Brunswick Review

• Review
• Specs
• Comments

I talk to people with all kinds of needs when it comes to mattress shopping. One of the biggest concerns among our Canadian friends is shipping. Some companies won’t ship to Canada while others charge extra.

Today, we’re taking a look at Canada’s number one innerspring mattress. Believe it or not, they are able to vacuum seal an innerspring mattress and send it to your house. In fact, it was one of the very first spring mattresses to be delivered this way, and they ship to every province and territory.

Innerspring mattresses are notorious for great bounce and excellent support, but they also tend to transfer motion. Let’s get right into looking at the layer lineup of the Brunswick mattress and seeing how it works to balance everything out.

Video Review

Don’t want to read the full review? Watch our video review instead.

Novosbed: Focus on Educating Customers

Let’s face it. Some companies are so focused on making a sale that they neglect to ensure they’re matching customers with the right product for them. I really like that Novosbed makes efforts to educate their customers so they get it right the first time around. They make a conscious effort to help their customers understand the relationship between sleep and performance.

Not all mattresses are made equally, and that’s why Novosbed offers different types with various layer constructions. This helps them fulfill their goal of manufacturing products that provide ideal sleep conditions. I’ve had the chance to try out three of their other products:

• Recore if you like medium firmness and/or sleep on your side

• Douglas if you’re on a budget and/or like a slightly firmer sleep surface

• Novosbed if you want firmness options and good durability

Brunswick Mattress Layer Lineup

As you can see, we’ve actually cut this mattress open so you can take a look inside. If you want to see how my Brunswick mattress got like this, you can watch in the video above.

Hemp-Based Cover

Let’s get started at the top with the hemp-based, antimicrobial cover. It really has a lot going for it including:

• Easy cultivation since hemp farming doesn’t require much water and no pesticides or fertilizers
• Highly durable material despite the low cost.
• Smooth softness at the surface of the mattress.
• Immediate pillowy, silky feel through the use of ¾” of Euro-Top fill right beneath the cover

Comfort Layers

Right beneath the cover is a ¾” layer of cooling gel foam. The gel is used to regulate temperature, and we’ll see how effective it is here in a few minutes in our heat transfer test. I’m a big fan of memory foam, and I love the way it feels when placed in the top layer.

Not the Sinky Memory Foam Feel

Keep in mind, the memory foam in the Brunswick mattress doesn’t provide that super sinky feel that was typical of traditional memory foam. The good news is that the thickness and composition of the Brunswick memory foam layer are more conducive to ease in mobility. It’s just enough to provide pressure relief in the areas like the hips and shoulders. 

The comfort layer ends off with an inch of visco gel foam that further works to provide great contour.

Support Layers

The transition into the support unit comes in the form of an inch of Trizone Eco Foam. It’s here where there’s a noticeable increase in firmness to provide good spinal alignment. The remainder of the base is composed of an innerspring unit made of reinforced, individually-wrapped steel springs. It’s zoned, and this means there is a slightly different coil gauge in the areas of the mattress where you carry more weight. Stick around to see how it works.

If you struggle with hip or shoulder pain and sleep on your side a lot, I think this is a feature you’ll appreciate. We’ll get into further detail just how much extra contour you can expect here in a bit. Finally, you can see the eight-inch innerspring unit is surrounded by a foam encasement. It’s in place to stabilize the sleep surface and keep you well-supported on the edge. The total mattress thickness is 11 ¾”.

Brunswick Mattress Feel & Performance

Next, I’m going to walk you through what it feels like to lie down on the Brunswick mattress. Just based on my perception, it feels very much like a standard medium, and this often pairs well with people of average weight that’s evenly distributed. This would typically be ideal for:

• Banana and hourglass shapes for the ladies
• Oval and rectangle shape for the guys

I like the inclusion of the pillow top as this works well to ensure you still get to enjoy the resulting softness at the top of the mattress. In all three sleep positions, I feel very evenly supported, and I think this has a lot to do with the zoning of the coils we talked about earlier. I pick up on that targeted lumbar support when back sleeping, and we can attribute this feature to the encasement foam and thick steel springs. If you suffer from excessive strain in the hips and lower back areas, this is good news.

A Few Good Reasons for 30 Day Required Trial

I noticed a review online that listed it as a con that you have to try the Brunswick mattress for 30 days before you can return it. I actually consider it quite the opposite. I like that the company helps consumers understand that it can take a few weeks to adjust to a new mattress, and this goes back to their commitment to educating their customers.

Not only does the mattress soften to its intended firmness level, but it just takes time for your body to get used to a new layer lineup. I’ve worked with more than one person who was really upset when their mattress just didn’t feel like they expected upon delivery only to find out they loved it after a few weeks. So, yes, always take advantage of that break-in period.

The innerspring unit does a great job keeping the bed nice and bouncy. This makes it really easy to move around and get in and out of bed. I think it pairs nicely with the double-stacked visco foams in the comfort layer, allowing you the contour of memory foam without feeling stuck.

Firmness & Contour: What to Expect

We touched a little bit on the firmness of the Brunswick mattress. Based just on lying on it, it felt to me to be pretty medium. There are a couple of things we can look at to get a good idea of what to expect in terms of firmness. We like to start by taking a look at the indentation load deflections in the foam layers. I wrote a very in-depth article on how this measurement works if you want to understand it better. For right now though, all you really need to know is that 12 is very soft, and 50 is very firm. 

The two visco layers on the top of the layer lineup are very plush with the top weighing in at eight and the second layer at 11. We see this number increase significantly as we move into the transition layers with both the Trizone Eco Foam and innerspring encasement featuring an ILD of 34.

Although coil gauge information isn’t provided, as you know, we did cut this mattress in half. Using my digital calipers, I just gathered this information for myself. This number measures the thickness of the steel and typically ranges between 12-15. The lower the number, the firmer the mattress. Here’s the information I was able to gather:

• Coils in the middle of the mattress with black fabric wrapping
  • .089 inches 
    • 13 coil gauge (on the firmer end of the spectrum)

• Coils at top and bottom of the mattress with white fabric wrapping
  • .073 inches 
    • 14 coil gauge (on the plusher end of the spectrum)

By placing the firmer coils near the middle of the body, you’re able to enjoy a higher degree of support for the heavier hip area. It also helps you avoid excessive sinkage that can throw your spine out of alignment when you sleep. If you carry a lot of weight in your hips and have struggled with poor alignment on innersprings in the past but do like the excellent support they provide, it’s possible your mattress didn’t incorporate zoning. This could be something worth trying out.

A Good Fit for People Who are Top & Bottom Heavy

Now that you have an idea of firmness, let’s use our firmness and contour testing tool to give you a visual representation. Noting the sinkage when I apply increments of 25 pounds to our device, we can generate some very useful information. You can see the progression of sinkage is pretty steady in that there are no areas of sudden change on our chart. We do notice the majority of the sinkage occurs in the middle weight range, and this indicates it could be a good fit for people who are top or bottom heavy.

For example, if you carry a lot of weight in your hips or lift weights and carry a large degree of your weight in the chest and shoulders, you don’t want support to kick in too early as this can lead to pressure points. The Brunswick mattress allows the heavier body areas to achieve proper contour as we see in the long line representing the transition material. On a comparison chart showing how Brunswick measures up against popular competitors, we can see it’s right in the medium firmness range and should be pretty compatible with the average person.

Motion Transfer Reduction

When it comes to motion transfer, a lot of people tend to avoid innerspring products, and that’s really unfortunate considering a lot of effort has gone into making them more stable. Since the springs are independently wrapped, this means energy exerted on one side won’t domino over to the other. I also think the double layer lineup of memory foam in the comfort zone adds to this mattress’s ability to isolate motion.

In our video above, you can see when a 20-pound medicine ball is dropped next to another how well the complete layer lineup works at keeping you stabilized.

Breathability

We want to sleep cool so we can enjoy more time in REM sleep. To help you with this, the Brunswick mattress incorporates multiple cooling and moisture-wicking features including the:

• Hemp-based cover
• Heat dissipating gel memory foam
• Pocketed springs that effectively circulate air when you move

To put this combination to the test, I lied on the mattress for a half hour and monitored the cooldown with a thermal imaging camera. This process typically takes 10 minutes, but the Brunswick mattress cut that time by 20%. If you sleep hot, this is good news. It also out-performed the other three Novosbed mattresses I’ve tried out, so, if you sleep hot, Brunswick is worth a close look.

Edge Support

Edge support shouldn’t be overlooked, and this is especially true if you have a sleep partner. You can fall into trouble on both ends of the spectrum:

• Edge support too low
  • You risk falling out of bed more easily, and it makes getting in and out of bed more difficult. 
• Edge support too high compared with support of overall mattress
  • You’re more likely to sink into the middle of the mattress if you have a sleep partner

The great news is that, since this mattress has a strong innerspring unit and the edge-to-edge reinforced support system, it does an excellent job keeping me very well supported even when sitting on the more vulnerable corners. The springs further work to prevent the “trampoline effect” that sleep partners often struggle with when one tends to fall into the indent made by the other.

If you need the benefit of an extended sleep surface or have mobility problems, I think you’ll be very happy with the edge support Brunswick provides.

A Look at Brunswick’s Durability Expectations

Before we wrap up, let’s talk for a moment about durability expectations. I’ll start off by voicing a few concerns:

• The ViscoGel layer only has a density of 2.5 pounds per cubic foot. In this material type, we really want a density of between 4-5 with three being a minimum. Since it’s placed in the comfort zone, I fear heavier people may begin to notice indents over time.
• The next layer of Bio TRIZONE foam is only at 1.5 pcf when, in this material type, we want to see that at 1.8 pcf or higher.

With that being said, keep in mind you can buy the queen version of this mattress for under $1,000 Canadian, so slight density compromises are typical to be expected. The good news is that the density in the top foam layer is at 1.8 pcf, and this indicates good durability in polyfoam. I think placement in the top layer where the most wear and tear takes place was a good move.

The coil unit is also promising. For starters, the multi-tempered steel coils are wrapped independently. Since they don’t all compress at once, it can prolong the life of the mattress. We like to see a coil count in a queen of at least 800 for good durability, and Brunswick is filled with 828. I also like that the hemp-based cover features three times the tensile strength of cotton.

Based on all these factors, if you have an average BMI, you should get at least 5-6 years of good use out of your Brunswick mattress. Of course, there are always things you can do to encourage a long-lasting mattress:

• If you need to clean the cover, it’s not removable. Novosbed recommends using a very mild fabric cleaner or baking soda to spot clean.
• Every three months, rotate your mattress from head to toe. If you think you might forget, just make it a habit to rotate with the seasons. Since springs lose tension over time, rotating extends the lifespan by spreading wear patterns. It’s the exact same concept as rotating car tires. Some mattresses can also be flipped to achieve this, but you don’t want innersprings as your comfort layer, so just stick with rotating!

Maintenance, Protection, Care & Warranty

Foams used in the Brunswick mattress are Certi-PUR certified, and I think you’ll find the combination of bounce from the innersprings and contour from visco foams to offer a great balance.

Not only will your purchase be backed by a 15-year warranty, but you’re also protected with Canada’s longest trial of 120 nights. As we talked about, you have to try it out for 30 days, and for good reason. If, after that time, you find it’s just not going to work out, arrangements will be made to have it donated to a charity or local organization or recycling center. Once picked up, you get a full refund and a better understanding of what doesn’t work for you in a mattress.

Let’s take a look at some important information if you do decide to give the Brunswick mattress a spin:

Cost

Every Brunswick mattress is expertly assembled by Canadian mattress industry veterans, and free shipping is offered to 99% of Canadians across every province and territory. Not only was it made specifically with the northern climate in mind, but payments are also only accepted in Canadian dollars, so this is especially for my Canadian friends.

If you don’t quite have enough money to pay the full amount, 0% financing and payments starting at $158 per month is available to qualified buyers through PayBright.

If you think this could be the right mattress for you, pricing is as follows:

Twin- $649

Twin XL- $699

Full- $749

Queen- $799

King- $949

California King- $949

Brunswick Mattress Reviews & Feedback

We always like to ensure we provide a thorough review of each product we test. Since some of the information I’ve provided is based on my perception of the Brunswick mattress, I took some time to examine the feedback provided by other users of this product. Here’s what I found:

PROS

• Free shipping in Canada
• Great bounce
• Excellent edge support
• Sleeps cool
• Low motion transfer considering the use of the innerspring unit
• Use of hemp and its inexpensive cultivation keeps costs low
• Use of memory foam and innersprings balance bounce and sinkage well, allowing memory foam feel without feeling stuck in the mattress
• Good for pear and apple body shapes in women and oval, rhomboid, or inverted-triangle body shapes in men

CONS

• Only available in Canada
• Only one firmness option
• Density in foams low but well-aligned with cost

Who We Recommend the Brunswick Mattress For

Overall, if you live in Canada and are in the market for a mattress under $1,000, Brunswick is definitely worth taking a close look at. It could prove a great fit for hot sleepers and those who like the springy bounce only available with an innerspring unit

BEST FOR

• Body Type
  • Men
    • Oval
    • Rectangle
  • Women
    • Hourglass
    • Banana
• BMI
  • Between 19 and 25
• Side, back and stomach sleepers

Our Final Verdict

At the end of the day, I think the Brunswick mattress is an awesome consideration for people with an average BMI. More specifically, I think women with apple or pear-shaped bodies and men with oval or rectangle-shaped bodies will find the layer lineup to provide an adequate support-to-comfort ratio.

This product is capable of holding up to 250 pounds for single sleepers and 500 total pounds for sleep partners. Again, if you weigh more than that, I think the low densities we talked about could produce premature wear and tear. Considering the great trial period, you have nothing to lose.