For this review, I’ll be digging into the Hybrid line from popular mattress retailer Sealy. Sealy is one of the best known mattress brands on the market and you can find a number of their models at places like Sears. The brand boasts three different hybrid collections within this line, including the Essentials (the least expensive), the Performance and the Premium (the most expensive). While I’ll be assessing all of these models in due time, I’m going to start off this adventure with the Sealy Hybrid Essentials.
Though its combination of foam and pocketed coils seems enticing, I won’t know how comfortable this mattress actually is until I put it to the test, figuring out how it feels, how it sleeps and whether or not it could be the bed of your dreams.
Continue reading below for my full review of the Sealy Hybrid Essentials mattress. Don’t have time to read it all? Click here to skip to the bottom and check out my review summary.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress.Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Trial Period
120 nights
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Warranty
10-year warranty
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Warranty
10-year warranty
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Trial Period
120 nights
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Trial Period
120 nights
Warranty
10-year warranty
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
CONSTRUCTION
The Sealy Hybrid Essentials features a straightforward, two-layer construction of memory foam and pocketed coils. While this mixture of materials is fairly common for a hybrid such as this, what’s unique about this bed is its short 9” profile, intended to better highlight the firm support of the pocketed coil system.
To see how all of this comes together in the mattress, let’s dive on into its different layers!
Cover – The cover is made up of an ultra stretch knit material, which gives off a soft and cozy feel. It also snaps back into place quickly, so you won’t have to worry about it bunching up as you move around at night.
Comfort Layer – Up top, you’ll find a thick layer of gel memory foam, which will provide you with some immediate pressure relief as you sink into the material. While this body contouring is one of the most well-known features of memory foam, it can also lead to overheating throughout the structure. To mitigate this, Sealy added a gel infusion here, which is something you’ll find in a lot of the best cooling mattresses.
Foundation Layer – Directly below the memory foam comfort layer, you’ll encounter the bed’s pocketed coil system. This layer brings some bounce to the mattress and provides the lift of a classic innerspring mattress. However, since these coils are individually wrapped, they’re going to be better at isolating motion transfer than an old-fashioned innerspring, which could be a great thing for couples to take note of. This section also features some zoned support at the lumbar region and an additional batch of coils along the edge for even more support.
FIRMNESS
After taking a look at the construction, let’s chat about the firmness and feel. I started off by applying light hand pressure to the mattress and found that I was immediately interacting with the gentle memory foam comfort layer. Even though the bed is technically categorized as a Firm bed, you’ll still feel some initial softness as you press into the hybrid. Pushing in further is when you’ll meet the coils, which will lift you up and out of the structure.
Since folks of varying shapes and sizes are going to feel firmness differently, I thought I’d bring in three other testers to help me assess this hybrid. To do this, we each took a turn lying on the bed and gave it a personal firmness rating, which we then compiled on the graph below.
While feel is always going to be an individual thing, our responses should give you a solid idea of the firmness range you can expect from this mattress.
As you can see in the graph above, we had a bit of a range with our responses, but ultimately landed on an average firmness rating of 7. When compared to the industry standard of 6.5 for medium firmness, it’s clear that this bed is pretty firm.
I personally gave the mattress a 7.5 as I found its hybrid construction to create a pleasant buoyant firmness. Though you’re likely to sink into the memory foam top layer for pressure relief, you’ll quickly meet the pocketed coil system, which will keep you positioned firmly on top of the bed. I should also note that the absence of any kind of transition layer here is going to further accentuate the hybrid’s firmness as you’re not going to gradually sink into the structure.
Overall, our responses were consistent with the fact that the Sealy Hybrid Essentials only comes in Firm. For gentler options, check out either the Performance collection (coming in Cushion Firm, Firm and Plush) or the Premium collection (available in Firm, Plush and Ultra Plush).
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress.Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Trial Period
120 nights
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Warranty
10-year warranty
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Warranty
10-year warranty
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Trial Period
120 nights
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Trial Period
120 nights
Warranty
10-year warranty
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
PRESSURE MAP
Another important component of a bed’s feel is its pressure, or more specifically where pressure points are likely to form while lying on top of it.
To help you visualize where these tension spots might crop up, I placed a pressure map on top of the mattress and lied on my back, side and stomach. You can see the results on the image below where pressure is represented from blue (low pressure) to red (high pressure).
Back – Lying on my back, my weight was pretty evenly distributed across the surface. While I could feel the memory foam filling in the space at my lumbar region for some comfort and relief, I definitely felt as though I were “on top” of the mattresses as opposed to lying “in” it. I’d attribute this feeling to the zoned support in the pocketed coil system, which gives a nice little boost at the lower back and makes it easy to move around and change positions.
Edge Support – Scooting as close as I could to the side, I continued to feel well supported by the bed. I’d say the extra section of edge support coils do a fantastic job of lifting the sleeper up and out of the structure, which tells me that you’ll be able to comfortably use the entire surface area of the bed.
Side – Rolling onto my side, I began to feel a bit of discomfort. Side sleepers tend to prefer softer beds as they do a better job of cushioning the shoulders and hips, typical problem areas for side sleepers. Since this bed is quite firm, I didn’t experience the kind of support I needed in these spots, so those of you who are looking for the best mattress for side sleepers, you may want to look at either the Performance or Premium hybrid collections.
Stomach – Switching onto my stomach, I felt some excellent pressure relief thanks to the bouncy support of the pocketed coils, which kept my spine in an even alignment. Stomach sleepers tend to prefer a firmer bed such as this, so I’d say this mattress could be a great pick for anyone who likes to sleep in this position.
MOTION TRANSFER
Next up, let’s take a gander at motion transfer, or the amount of disturbance that’s likely to be felt from one side of the bed to the other. While this section is important for everyone, it’s especially pertinent for those of you who plan on sharing your bed with a partner as it’ll key you into just how bothered you’ll be by their movements in the middle of the night.
To illustrate this motion transfer, I dropped a 10 lb. steel ball from heights of 4 inches, 8 inches and 12 inches and measured the disturbance it caused: the bigger the lines, the bigger the disturbance.
FYI: Each drop is meant to symbolize a different movement you’re likely to experience in bed, from tossing and turning (4”) to getting out of bed (8”) all the way to full on jumping (12”).
Honestly, I’m kind of surprised by these low motion transfer results. When I’ve reviewed other hybrid models that feature pocketed coils, I’ve found that the bounce from the springs usually lends itself to a high level of disturbance transferred across the surface. But here, the Essentials benefits both from the memory foam, which helps to dampen movement, as well as the individually wrapped coils, which distribute motion throughout the structure. All that being said, I think this could be one of the best mattresses for couples.
SINKAGE TEST
And finally, let’s talk about sinkage. This next test is intended to demonstrate whether you’ll feel like you’re sinking “into” the bed or lying “on top” of it.
To visualize this, I placed four balls of varying sizes and densities (a 6 lb medicine ball, a 10 lb steel ball, a 50 lb medicine ball, and a 100 lb medicine ball) on the mattress and measured how much they compressed the surface.
The variations in size, weight and density are meant to simulate different body parts and different sized sleepers.
- 6 lb medicine ball: 1 inch of sinkage.
- 10 lb steel ball: 2 inches of sinkage.
- 50 lb medicine ball: 3 inches of sinkage.
- 100 lb medicine ball: 5 inches of sinkage.
This isn’t a lot of sinkage, which makes sense when you consider the bed’s short profile, lack of transition layer and pocketed coil system. The firm, buoyant support is likely to keep you positioned on top of the mattress, so you shouldn’t experience that “stuck in the bed” feeling you’d get from a foam mattress, for example.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress.Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Trial Period
120 nights
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Warranty
10-year warranty
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Warranty
10-year warranty
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Trial Period
120 nights
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Trial Period
120 nights
Warranty
10-year warranty
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
IS THE SEALY HYBRID ESSENTIALS MATTRESS RIGHT FOR YOU?
Now that we’ve taken a closer look at the mattress, I want to highlight some of its biggest pros and cons:
PROS
- One of my favorite things about the Sealy Hybrid Essentials is its bounce, which brings some nice support to the mattress.
- I also think this bed could be a great pick for couples, as it has excellent edge support and super low motion transfer.
- Given its firm nature, the mattress could also be a solid option for stomach sleepers as it’ll work to the keep the hips and shoulders in an even alignment.
CONS
- While this firm support is great for stomach sleepers, it’s not necessarily going to be a good fit for side sleepers who need a bit more contouring at the shoulders.
- I’d also say that the lack of a transition layer means there’s not a ton of sinkage to this bed, which could be a detractor for those who like to sleep “in” their mattress.
BASIC INFORMATION
- Purchase: Sealy doesn’t sell directly to consumers online, but interested folks can buy through Sears.com.
- Sleep Trial: Sears offers a 180 day trial for this mattress. (must try for at least 30 days).
- Warranty: 10 years.
- Shipping: Sears offers free shipping on all orders over $599.
Just getting started? Begin your mattress search with my mattress reviews breakdown.
SIZE AND PRICING INFORMATION
If you’re convinced the Sealy Hybrid Essentials is the right mattress for you, the size and pricing information for the mattress are below. Please note that these prices reflect standard pricing, but coupons are often available.
| Size | Dimensions | Weight | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twin | 38" x 75" x 9" | 45 lbs | $1,249 |
| Twin XL | 38" x 80" x 9" | 48 lbs | $1,274 |
| Full | 53" x 75" x 9" | 51 lbs | $1,279 |
| Queen | 60" x 80" x 9" | 76 lbs | $1,299 |
| King | 76" x 80" x 9" | 96 lbs | $1,799 |
| Cal King | 72" x 84" x 9" | 96 lbs | $1,799 |
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress. The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
We recommend this mattress for the following sleeper types: Financing options are available for this mattress.Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Trial Period
120 nights
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Warranty
10-year warranty
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Warranty
10-year warranty
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Trial Period
120 nights
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
Material
Hybrid
Firmness
Firm: 7/10
Trial Period
120 nights
Warranty
10-year warranty
Shipping Method
Free shipping
Price Range
$$$$$
Couples
This bed has great motion isolation so you will not feel your partner tossing and turning at night.
Stomach Sleeping
Ideal for lightweight, average weight, and heavyweight stomach sleepers.
Financing Options
Still deciding? Take a look at our mattress performance rating for the Sealy Hybrid Essentials mattress below.
Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress
The Sealy Hybrid Essentials Mattress is one of three in Sealy’s hybrid collection. It’s known for being the least expensive of the three. The top gel foam layer combined with pocketed coils to give it a firm feel that stomach sleeper will enjoy.
Product In-Stock: InStock
3.9
