Helix Mattress Review 2024

Around the halls of GQ, editors have our go-tos that we know are crowdpleasers: Patagonia Baggies come summer, a Needles mohair cardigan for the fall, Our Legacy Camion boots in the winter, and Arc’teryx Beta jackets for the spring rain. And when it comes to pancaking on a mattress—no matter the season—it’s always midnight: Our team continually crowns the Helix Midnight Luxe and the Helix Midnight Elite winners of our Sleep Awards, thanks to squishy memory foam pillow top coupled with support-bearing innersprings.

Having read and edited the praises of others in our roundup of best mattresses, I was ready to test how the Midnight Luxe stacked up with my old (but incredibly beloved) Saatva mattress. What I found was that it certainly does not compromise on pressure relief, contouring, or motion transfer—and as a side sleeper, I always felt like I was supported and had solid spinal alignment. As for what else to know? Let’s dive into my Helix Midnight Luxe Mattress review.

Delivery and Unboxing the Helix Midnight Luxe Mattress

When you order a new mattress from Helix, FedEx delivers it straight to your doorstep. On your delivery date, your 100-night sleep trial begins, during which you can get a full refund during the trial period if you decide that you don’t jibe with the mattress. The mattress arrives in a box on your doorstep, and then it's incumbent upon you to get it onto your bed. This is great if you’re not feeling like making small talk with delivery drivers on a given day, but it’s a bit of a drag if you’ve been slacking on your power rack routine. Mattresses are heavy: For Luxe models, twin mattresses ring in at 83 pounds while the California king and king mattresses go all the way up to 145 pounds.

The mattress slides out of the box, compressed in a plastic. When you get it up onto your bed frame, you can gingerly slice that plastic open and watch it puff up. FYI—the brand says that you have four weeks from the time that it’s dropped at your doorstep to open it up without the risk that it won’t properly inflate. Sometimes mattresses have slightly chemically smells out of the plastic—commonly known as “offgassing”—and I noticed that slightly with mine. Yet, it went away within a few days.

The Helix Midnight Luxe is 14 inches tall and has five layers, including a pillow top.

First Impressions of the Helix Midnight Luxe Mattress

The Helix Midnight Luxe is a medium-firm mattress that’s known for its zoned lumbar support, which is meant to help relieve pressure in areas like your hips and lower back. In some cases, testers who have tried the Midnight Luxe for GQ have reported that it can help ease back pain, thanks to the comfortable layers. And while plenty of folks love the medium-firm feel all on its own, combination sleepers (who toggle between side sleeping, back sleeping, and stomach sleeping) will take extra heart in the Luxe's cushioning, responsive foam, and zoned coils.

I've been sleeping on a traditional innerspring mattress for ages, so the hybrid mattress construction had me slightly nervous as I don’t love the body-molding, “bed-in” feel that memory foam can have. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised that the pocketed coils, paired with the memory foam layers and a plush pillow top, gave this mattress just enough springiness to feel like I was on top of the bed. It also lapped my old mattress in terms of motion isolation, keeping my partner’s side of the bed still when I needed to change positions.

Of course, body type and body weight play into how you experience a mattress, and so I’d imagine that folks closer to 150 pounds would have an experience like mine, while folks closer to 250 pounds might sense that the mattress has a slightly more sinking-in feel to it. Still, the mattress—which falls at a 6.5 in terms of firmness level (where 1 is cotton and 10 is a rock)—really suits stomach sleepers and back sleepers alike.

I have an Eight Sleep (a sleep product that heats and cools the bed to help me drift into a deeper slumber), but there are plenty of perks for hot sleepers when it comes to the Helix Midnight Luxe's airflow and temperature regulation. At checkout, you can choose between a Tencel cover, which purports to help with the surface’s breathability or you can opt for a Glaciotex cooling cover, which the brand says has a cool-to-the-touch feel. The bed is also made with copper gel memory foam, which conforms to your body without trapping heat.

As a sleep-deprived toddler parent, I rely on the Eight Sleep smart mattress cover to perfectly calibrate my bed's temperature for optimal sleep quality—but on its own, the Helix Midnight Luxe has several features to keep you cool at night. At checkout, you can stick with the included pillow top made from Tencel, a semi-synthetic fabric known for being extra breathable and moisture-wicking. Or, for a couple hundred bucks, you can upgrade to a plush GlacioTex Cooling Cover that boasts a cool-to-the-touch feel GQ testers have raved about. I did so and thought that the cooling cover was a nice-to-have, but if you're adding any kind of a topper or gadget to you bed like I was you can probably save yourself some cash. Plus, the mattress itself is made with copper gel memory foam, another cooling touch that conforms to your body without trapping heat.

The Helix Midnight Luxe's cool-to-the-touch cover.

Sleep Quality While Testing the Helix Midnight Luxe

For me, sleeping on the Helix Midnight Luxe has equated to pretty solid sleep over all. I tend to cycle through sleeping positions to try to find what's most comfortable, and I’ve found the mattress to be soft enough to cradle my hips when I’m sleeping on my side and firm enough to support me when I nod off on my back. The topper is cushioning without feeling super cottony, which I’d imagine helps with the overall durability of the mattress (that is, I don’t foresee this one going concave at any point soon).

Plus, because the mattress is a hybrid, it takes all of the benefits of a memory foam mattress and adds to it the base layer of pocketed coils. I’ve found the bed to be springy while still retaining that “give” that so many of us want in a mattress. One downside for me so far is that the mattress slopes ever-so-slightly around the edges, giving it less solid edge support than other mattresses. Because of this, I sometimes feel like my head is sloping downward at night.

I have a 9 p.m. bedtime every night, and my partner is a night owl. Something I enjoy about this mattress is that when he crawls into bed in the wee hours, he doesn't wake me up like he used to when we slept on a traditional innerspring. He's also mentioned that he doesn't feel my tossing and turning quite like he used to in our old bed either, signaling this one has solid motion control.

So, Is the Helix Midnight Luxe Worth It?

For folks looking for a high-quality, medium-firm mattress that has multiple layers of foam and a spring base, you can’t go wrong with the Helix Midnight Luxe. It’s a true medium feel on the firmness scale and its multiple foam layers (a support layer, a transition layer, and an extra-dense bottom foam layer) mean that you have support that still feels like it has a little bit of give. The top layer is a pillow top, which is really cushioning and cradling, lending itself to all sleep positions. In other words, give it a go and we bet you'll sleep better for it.

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