Casper’s New Mattress Is My Holy Grail of Memory Foam Beds

Owning a Casper mattress has always been on my bucket list. Seriously. I have had an obsessive fascination with the brand—please see: the history of my (one-sided, lol) Instagram beef with its social team, which led to my turning one of its dog beds into a human couch—that has only gained a more coveted, El Dorado patina over time. This was the sleep brand that launched a postmodern pop-up on Abbot Kinney boulevard in LA; the company that put up a pro-sleep (and pro-furries) billboard in 2015. As a Taurus-rising who never wants to leave her bed, what more could I want??

Anyway, I pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere and on anything, but that doesn’t mean I should. I’m in my thirties now, and after years of sleeping on a creaky box-spring-mattress combo, my spine has started to feel like it’s being held together by rubber bands. My body type? For those wondering at home, I’m long, tall Drinking Bird-shaped with size 10 feet, so I get a lot of neck and lower-back pain. I’ve digested enough glowing Casper mattress reviews from the internet and friends, so when the brand released a new-and-improved version of its Element mattress—the Element Pro—I was more than down to test it out.

Here’s how the sausage is made: The Element Pro is designed with AirScape technology, which apparently adds perforation to the foam to keep you from overheating at night. And, unlike old school foam mattresses, the Element Pro comes with three layers of dual memory foam that are supposed to respond to your body, and not just react to it, which is a) what my therapist would call a big green flag, and b) what I would call my white whale: a mattress that feels soft, but actually provides the spinal support I need.

Would this Casper mattress du jour really be worth the $900 price tag? I slept on the question, and the mattress, and came back with quite a few notes. Slide into your jam jams, and let’s unbox one together.

What was rad

Shipping from Casper is fast, and the mattress arrived in an easy-to-roll rectangular box:

You know those hypnotic ASMR videos of slowly expanding foam? Unboxing a Casper mattress is just as satisfying; it gradually puffs up once you slide it out of the box to reach its full, queen-sized potential like a Magic Castle trick.

I let my Element Pro air out for a few days to get rid of that newborn-mattress smell, and awaited my new bed frame from Zinus. (My last mattress was a full, so I ordered Zinus’ $93 bed frame to support my new bb Casper; it had 46,000 rave reviews on Amazon, and only took me about half an hour to assemble. So far, there’s no creaking, and the 14-inch height means it will be able to hide my suitcases and boxes.) My mattress slid onto the bed frame like a flammkuchen in a pizza oven. It was squishy, but didn’t bounce around like a box spring. My feet didn’t hang off the edge of the bed, for once, yet it didn’t look that much bigger than my full-size mattress. Here’s a picture of them in their The Shining twins glory, for reference. The Casper is on the right, and ye olde box spring is on the left:

As a firm mattress-lover at heart, I was afraid that even the firm squish of the Element Pro would make my back hurt. But after a week on this luxurious slab, I’m happy to report that getting out of bed in the morning has been… easier? Less creaky on my joints? Instead of peeling out of bed like the Tin Man to sign onto Slack, I found myself waking up with less lower-back and neck stiffness. Most of all, I slept through the night better without the constant springiness of my old mattress—which was a bit like someone poking you again (and again, and again).

You know the consistency of the perfect brownie? It’s not puffy, but it has a kind of soft, chewy density. That’s what the Element Pro is like. As soon as I started to roll around on it—without experiencing any bounce—I began to understand the unrivaled power of the memory foam, which really does support the curves of your body without making you feel like you’re sinking.

You can buy memory foam mattress toppers for a few hundred dollars that are a few inches thick, but the Element Pro is a whopping 10 inches of memory foam with a top layer of something called AirScape foam that is meant to promote airflow and keep you from night sweats. No wonder it feels like the La Mer of mattresses.

What was tricky

The Element Pro is easy to move around in its box (and weighs about 70 pounds), but I do wish there were handles or loops on the sides of the mattress itself. I also wish that it came with a bonus pillow in the shape of a buttered waffle, like the Casper dog bed. But, I dream…

TL; DR

Casper is the GOAT for a reason, mainly because it doesn’t skimp on the high-quality memory foam and makes everything—from the customer service/shipping to unboxing—truly idiot-proof. As a tall and fussy sleeper, I can confirm the Element Pro is the ideal squishy bed for people who like firm beds. If you’re in the market for a new mattress, it’s worth throwing down the extra few hundred bucks (most memory foam toppers cost that much, anyways) for this dream slab.

Looking for more firm mattress recs? Check out our review of the Plank Natural Firm Mattress.

Purchase the Casper Element Pro on Casper, Amazon, and Wayfair.

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