The Sealy Advantage Memory Essential Mattress is a fair, inexpensive choice for a spare room or for one sleeper who likes a soft memory foam top over springs, and it's the wrong bed if you run hot or share with someone who tosses about. It's one-sided, with a layer of Sealy's MemorySense foam over PostureTech springs. Like most Sealy beds it's perfectly fine and nothing to get excited about.
A soft foam lid on Sealy's linked springs
MemorySense is memory foam with a Sealy trademark on it, and the listing calls it a plush layer without saying how thick. Under it sit PostureTech Core Support springs, which Sealy says firm up under the heaviest parts of your body. They're Sealy's own variation on open coil, joined together rather than sewn into separate pockets, inside an Edge Guard border. The cover is a soft quilted knit, and the whole thing is 27cm deep.
I have the bed this listing used to sell, the Posturepedic Pearl Memory, on the guest bed in my spare room, so I can say what carried over. The layout is the same: memory foam over PostureTech springs, one side to sleep on, graded medium to firm. On mine you can press a palm into the top and feel the foam give before you meet the firmer springs, and on my back it holds my hips well, while on my side my shoulder feels the firmness. What has gone is the Posturepedic name, the fibre cover and a stated foam depth. The Pearl was listed with 2.5cm of memory foam and the Advantage listing gives no figure, so ask Mattress Online before you buy. Recent owners finding it softer than mine makes me think something under that cover has changed.
It's single-sided, so you rotate it head to foot every couple of months and never flip it. I prefer a mattress I can turn, and no-turn is mostly the trade saving money and calling it convenience. In its favour, a double weighs 25kg and four handles are stitched into the border, so rotating it is easy for one person.
Good for a guest or a solo sleeper, poor for anyone who overheats
The people this suits are back and side sleepers of light to average weight who want a little give on top and sleep alone, or guests who'll be on it for a few nights at a time. A medium to firm grade suits most visitors, which is what you want from a spare bed.
Avoid it if you sleep hot. I hate being too hot, it wakes me, and memory foam holds body heat whatever the knitted cover promises about airflow. Skip it too if you're over about eighteen stone, because there's no spring gauge or count to judge, and if you share with a restless partner. One recent owner describes feeling "ripples" through the springs when the other person turns over.
Owners find it softer than the label
Many of the older reviews are for the earlier model, so the recent ones are the better guide here, and they're mostly short and happy: comfortable, good value, bought again for a second room. Where owners complain about firmness, it runs one way. They expected medium to firm and got something closer to medium, and one says simply that it's "a bit softer than expected". Treat it as a medium when you choose, because people who have slept on it for months are better judges of firmness than a label printed before it left the factory.
That wouldn't put me off for a spare room. One owner also reports it sliding about on the base. Put a non-slip mat between the mattress and the base if yours does the same, before you blame the bed.
What to buy instead
Would I put it in my own bedroom? No, I'd want pocket springs and something cooler than memory foam on top. If this firmness doesn't suit you, Mattress Online's own suggestion is the Sealy Waltham Advantage Latex, which it lists as a medium feel, and latex sleeps cooler and bouncier than memory foam. If you run hot and must have foam, look for gel foam over pocket springs instead.
