Emma NextGen Premium mattress review: An innovative hybrid mattress

UPDATE: Recently, Expert Reviews has become aware of an increasing number of negative reviews for Emma Sleep on Trustpilot. Emma has assured us that it is working on resolving the issues cited, and has subsequently updated the estimated delivery times on its website and set up a dedicated customer service line. We will be monitoring the situation closely.

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Emma’s latest mattress is the most sumptuous addition yet to its bed-in-a-box line-up. It’s not only one of the best hybrid mattress options, it’s one of the best mattresses we’ve tested. Thanks to an innovative combination of large, super-supportive pocket springs and assorted layers of foam, the Emma NextGen Premium achieves a rare feat among hybrid mattresses: it lets your skin breathe, even in summer.

The Emma NextGen Premium aims to deliver a “sweat-free sleep” by using a higher proportion of springs than other hybrid mattresses, which can feel clammy for some sleepers, including me. And, sure enough, using it on muggy July nights, I found it hit a delightful balance of comfort, breathability and ergonomic support. It’s also excellent value, and a great choice if you like your mattress on the firm side.t value, and a great choice if you like your mattress on the firm side.

Emma NextGen Premium mattress review: What you need to know

The NextGen Premium is the latest of Emma’s hybrid mattresses, combining memory foam and springs to offer the best of both worlds. The springs allow air to circulate and help the mattress to absorb movement, creating a more luxurious and supportive experience than foam alone. They also help to ensure that the mattress won’t sag or lose firmness over the years.

The NextGen Premium has a higher spring-to-foam ratio than its (now discontinued) predecessors, and the springs themselves are bigger. The Emma Hybrid had a layer of micro pocket springs, and its successor, the Premium used full-sized springs, but the NextGen Premium has ‘extra tall’ 18.5cm springs that make it feel properly structured and supportive. The mattress itself is no taller than usual though and, with an overall height of 24cm, works fine with most fitted sheets.

The springs are arranged in seven adaptive ‘zones’, each designed to provide optimal support for a different part of your body – be it head, shoulders, chest, lower back, hips, thighs or feet. Their arrangement ensures the mattress cleverly adapts to your size, shape and sleeping position to help keep your spine aligned while you sleep.

On top of the springs are three layers of foam: a 1.4cm layer of standard polyurethane foam for support, a layer of high-resistance polyurethane foam to regulate temperature and evaporate sweat, and 2cm of visco-elastic memory foam to cradle your body comfortably. Under the springs, there’s a further layer of high-resiliency foam to give the springs a hand in aligning your spine.

The NextGen Premium is designed to be slept on only one side, so it never needs flipping. Emma says it doesn’t need rotating either, but, to help your mattress perform at its best for years, you may want to turn it head to toe every few months anyway. Fortunately, it’s not a particularly heavy mattress – 34.5kg for the king size – and the side handles help you manoeuvre it.

The sleep side has a removable polyester cover that you can unzip and wash in the machine, at up to 40℃. This washable cover also helps to combat allergens, as well as wicking moisture away from your skin, helping you stay comfortable on summer nights. It feels soft, but cooling, and if you’re like me you’ll probably want to add a mattress protector on top to help protect your mattress.

Emma is keen to point out that the NextGen Premium is its most sustainably produced mattress yet, with greater use of recycled steel in its springs and much less foam than previous iterations. As a result, the NextGen Premium boasts 32% lower carbon emissions than the Emma Premium, and 58% lower than the Emma Original.

All Emma mattresses now come with a 200-night money-back guarantee, a substantial step-up from their old 100-night trial, and, like its stablemates, the NextGen Premium also comes with a ten-year warranty against manufacturing defects.

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Emma NextGen Premium mattress review: Price and competition

Update: Emma’s prices have tumbled since we wrote this review in summer 2023. The NextGen Premium launched at £1,119 for a king size, but now costs just £739. A super king size (180 x 200cm) is £849, while a double is just £659, making the Emma NextGen Premium one of the best value hybrid mattresses you can buy. Emma reduces prices even further with regular special discounts.

Emma’s prices are significantly lower than premium models from other brands. Eve’s Premium Hybrid mattress, for instance, costs £1,049 for a king size, while Simba’s Hybrid Essential mattress is £749. The Simba Hybrid Pro is a much more luxurious mattress with an appropriately higher price tag of £1,249 for a king size.

Emma’s recently-launched Emma NextGen Cooling Mattress is also much pricier than the NextGen Premium, at £1,259 for a king size. It’s 3cm thicker than the NextGen Premium and features more layers, including a top layer made from Emma’s patented Thermosync foam which they claim keeps you even cooler than the NextGen Premium.

Previous experiences with bed-in-a-box hybrid mattresses have left me hot and bothered – bothered, that is, until they politely and efficiently whisk the clammy mattresses away, in line with their no-quibble money-back trial periods. So I craved a mattress that would allow the air to circulate, while still cradling me in cosiness as I drift off, and that’s just what the NextGen Premium delivered.

Emma doesn’t quite go so far as to describe the NextGen Premium as a cooling mattress – that honour is reserved for the more expensive NextGen Cooling mattress – but it does claim to offer “dry and sweat-free” sleep, with “maximum airflow” while being “free from humidity”. I was particularly keen to put these claims to the test. I’m delighted to report that the NextGen Premium didn’t leave me feeling clammy and, in fact, proved to be a lovely soothing mattress to sleep on when the weather’s warm.

My test mattress didn’t quite arrive in time for the recent June heatwave, so it’s hard to say just how cool it would have kept me on very hot nights, but I slept on it for several 15°C nights in July, with a lightweight 4.5 tog polyester duvet, and I wasn’t uncomfortably warm at any point. I won’t say it’s quite as breathable as my old pocket-sprung mattress, but that may just be a matter of what I’m used to.

I used a heat pad and thermocouple to put this impression to the test. First, I heated up an area of the surface with the heat pad, then I sat on it for good measure, and then I took its temperature at one-minute intervals. The NextGen Premium’s sleeping surface cooled down at a similar rate to the Simba Hybrid Pro, dropping from 30°C to around 20°C after 10 minutes, with an ambient temperature of 16.5°C. Given that the Simba is a more expensive mattress, with a layer of natural wool to help regulate temperature, I was impressed to see that the Emma matched it in my heat retention test.

The firmness of the NextGen Premium won’t be for everyone. Emma describes it as medium-firm, but it really is quite firm when you’re lying down – perhaps this is because I used it on a solid bed base and maybe it will have a little more softness and bounce on a slatted base.

The combination of tall springs and multi-layer foam offers a superb level of ergonomic, edge-to-edge support. There’s much less bounce than I would have expected, given the extra-tall springs, and the mattress sank surprisingly low when I sat on it, making it less comfortable for bedtime reading than my old mattress. But when you lie on it, even when you toss and turn, it performs the almost magical feat of supporting every inch of you, as though you are held aloft on a supremely comfortable, albeit firm, cloud.

Again, I ran tests to confirm my impressions: a 7.5kg pile of weights in the middle of the double-size NextGen Premium caused its surface to dip 26mm when the mattress was on slats, and 25mm when it was on a wooden floor. When I placed the weights much closer to the edge of the mattress, they sank a further 7mm, suggesting edge support could be better – you don’t want to feel as though you’re sliding off the edge of your bed when you sit on it.

I achieved similar results with other hybrid mattresses. The Simba Hybrid Pro only sank minimally further, but had much better edge support, while the consistently firm HiGrid Premium Hybrid sank less, both in the middle and at the edge.

The results from these sinkage tests broadly correlate with each mattress’s claimed firmness, but they’re only a rough guide. The best hybrid mattresses are designed to sink under your hips and shoulders so your spine can align for optimal comfort and health. In my experience and from the evidence of my tests, the Emma NextGen Premium does this very well.

I also want to give the NextGen Premium kudos for its motion isolation. My husband weighs more than me and can be restless in his sleep, and our old mattress sometimes seemed to amplify that movement, but the NextGen Premium does the opposite, absorbing our movements and helping us both get a much more restful night’s sleep.

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Emma NextGen Premium mattress review: Verdict

The Emma NextGen Premium delivers supportive, incredibly comfortable rest, with levels of breathability and motion isolation that are rare in bed-in-a-box mattresses. If you get too warm in bed, or if you or your partner tend to sleep restlessly, this mattress could make nighttimes less stressful and more restful for you both.

The mattress is quite firm and not quite what I’d call cooling, but it does an excellent job with airflow and avoiding the dreaded clamminess typical of most foam mattresses. The removable cover is a masterstroke, wicking sweat from your body and then washing clean in time for another sleep.

This is the first Emma mattress since the exceptional all-foam Emma Original to win five stars from us, but, if you’re not quite as taken by it as I am, you have a full 200 days – nearly seven months – to try it out before committing for keeps.