Kitting out a spare room or a first flat, you want proper springs under whoever sleeps there and a mattress that comes up the stairs without a fight. The Bodyshape Boost 800 Pocket is made for that job. It sits at the bottom of the Boost pocket-sprung range from Bodyshape, Mattress Online's own label, and it fills the gap for a sprung bed with some foam in the top that arrives in a roll: 800 pocket springs under a microquilted layer of reflex foam and soft polyester fibre, graded Medium. Lie down and the quilted top gives a little at your shoulder and hip, then the springs push back, and you stay up on the bed with a cushion under you.
One rung up is the Bodyshape Boost 1000 Pocket, and the two part company on a single question: do you want foam in the top, or a mattress you can turn? This one has the foam and only one side to sleep on. Its twin on the same 800 springs, the Bodyshape Boost 800 Pocket Memory, adds memory foam and goes softer, which is the one to pick if you want to sink rather than sit on top. The 1000 swaps the foam for fibre and gives you two faces and handles to flip it. Eight hundred is a light count as well. A thousand in a double already strikes me as a little thin, though these are proper pocket springs, and that counts for a lot.
Buy it for a guest bed, a student room or a first flat, and for a back sleeper or a lighter side sleeper of average build or less. Medium with a cushioned top is the grade most visitors can sleep on, which is what a spare bed needs, since you never know who will end up in it. Skip it if you're heavier, around eighteen stone and up, because a bigger body goes straight through the quilted top and onto the springs. Skip it as well if this is going to be your own bed every night for years. For a spare room it's a great bed, worth buying without a second thought. It just isn't the one I'd want under me every night.
Is the Bodyshape Boost 800 firm?
No. It's graded Medium, and that fits the build. Reflex foam is the springy, quick kind of foam, not memory foam, so it gives under your shoulder straight away and comes back the moment you move, with none of the slow sink that holds you in place. Below the quilted top, a layer of dense polyester fibre sits over the springs and another sits underneath them, which softens the feel of the coils without deadening their push.
Start with your weight, then think about how you lie. On your back at an average weight, your hips stay level and the quilted top fills the hollow of your lower back. A lighter side sleeper gets enough give at the shoulder to sleep well on it. A heavier side sleeper goes through the quilted top quickly and feels the shoulder meet the springs, so look for something deeper and softer. Front sleeping is the one position I'd talk you out of, and if you can't give it up, a Medium lets your hips dip a touch, so you'd be better on something firmer, with a flat pillow so your neck isn't cranked back.
Treat the word Medium as Bodyshape's own grade. It's a fair guide when you're comparing one Bodyshape with another, and it tells you very little against another maker's Medium, because every brand grades on its own scale and none of them carry across.
Eight hundred pocket springs, and I'd still have them over an open coil
Each of the 800 springs sits in its own fabric pocket, with the pockets joined into one unit, so the spring under your hip goes down without dragging its neighbours with it. That's why pocket springs keep one sleeper's turning on their own side, and why I'd have them every time, even at the bottom of a range. The worst bed I ever had was a hand-me-down open coil, twenty years old before it ever reached me, and I slept in a divot between its springs. A decent rolled pocket-sprung mattress beats one somebody else has slept on for a decade, and in a first flat that's the whole case for this one.
The count is where it goes thin. Past about 1,500 in a king I stop being impressed, because the extras are mostly padding, but down at 800 you're at the light end, and a light count shows most on a double shared by two adults, where fewer springs carry two bodies all night. Ask Mattress Online which size the 800 is counted on before you order, because a spring count only means something when you compare it size for size.
One side to sleep on, and a guarantee of one year
Only the top face is quilted to sleep on, so it never gets flipped, and you swing it round end to end about once a season instead. Bodyshape sells that as easy care. To my mind, no-turn is the trade saving itself the cost of a second finished face, and I'd always sooner have a bed I can turn, since two faces share the wear and a turnable mattress lasts longer. On a spare bed that gets a few weekends a year, it barely registers. Under you every night, it's the first reason I'd step up a rung.
You get one year of guarantee, for faults in how it was made or what it was made from. That's short, and it's one more reason I'd keep this mattress for lighter use. Look after it the way the guarantee asks: keep it covered, because a soiled mattress with no protector is excluded, and put it on a sound base, because an unsuitable one is excluded too.
Boost 800 or Boost 1000: where the extra goes
The Boost 1000 costs more, and you can see where the money goes. You get 1000 springs to this one's 800, a second sleeping face with handles, air vents in the border, a reinforced edge, a centimetre more depth and five years of cover. What you give up is the foam. Its quilted top is soft white fibre and nothing else, so it lies a touch firmer at the shoulder, and you need to flip it every fortnight for the first three months, then once a month.
So the 800 is the kinder bed for a guest who sleeps on their side for two nights and goes home, and the 1000 is the better-built bed to sleep on every night for years. If it's going to be your own bed for the long haul and you weigh the two honestly, turning and the longer cover win.
Getting it home and keeping it right
It arrives vacuum-packed and rolled, and a double weighs about 25kg, so two people can carry it up a tight staircase and open it in the bedroom. Give it six to eight hours in an aired room to open up before you make the bed, and don't judge the feel on the first night: Bodyshape suggests a fortnight to get used to it, and I'd give it that. Rolled pocket springs work well, to my mind, and the technology was never my quarrel with mattresses that come in a box.
Put it on any firm, flat base. Bodyshape asks for gaps of less than 10cm between slats, with each slat solid and secured to the frame. I'd want them closer, nearer 7cm, because wide gaps and a cracked slat are the first things I check when a mattress starts to dip. It's 24cm deep, about nine and a half inches, so a standard fitted sheet fits, with a snug pull once a protector is on underneath. I get suspicious of a mattress under about 20cm, so that depth reassures me.
Mattress Online's 100-Night Comfort Trial is an exchange for another mattress, and it only applies if you buy one of their mattress protectors with it. You'll also need to have slept on it for a month before you can ask to swap. Protectors aren't my favourite thing, like putting a one-pound case on a thousand-pound phone, but between the guarantee and the trial, this is a bed to put one on.
What to buy instead
If this is going to be your own bed for years, find the extra for the Boost 1000 and plan on turning it. If what you want every night is foam on top over a lot more springs, the Bodyshape Gel 2000 Pocket puts gel foam over 2,000 springs at the same Medium, and I rate gel foam as a mild help for anyone who runs warm. For the spare room or the first flat, stay with the 800.
