Category: Adjustable Beds

For those looking to buy an adjustable bed frame on a tight budget you may want to consider Costco. I saw one in the San Francisco Store the other day but didn’t get far in my review. As part of my review I wanted to include a photo, which caused consternation with a store employee who stormed by me and said in a cranky disciplinarian tone: “No taking photos in the store!” Here I may digress a little from writing about the adjustable bed in the store, but what is so secretive about Costco that you can’t take a picture? I understand the policy as it relates to something like Burning Man where privacy from cell phone cameras makes sense but not at a big box store where you could be in any city in the USA or another country. So back to the bed it was a queen-sized memory foam for $1499 on a Carrie poster bed for $1199, apparently all are available on costcodotcom. Oh yeah, and there is one pic.

My curiosity peaked after seeing 2 months of Tempurpedic TV Commercials featuring happy customers giving their high-rated testimonials to the camera. I realized I needed to check this mattress out. Brookstone carries Tempurpedic in store so I decided to venture off to their Corte Madera location and test their adjustable bed, the Ergo System.  FYI: Whatever you do, don’t call it an adjustable bed; no one seems to know what that is.

I was also hoping that this trial, besides giving me a chance to work the remote, would allow me time to put my feet up and get a nice massage, breaking up a busy day and week.  No such luck. My dog was with me in the store, and as soon as I activated the massage feature, it was so loud that my dog freaked out. The first thing I tried was a mini massage for my legs and back. I was hoping for relaxing… but it was more in line with disturbing. I think it was mainly due to the fact that it was so loud, something the sales associate agreed with me about. What came to mind was a bad rollercoaster ride, one where you can’t wait to get off.

Luckily things went smoothly from there. I used the remote (wireless) to raise my head and imaged a nice flat screen TV at the foot of my bed. There was one touch on the remote to lower the bed, plus memory buttons to store your favorite mattress positions (up to four) and the bed frame changing positions was nice and quiet. All in all using the remote was as straight forward as advertised with its ‘simple and easy to use buttons’. Not surprisingly the mattress, The Cloud Supreme, was the real star here, over the adjusting frame. When it comes to comfort, I like the way memory foam contours all the body parts. But, I don’t like that it’s made using lots of potentially dangerous chemicals. I’ve read a lot of reviews of this mattress from new owners and they will often note that they barely have to move on this mattress it conforms so well to your body.

Even though this particular mattress, which in queen size retails for $3000, is appealing, I found it to be too soft.  The firmest in this line is the Deluxe Cloud, which in queen size retails for $2500.  A queen size Ergo System frame sells for $1700. Prices, like these are set by the company so they don’t differ from store to store.

Adjustable bed features are growing and so are the marketing efforts to get young consumers NOT to associate adjustable beds with hospital beds — which apparently they do, according to this article in the Wall Street Journal. To do this, mattress manufacturers are replacing the term “adjustable” with “power” and hope that this works.

If things go their way, then the hip new bed of tomorrow will be a departure from the flat bed experience, making way for the modern lifestyle power bed.

If you go to a local mattress or bedding showroom, you will see at least one adjustable bed (a.k.a. power foundation). Two popular ones are Tempur-pedic’s Ergo base and one of the many models made by Leggett and Platt.

Leggett and Platt’s latest model “the Prodigy,” may be representative of one of the company’s future customers. The profile is young, maybe even high tech. Recently, I spoke with a sales representative at a Sleep Train mattress store in Emeryville, California, who said that Prodigy power foundation was selling well with the younger crowd.

And if you’re wondering what some of the high tech features are — on Prodigy, they include a sleep timer, snore feature, gentle wake up alarm (massage and audio), and dual full body massage with wave. You can use their wireless remote with integrated clock, or if you prefer, use your iPhone or iPodtouch as your remote.

If local bedding and mattress retailers continue to display adjustable bed bases in their showrooms and the market continues to grow, it’s a safe bet that more and more people will not only have flexible mattresses, but also flexible adjustable bed frames.