New Mattress Gels Compared

Posted on November 28th, 2011

The latest hot material in the mattress market is gel. Recently, Serta has introduced their new i-comfort mattress with a gel infused memory foam core. Dr. Scholl’s has launched a mattress line featuring Technogel. Natura has been retailing a line of Nexgel mattresses for a couple of years now and it seems you can’t go a month without some other mattress line shooting up with the name gel in it. And then there’s intelli-gel which has been used in intelliBED mattresses for over 10 years. What are these materials and how do they compare to the older gel materials? intelli-gel® is a patent protected gel invented by Edizone LLC and licensed exclusively for mattress use in the US and Canada to Advanced Comfort Technologies, Inc. It is a 100% co-polymer gel in a honey combed, column buckling formation. Both the gel and the formation are patent protected. The gel is also licensed to Dr. Scholls and is used in both their footpads and their new mattress line. Their license of the gel does not contain the column buckling form which is the key to the pressure relieving quality of material. The column buckling form is also licensed to Garymar Industries and is used in hospital beds to cure bed sores. Independent third party testing has shown intelli-gel to be the most pressure relieving and durable material ever used in a mattress. It relieves pressure 50% better than other cushioning materials including the new gels and lasts 3 to 5 times longer.

Serta’s i-comfort gel is a layer of gel used to coat memory foam. The advantage of this is heat dissipation which is a problem with traditional memory foam, since it reacts to body heat it tends to sleep hot which is a negative to some users. This material will wear more like memory foam which in third party testing showed 4x the wear characteristic of the solid, co-polymer gel material.

Nexgel is similar to intelli-gel in appearance and shape, but by law must contain at least 15% foam. This material was also developed and patented by Edizone, LLC to be a competitor to their intelli-gel materials. Independent testing shows that this material wears more like foam showing 50% more wear and loss of cushioning value when compared to the solid, co-polymer intelli-gel.

Technogel is a bumpy gel surface similar to what Dr. Scholl’s uses in their foot pad design. Dr. Scholl’s did not license the column buckling rights from Edizone, LLC and is therefore using a relatively flat gel surface in their mattress designs which negates much of the pressure relieving characteristic of the intelli-gel material.

So while there are a lot of new gel materials hitting the market, they have very different material make-ups and cushioning and durability characteristics. This is bound to cause confusion which the consumer will be forced to use trial and error to resolve. This is an area where the smart buyer who does their research will be rewarded because these new gel products do not compare in either pressure relief or durability to the solid co-polymer gel trademarked intelli-gel in its exclusive column buckling form. Advanced Comfort Technologies, Inc. has the exclusive right to use intelli-gel in mattresses for the home market and has created the intelliBED product line to optimize the performance of this material in retail mattresses.