The Emma mattress is one of the best loved mattress in a box brands around the world, and has gained a huge group of happy customers in New Zealand. Emma very kindly gifted me a mattress to help my readers get to know it. This article is all about unboxing it (video further down the article) and my very first impressions of it.
What Am I Looking For With My First Impressions?
So what exactly am I looking for when I’m seeing a mattress for the very first time? I’ve got all the points below, along with everything I found:
- How heavy is the mattress?
This is the first thing you’ll notice about your mattress in a box when it arrives. I’d asked Emma for a single mattress to review, and you can see from the image above that I can very easily pick the box up by myself.
- How easy is it to unpack and unbox?
You can watch me unboxing the Emma mattress below. It was pretty easy to unbox by myself, even though it was a Queen size. The box was 33kg in weight though, so you may want to have two people. When you take the plastic off, I highly recommend you do this on the frame you want the mattress to go on, because they can expand out quickly! Use the cutter provided as scissors could cut the cover!
Here’s my short unboxing video:
- Does the mattress have an offgassing odour?
You should note that any mattress in a box is going to give off an odour as the foams expand. These are not harmful, they’re just a normal part of the expansion process. All quality mattresses carry certifications to show they do not contain toxic chemicals. I was expecting the odour from Emma to be pretty strong, given that this mattress is made overseas, then compressed into a box and shipped to Emma’s New Zealand facility. That means it’s been sitting in its box for a while by the time it reaches your house, which can mean stronger or more lingering offgassing.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by Emma. There was virtually no smell at all; I kept sniffing to check! I went back into the room multiple times across the day expecting it to smell, but it was minimal. I recommend you open your mattress in a ventilated room to speed this up even more.
- How quickly does the foam decompress?
Again, because I knew this mattress had been in its box for a while, I was expecting it to take a while to fully expand. If you watch the unboxing video right to the end, you’ll see it’s looking a bit uneven in one corner. I was totally expecting this and watched closely over the day to see how it evened out. Some mattresses require 24-72 hours to fully expand so I was interested to see what Emma was going to do.
The foam had fully expanded within two hours, which is pretty awesome. That means you could sleep on the mattress the same day you bought it.
- What’s the cover like?
I was looking forward to seeing the Emma cover, because I really wanted to have a good look at the handles and how easy it is to zip the top of the cover off (they all have a removable zippable cover, but you’ve got to take the whole thing off, with Emma you can just remove the top which is much easier for washing). These are both features I haven’t seen on other mattress in a box brands here in New Zealand, only Tempur.
Overall, the cover is quite nice. It’s a soft stretch knit on the top, and the bottom has grip material to help the mattress stay firmly on your base. The zip is a nice quality and the top part of the cover zips on and off easily. I did think the handles were a little bit flimsy, but at least they’re there should you need them.
- Does the overall look of the mattress match the marketing material on the company website?
I like to unzip the mattress and eyeball the foams, to see if it looks the same on the inside as the company depicts on their website. With Emma, the answer is yes, the expectation and the reality were the same. Here’s an image showing their picture directly beside my mattress:
- First impression of the feel of the mattress?
Emma’s previous mattress, the Original, was very firm. The current mattress, the Emma Comfort, which is what you see in the images and unboxing video above, is MUCH better. It’s more of a medium firm and I could tell straight away that my softer mattress loving heart was going to enjoy sleeping on it.
What really surprised me about the feel of the Emma mattress was how bouncy it was. All foam mattresses typically have very little bounce, but thanks to the thick layers of high resiliency foam inside Emma, it actually has a fair bit of bounce! It also looks and feels like it’s going to last well, and the edges are stronger than I was expecting (foam mattresses typically have weak edges).
There isn’t going to be much body contouring with Emma as there is just the one contouring foam layer, but if you’re looking for a comfortably medium-firm mattress that has a bit of bounce, Emma could be a great choice for you.
