The Casper Mattress Review

About the Casper

Casper may not have invented the mattress-in-a-box, but it certainly kickstarted the craze for online, direct-to-consumer beds when it launched its first mattress in 2014. In addition to various mattresses, Casper sells bedding products like pillows, sheets and blankets, and dog beds.

The Casper is a 10-inch all-foam mattress comprised of three layers: an “Airscape” layer of perforated foam designed to diffuse heat throughout the night, a memory foam layer for pressure relief, and a durable foam base for support.

The Casper is available in Twin, Twin XL, Full, Queen, King, and California King sizes. Prices start at $595 for the Twin.

What we like about the Casper

It keeps motion transfer to a minimum

If you’re a light sleeper and share your bed with a partner who shifts their sleeping position throughout the night, you’ll appreciate the Casper's ability to isolate motion.

To test motion isolation, we drop a 150-pound punching bag onto one side of the mattress, and using an accelerometer, we record how the motion registers on the opposite side. With their dense spongy internals, foam mattresses tend to do very well in this area. The Casper continued this trend, and its all-foam construction did an excellent job of dampening motion.

It provides a reasonable amount of pressure point relief and comfort

When we sleep, certain parts of our body push further into the surface of a mattress than others. This can create uncomfortable pressure points on the shoulders and hips of side sleepers; the small of the back of back sleepers; and the rib cage, thighs, and knees of front sleepers. Ideally, a mattress should conform to the sleeper so that an even amount of pressure is spread across the body.

The Casper’s medium-firm surface and memory foam layers conform well enough to pressure points to make side sleeping comfortable, and the medium-firm surface is enough to give lumbar support to a back sleeper.

It’s affordable

It’s increasingly rare to find a solid mattress-in-a-box for less than $1,000, so we’re glad that Casper is still relatively affordable. It’s not the best budget mattress by any means, but it’s nice to have some options.

What we don’t like about the Casper

Its edge support is nothing special

Most of us pay little attention to mattress edge support, but it can be crucial for those with mobility or strength issues who need assistance getting in and out of bed. Foam mattresses struggle in this area as even the densest foam won't keep rigid under a person's body weight. The Casper’s edge wasn’t dreadfully squishy, but it's less supportive than ideal if you're an edge sleeper or pushing up from a seated position.

It won’t keep you cool for long

Casper doesn’t make any specific claims about this mattress's cooling performance, so we didn’t have high expectations. In our testing, it was just above average when it came to diffusing heat. It’s not bad by any stretch, but If you’re looking for a mattress that will keep you cool while you sleep, there are much better options than The Casper.

It has a strong lingering odor

Foam mattresses are known for “off-gassing,” which is the process where odorous residual chemicals leftover from manufacturing are released. This smell will dissipate over time, but it can be unpleasant until then. The Casper had a powerful odor when we first opened it, and the scent lingered for longer than usual.

What is Casper's return policy and warranty?

Like other mattress-in-a-box companies, Casper offers a 100-night trial but asks customers to sleep on the mattress for at least 30 nights before attempting to return it. The company offers a 10-year limited warranty, valid only for the original purchaser and product.

The warranty covers defects attributed to its manufacturer, such as splitting foam or a visible indentation greater than 1 inch that isn’t associated with an improper or unsupportive bed frame and base. The warranty doesn’t cover general wear and tear over time. It also nulls if the mattress is sold from the original purchaser.

In the event of a defect, customers can either request a replacement of the same model or upgrade to a more expensive replacement by paying the difference between their original purchase price and the current cost of the upgraded mattress.

What other people are saying about the Casper mattress

The Casper is available on the brand's website and on Amazon. On the Casper website, the mattress only has 125 reviews and has an average user rating of 4.7 stars out of a possible 5. The mattress has 922 reviews on Amazon and an average user rating of 4.4 out of a possible 5. The Casper is a relatively new product, so the lack of reviews on the brand's website isn’t surprising.

Most reviews are positive, with customers highlighting the Casper’s comfort and price.

There aren’t many negative reviews, but the few unhappy customers found the mattress uncomfortable and drew attention to some shoddy built quality.

Should you buy the Casper?

No, unless you’re on a tight budget

It’s been frustrating to watch Casper struggle to innovate and keep up in the increasingly crowded mattress-in-a-box market, and The Casper mattress, sadly, continues this trend. The Casper is by no means a bad mattress. It’s affordable, perfectly serviceable, and offers reasonable comfort, stability, and excellent motion isolation. However, despite its competitive price, The Casper doesn’t provide enough value to justify a purchase except as a spare room mattress or a last-minute stopgap.

Yes, the Casper is affordable, but so is the far superior Dreamcloud hybrid , which is often on sale for less than the Casper and offers better cooling and motion transfer and similar pressure point relief and edge support. It’s also not even the best affordable all-foam option; that honor goes to the Serta Perfect Sleeper, which is $200 cheaper and pips the Casper on edge support.