Lie on the Raspberry and the memory foam gives under your shoulder for a second or two, then stops dead against the sheet of springs underneath. A little sink, then a floor. That is the feel, and it is the hardest step of Dreams' four new fruit-named Hyde & Sleep mattresses: one memory foam layer over one sheet of micro springs inside 24cm, delivered rolled.
Buy it if you're a front sleeper or lie flat on your back, you have lived with a very firm bed and liked it, and you want foam holding you there. If you turn onto your side, or you are on the light side, your shoulder and your hip have nowhere to go in this build. Hot sleepers should avoid it. My standing view of this brand is that the beds come out harder than most people want and ask a bit more than they are worth, and the Raspberry is the proof: one grade, the firmest in the range, at the same money as the gentler Blueberry beside it.
Hybrid here means one thin sheet of tiny springs
The word hybrid on this bed will not get you a pocket-sprung mattress, because there is no full-height spring unit in it anywhere. You get memory foam on top of a micro-spring sheet, with a slab of base foam underneath that, so judge it as a firm foam mattress with a little spring in the middle. Micro springs are padding for the number on a label, and nobody has put a number on these, which tells you how much work they do.
The layer worth measuring is the foam. A comfort layer is the whole feel of a bed, and the depth of this one is never given. Ask Dreams how thick that memory foam is before you order. If the answer doesn't come, take it as a thin top over a hard middle, because that is where the grade and the 24cm both point.
The only memory foam rung in the range, and the warmest
Memory foam sleeps warm. It wraps round your shoulder and your hip, which is why people like it, and the same wrap keeps air off your skin all night. Dreams calls this one cooling, and the claim lives in a knit cover with no fabric named and no test behind it. A cover doesn't undo what foam does with your body heat.
Don't buy it if you wake up throwing the duvet back in January. Get something sprung instead, because air moving through a bed beats any cooling fabric.
Ordinary sheets fit it, and the cover never comes off
Depth is the easy part. At 24cm the fitted sheets in your cupboard will go on without a fight, so don't go buying deep ones. The roll is about a metre long and a shade over 40cm square, so it goes up a staircase a full-size mattress would stick on, though two of you will still be carrying it. Expect it to be usable in four to six hours.
Keep the cover clean, because it is staying where it is. That zip is there to build the mattress, not to take the cover off for a wash, so put a protector on from night one and blot any spill the moment it happens. Spin it head to toe every week while it is new, then monthly once three months have gone, so you don't leave a dip where you sleep.
Nobody claims an edge on this one, and the care guide warns you off perching on it for long. On any bed with springs in it, the edge is where my eye goes first. Being a side sleeper, I was never going to end up on this one. The same mattress is sold flat for the same money and that one keeps you waiting months, so order the rolled version. Dreams' 100-Night Comfort Guarantee will swap it if the firmness beats you, the money stays with them, and the collection is charged, so order the right grade first time.
What to buy instead
For almost everyone, order the Hyde & Sleep Blueberry Rolled instead. Same money, same 24cm, same sheet of micro springs, and its comfort layer is Serene foam where this one has memory foam, which puts it two steps softer at medium firm. It is still foam, so it is no cold bed, but it won't cling the way memory foam clings, and medium firm is the safest grade to start from if you haven't decided. Keep the Raspberry only where very firm and memory foam are both things you have slept on and gone back for.
