My husband has a neck/back injury and needs a supportive mattress. i prefer a soft, pillow-like mattress. When we met four years ago he had a tempurpedic, then he traded it for a regular mattress, now we have a foam topper on that! I am 30 weeks pregnant w/ my seocnd child and am currently sleeping in the guest room on my bed from my single days as our mattress is too hard and umncomfortable. Ridiculous!

I will tell you that if you try the dual chamber select comfort, get a king size. The two sides are separated and surrounded by foam to make the edges more rigid. That makes the actual sleeping surface each person has a lot smaller. That might have been why my wife didn't like it. We just had a queen. The tempur pedic doesn't transfer motion. The select comfort did. Don't know how bad off your husband is. The physical therapist taught me how to get in and out of bed without hurting my back. I found the select comfort to be somewhat harder to get in and out of when my back was bothering me.

I believe they let you try it out for a couple of months so I guess there's no harm in trying it.

Best of luck.

I've read that there can be a mold problem with the air chambered mattresses -- that they should be wiped down with a bleach solution monthly. That was enough to keep me away.

What I really like is it is so much easier to change linens and having the options for softness depending upon my mood. There has never been any problems with the mechanical parts.

Joyce, never had an "outgassing" as you mentioned. Any foam used would be about the same as in the majority of other type matresses (which can't be seen, but is there). People alergic to such would be wise to check this.

Bottom line is the SC is a personal choice that may or may not be for another. Just as any other mattress works or not for someone. Can't profess it is a miracle, one has to try it and see what works for them.

We got the top of the line Gold Bond Mattress & box spring and couldn't be happier.

Still expensive but couldn't tell the difference between the Shiffman mattresses sold at Macy's (very expensive).

Do a search and you will find a lot of SC comments.

Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed--7000 series.

One thing you must know BEFORE you purchase a Sleep Number Bed (SNB) is there is NO REPAIR SERVICE if something goes wrong with your bed. If something breaks they will send you the part(s) but you have to make the repair yourself. I own a King size SNB. Even before you get any new parts YOU have to diagnose the problem by crawling under your bed and troubleshooting. If you are disabled like I am and no one else in the household to do this for you that is difficult. I called the home office in Minniapolis (Bill McGlaughlin is the CEO) and his assistant (Chad, employee #89638 and it was his choice to tell me his employee number rather than his last name) had a very canned statement about the repair of my bed and it was if it's broke and you can't fix it, TOUGH! They are happy to send out parts but if you want someone to come fix it they will call the people that delivered and set up the bed and it will cost $150 each time they have to come out. As far as the comfort of this bed; we have had it about a year (they came back over the first 3 months, many time to replace and add things to this bed), it tends to sink in the place where you lay and then there are higher places on each side of where you lay so if you don't get right back in the rut your body had made you do roll back into that spot because of the hill on each side of you. My husband is terminally ill with cancer and I purchased this bed so he could hopefully have ultimate comfort during his struggle--it was a bad/expensive decision. Keep this in mind if you are thinking about purchasing one of these beds--folks they are NOT WORTH IT!! PS: The problem with my bed is the chambers will not hold the air. We put it on the setting we want and in a few days the air has gone down. Even if they sent me new chambers, they come in a small box, I would have to inflate (?? how) them and on a King size bed they are huge once inflated, disassemble the bed (zippers, padding, foam), put the chambers in the bed, reassemble the bed--it's a lot of hard work. IT TOOK TWO YOUNG MEN TO ASSEMBLE THE BED TO BEGIN WITH (and that's another story: they knocked a TV off of a table with one of the air chambers when they installed the bed, fell into a slider door and tore the window treatment covering the door, and caused over $1,000 (more like $1500) damage to my home). What make them think that a disabled person could do these kinds of repairs?? And then I am thinking, why should the consumer have to make repairs on a $4000 bed? I should have read the reviews prior to buying--I would never have purchased if I had. You should consider this kind of purchase very carefully--they do not stand behind the QUALITY of these beds--their idea is "just send out the parts" and they could care less if you are comfortable or happy with your bed!

Before you buy a Select Comfort bed, know what your future expenses may be. It was a rude awakening when the mattress on one side of our Select Comfort bed would not stay inflated. The company said it was a pump problem and we would need to buy another at a price of $150. It made no sense that the pump kept one side inflated while discharging the air on the other, but "they" insisted that was the problem.

At a premium shipping and handling cost, the pump arrived in a couple of days. When I went to install it, I noticed the little plastic fitting that connects to the mattress was cracked. The fitting could not have cost more than a dime to manufacture, tops! I phoned Select Comfort and ordered a replacement and asked for an RMA to return the pump they just sent. Three weeks later the little fitting arrived. Much to my surprise, my credit card was charged $25!!!

The other day I emailed them to purchase a pillow top. My sister-in-law just replaced theirs at a cost of $300, plus the return of the old one. I thought that was rather costly, but still wanted to replace ours. A week after I contacted customer service, they replied saying a replacement for our bed would cost us $899!!!! The reason for the cost, they said, you had to get the bottom cover, too, because they are a matched set. I wonder who my sister-in-law spoke with…. This new pillow top came with a two year warranty which immediately tells me it would need to be replaced shortly thereafter. I emailed customer service back and asked if they were joking, but have yet to receive a reply.

So, to sum it all up, I paid almost $4,000 for a bed that never lived up to its claim, at least as far as we were concerned, it didn’t. Select Comfort was quick to sell me a pump I didn’t need, but ever so slow in sending me the little plastic fitting that solved the inflation problem. Come to think of it, the price they charged me for that small plastic fitting would have covered the cost of an oil change in my car. Lastly, after only a couple of years the Select Comfort pillow top lost its shape and the quality of sleep severely depreciated. I do not intend to give Select Comfort a single cent more than I already regret giving them.

I learned an expensive, but valuable lesson that I will not soon forget. It bears repeating that companies make the most money on accessories or replacement parts which is why they build products around the weakest link. The weakest link costs the most to replace, but in the end you are still at the mercy of the weakest link. Warranties are based upon the parts that are least likely to go bad. If all buyers would keep this in mind before they spent their ever decreasing income, it might force companies to make a better product.

For those of you who love your Select Comfort bed, I am truly happy for you. For those of you who have yet to buy one, but are thinking about it, all I can say is buyer beware!!! Don’t let the seduction of advertisement put a hearty dent in your finances.