The Arrival 

The Nectar mattress is available for purchase online and at several retailers across the United States and Canada, including Macy’s, Mattress Firm, and The Brick. For the purposes of this review, we purchased the mattress online from Nectar USA. In the past, Nectar shipped compressed mattresses in a bag but has caught up with its competitors and now uses a box for delivery.

The Unboxing

It’s a straightforward process to unbox the Nectar mattress. To begin, open the top of the box, tilt it over, and let the compressed mattress slide out (it might take a couple of good pulls to get it all the way out). Once the mattress is removed from the box, carefully cut open the protective plastic wrap and you’ll see the mattress begin to decompress.

The Look 

The Nectar mattress is fairly unadorned, inspired by the previous generation of Tempur-Pedic mattresses. It features a couple of logos on the mattress front along with a blue features tag. The mattress cover top is patterned with a series of small diamond shapes. You’ll notice a zipper on the mattress cover but be forewarned, removing the mattress cover completely will void your warranty. You can learn more details about this warranty in the Mattress Cover section below.

The Feel 

Although the diamond shapes across the mattress cover are nice to look at, they don’t add much to the feel or texture of the mattress. However, the cover materials are still soft to the touch. As for overall feel, the Nectar mattress scored 3.4/10 for firmness in the third-party engineered testing we commissioned. Suffice it to say, this is a medium-soft mattress.

The following results were determined by licensed 3rd-party engineers, commissioned by us:

Nectar Mattress Layers

The Nectar mattress has three layers that make up its internal construction.

• First layer: 2 inches of gel-infused memory foam. This top layer is designed to be a soft foam that contours to your body as you sink into the mattress.

• Second layer: 3 inches of conventional foam. This layer is designed to offer bounce and be responsive to pressure, but the third-party testing we commissioned implies it might not be super effective.
  

• Third layer: 7 more inches of conventional foam. This is the support layer that acts as a base for the mattress. 

Nectar Mattress Cover

One limitation of the Nectar mattress that stands out is its mattress cover and related warranty. Whether it’s misleading or simply an oversight, there appears to be conflicting information from Nectar on how to care for your purchase.

The tag on the front of the mattress includes a picture of a washing machine that says, “washable cover.” That must mean you can remove the cover to clean it in the washing machine, right? Wrong. Nectar’s warranty clearly states: “This Mattress Warranty does not cover: Any Mattress that has had the cover removed for any reason (removing the Mattress cover will void this warranty).”

You’ll have to meticulously spot-clean the mattress cover when needed, as stated in the care instructions. So why does Nectar include that washing machine logo?

As for appearance and materials, the bottom and sidewalls of the Nectar mattress are a solid charcoal color with a flat-white sleep surface. The cover is made of a poly-blend and includes polyethylene fibres.

If you’re looking for a mattress that doesn’t require scouring every line of fine print to ensure you’re making a safe purchase, Douglas would suit you well. Douglas is known for its innovative CoolSense® Cover, which is actually machine washable and you won’t run into any warranty-related woes by removing it.

Nectar Sleep is a mattress manufacturer out of Walnut, California. The company was founded in 2017 and is privately owned by its parent company, Resident. Nectar is one of five brands belonging to Resident, including three other mattress brands and a bathware supplier.

In 2019, Resident opened their first showroom in Las Vegas and began selling Nectar mattresses on Amazon. Three years later, Resident opened a manufacturing facility in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and decided the time was right to start selling Nectar in Canada.

Nectar offers free shipping to customers within the contiguous United States and now major metro areas in Canada. If you live in a remote area (like Alaska or Hawaii) you’ll incur an additional shipping fee of $150 per large item. Additionally, as stated by Nectar, “Products shipped outside of the contiguous United States are not eligible for return.”

The rest of the return process looks simple enough on paper but is more complex according to user reviews. If you want to return your mattress, you must call Nectar customer service to begin the process. Unfortunately, getting a hold of customer service seems to be the real issue according to some Reddit threads and customer reviews on Trustpilot.

We hire 3rd-party engineers and use public data to rate mattresses on over 25 criteria.

Nectar offers competitive prices, but that seems to be where the good news ends. Low scores from third-party testing indicate that this mattress may be far softer than the medium-firm feel Nectar claims. There also seems to be a disconnect between the product offered and customer satisfaction, as evidenced by customer reviews on Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau.

The Douglas mattress seems to be a formidable opponent to the Nectar, holding a longstanding A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, much higher test scores and costs $100 less. With all of this in mind, it appears the buzz around Nectar joining the Canadian marketplace isn’t quite the honeypot we expected.