What our reviewers found
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When Dreams refreshed its TheraPur line it did not start this one from scratch. The ActiGel® Polar 1000 is the successor to the Polar 800, one of the brand's steadiest sellers, with a higher spring count and the same core idea: gel foam comfort over pocket springs at a price that undercuts most brand-name gel mattresses. TheraPur is Dreams' own in-house brand, which is why you will struggle to find it in most comparison charts.
The recipe
A thousand pocket springs handle the support, with a layer of ActiGel® foam above them and I-Fibre® and Platinum 3D® fillings in between. The whole thing wears a knitted ActiCool® cover that feels cool when you first touch it. The fillings carry an antibacterial and hypoallergenic finish, a practical touch if allergies are part of your shopping brief.
Gel foam is the reason to pick this over a standard pocket sprung bed. It moulds the way memory foam does but recovers faster; if you have tried memory foam and hated the trapped feeling, this is the halfway house.
About those cooling claims
Cooling is the whole sales pitch, so it needs pinning down. The cover is cool on contact and the gel layer holds less heat than classic memory foam. That is the full extent of it. Owners who run hot mostly say it helps: "I was suffering badly with night sweats, but the cooling gel finish has put an end to them", one wrote. Others felt no difference. "Me and my partner both overheat through the night and thought this would help but it doesn't", wrote another. A mattress cannot fix a warm bedroom. Cooler than memory foam, yes. Cooling in the air-conditioning sense, no.
Living with it
Two practical notes surface in the owner reviews. It is a deep mattress, deep enough that one owner "had to buy some deeper fitted sheets to account for the extra depth of the mattress", so measure before delivery day. And it is single-sided: rotate it end to end regularly and leave it at that. A complaint that recurs in the reviews is that it feels firmer at home than it did in the shop. One owner called it "very firm for a medium". For some "it just took a few weeks to adjust to", while another was still finding it "a little firmer than I'd like" after two months. The medium tension suits back and side sleepers of average build; front sleepers who like a hard, flat surface should look at the firmer end of the TheraPur range.
The verdict from owners
The reviews are mostly happy ones, and comfortable is the word owners use most. Some arrived at it through the sleep machine in store, "a perfect match for us after trying the dreams machine" as one put it. The unhappy reviews are few. Besides firmness and heat, a small number of owners report dips forming where they sleep. One wrote: "It is showing signs of dipping where we sleep despite turning the mattress as instructed". Another saw them "after just 1 week". The step up to the Polar 2000 buys a higher specification, but at a noticeably higher price. For most people the 1000 is the sensible middle of the range: the gel benefits, the pocket spring support, and a price that keeps the comfort guarantee as a safety net you probably will not need.
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Tested in store by
James Klein , Mattress Reviewer · May 2025
Corrections When we get something wrong, we fix it and say so here. All corrections
11 October 2026 We said this mattress came in all popular sizes. It comes in single, double and king.