The Sealy Toledo Backcare Extra Firm Mattress sits on Sealy's own PostureTech spring unit, a variation on open coil rather than pocket springs, and at a price that ought to get you pocket springs I'd talk most people out of it. Side sleepers, couples and lighter people should walk past it. The few it suits are heavier back and front sleepers who sleep alone and already know a hard bed works for them, and even they can get the same firmness on better springs.
PostureTech is Sealy's own take on open coil
At the core is Sealy's PostureTech Core Support spring system, which Sealy says gets firmer the harder you press on it. Sealy doesn't call it pocket sprung, and it isn't. It's Sealy's own variation on the open coil, where a pocket-sprung mattress sews every spring into its own fabric pocket. Above it sit ReNew fibres, made from 76% recycled PET plastic, under a Belgian damask cover. The whole thing is hand-tufted and Sealy's EdgeGuard firms up the border. It's 27cm deep and non-turn.
An open coil design has its place. It's cheap to make and hard-wearing when the wire is heavy, which is why it suits a guest room. The trouble is what it does with two people on it. When one of you turns over the other feels it. Over the years the unit sinks in the middle where the weight sits. I call that the trench, which is why I want pocket springs under anyone who sleeps on a bed every night.
Hand-tufting holds the fillings in place with buttons through the mattress. It's a tidy finish and mostly romance, since machines make good mattresses too.
Extra firm for the few who know they want it
Expect to lie on top of this, with very little sink at your hip. If you're a heavier back or front sleeper who sleeps alone, that hard, flat surface is the point, and this spring unit delivers it without fuss.
Side sleepers will feel it at the shoulder and hip within a night, so look elsewhere. Avoid it if you share the bed, because springs that aren't pocketed don't keep your partner's turning on their side the way pocket springs do. And if the word Backcare is what drew you in, a harder bed is not a safer bed for a sore back. Medium-firm is where I'd start almost anyone.
The price is the problem
There are no owner reviews for the Toledo yet, so the build is the evidence, and the build is an open coil design. Judge it as you would any open coil, and set it against the pocket-sprung firm mattresses Bensons sells under its own name, which put individually pocketed springs under you for similar money. Some of the open coil prices I've seen at Bensons are shocking, this one included. Would I buy it? Not for any bed I slept in every night.
What to buy instead
Buy a pocket-sprung extra firm and you get the same hard surface with springs that move on their own. At Bensons that means the Fairfield Ortho Backcare or the Grantham Ortho Backcare, both pocket sprung and both sold as extra firm. The Toledo's softer twin, the Firm Support, has the same spring unit and gets the same objection from me.
