day Deals roundup and the Best Deals Under $100—everything we recommend here has been tested by a member of our team or one of our contributors and is legitimately discounted below the typical price. Prices shown are for queen size.
We test products year-round and handpicked these deals. We’ll update this guide periodically throughout the sale event.
Photograph: Helix
To make our guide to the best mattresses, WIRED tests beds by sleeping on them for at least a week in our homes, which is a more rigorous protocol than many other review sites on the internet. Via that protocol, the Helix Luxe has been our top-rated mattress for five years running. Helix is new to selling on Amazon and though mattress sales are always cropping up, this unique Prime Day mattress deal is one you may not see again for a while.
You can also get 30 percent off the entire Helix Core line, the steepest discount the company has ever had on these models. We haven’t tested the entire lineup but have flopped on a few of them, and they’ve impressed in that limited experience. There are five firmness levels in the Core line and because of their responsive foam, I’d suggest ‘sizing up’ with a mattress just firmer than what you think you’d want.
Photograph: Leesa
The Leesa Sapira Hybrid was our longtime runner-up to the Helix before being replaced on our list by its cooling sibling, the Sapira Chill. The Sapira hybrid is a true luxury-level mattress with high-end details and made-in-America craftsmanship, available to Amazon Prime members at a significantly larger discount than the current list price on the Leesa site itself. That makes this a true blue Prime Day mattress deal the likes of which you don’t often see from a third-party retailer.
Photograph: Casper
Casper was the original bed-in-a-box maker and is still making some very nice mattresses—the new The One really impressed me in testing. This is an older model that was a standby in our guide as the best bed to buy if you weren’t sure about what you wanted because it’s nice and neutral. Note that this price was at $1,195 just before Prime Day so this deal isn’t quite as impressive as the list suggests but it’s still cheaper than normal.
Photograph: Nectar
We show prices for queen mattresses but what’s interesting about this deal is you can currently get a California king for the exact same price, which is a true steal. Nectar is another very established brand that makes memory foam mattresses that have a loyal following. This model was our long-time pick as the best mattress for side sleepers before being supplanted by the Bear Elite. I’ve personally tested this mattress (medium firm gel memory foam) with a copper cooling layer (you can get that on Amazon on a smaller discount) and found it a little too soft but it’s a solid bet for a lot of people, especially side sleepers who want a softer, plusher foam feel.
Photograph: Amazon
The Linenspa is my favorite ultra-cheap mattress after testing a lot of cheap mattresses—an often unpleasant task you feel in the morning more than I’d like—at just under $300 normally. As I always tell people, it’s not especially well-made and if you can afford to spend more on a daily driver you should, but for a guest room or first apartment it’s pretty good, especially if your budget is very tight. I have slept on mattresses that cost 10 times as much that I liked less. Amazon Prime Day brings a big discount equivalent to 30 percent off the typical price and it’d be a good buy for a younger person going off to college or a shared apartment.
