To my mind the Iconic II is the best-made mattress Bensons sells and the hardest one in the shop to recommend, and both halves of that are true at the same time. Buy it if you replace a mattress about once in twenty years and you'll turn it every few months without being nagged. Anyone furnishing a rental or a spare room they would rather not think about should walk past it. This is Staples at the top of its game.
Four rows of hand stitching and a fibre list that reads like a wool fair
Four rows of true hand side-stitching go into the border of this one, more than any other rung, and it's hand-tufted with British wool on top of that. Honestly, it's a gorgeous piece of mattress-making and I'm not going to pretend to be above it.
The fibre list on this rung, with GOTS certification named against its British wool, runs to cruelty-free peace silk, British wool, mohair, hand teased British lambswool, alpaca, horsehair, viscose from bamboo wood pulp, flax, bamboo, Lyocell and cotton. Read that as a list of materials you're paying for and not as a promise about your sleep, because no fibre list has ever fixed a bad night. It's turnable, with the flag-stitched handles in the border, and I like that somebody thought about the practical end of it. The cat sleeps on my bed every night and I'm not sorry, so I have views about how a beautiful surface copes with ordinary life.
Fourteen thousand of those springs are padding
Fifteen thousand two hundred springs on the ticket, of which just 1,200 run full height. The cheapest bed in this range has the same 1,200. So everything the extra money buys you over that bed is depth, fibre and fourteen thousand mini springs in the comfort layers, and not one more spring carrying your weight. The stitching and the fillings are real and I have given them their due. The spring total is not the reason to buy this, and with no owner reviews on it yet I'd want the full-height count written down before I signed anything.
Buy it once and look after it, or don't buy it
At 38cm this is the deepest mattress in the range, and depth sets the terms. Fitted sheets this deep take some hunting down, so check the stated pocket in centimetres and buy the sheets at the same time as the bed. Add 38cm to your base and measure from the floor, because this can easily become a bed you get into instead of one you sit down on.
Turn it every few months with another able-bodied adult, using the handles to steer and your legs rather than your back. Don't try it alone. Avoid it if you can't arrange that help, if you need a low bed you can get out of easily, or if you know perfectly well you're never going to turn it, because the second face is a large part of what you're paying for.
What to buy instead
For nearly everybody, the Hypnos Luxurious Earth 01 at the same retailer is the sensible version of this decision if you want Firm or Extra Firm, because it has no softer grade. It gets you a maker I rate, natural fillings and a build I trust, without the top rung of anything. If the Iconic II is still the one, order it in the grade you have lain on, not the one that sounds right, because it comes in four of them and the name tells you nothing about the feel.
