Big W Mattress (Discontinued)

Big W Mattress Review

The Big W Mattress sells as the ‘Kodu Mattress in a Box’ at Big W. It is one of the cheapest mattresses on the market, and not surprisingly one of the worst. It is severely lacking in comfort and there are better options in this price bracket (see below).

Purchase and delivery

As the name suggests, this mattress can be purchased at Big W – either in-store, ‘click and collect’, or home delivered (online order). As with other mattress in a box products, this mattress comes compressed (by heavy machinery) into a cardboard box. We purchased our queen size mattress from the Belmont Big W store (WA) and was able to fit the box into a small SUV (Volkswagen Tiguan).

The box weighs approximately 30kgs and it will require two able bodied people to place the box into a car. The box itself was relatively easy to manoeuvre, thanks to the handy set of wheels at the bottom of the box.

Removing the mattress from the box was also fairly straight forward and should take 5-10 minutes. As recommended, we gave it 2 days to fully decompress before we conducted our assessment.

Aesthetically, the Big W Mattress looks cheap and unsophisticated. It uses a grey and white colour theme and certainly won’t win any awards for design excellence.

Comfort and support

The comfort layer of this mattress consists of a polyester cover and a layer of ‘soft fillings and foam’. If this description sounds ominous, you would be right. This top layer offers almost no pressure relief at all and it is noticeably hard and uncomfortable.

Our team rated it as a ‘firm’ feel and a 8.5 / 10 on the firmness scale (with 10 being the firmest). Please note that our firmness ratings are just a guide and they do not necessarily relate to comfort. Furthermore, our firmness ratings are assigned based on Bedbuyer’s testing process and these may differ from firmness ratings given by individual companies.

The support structure of the Big W Mattress is made up of a Bonnell spring system.  Not surprisingly, this spring unit feels cheap and general back support is very poor. It is noticeably unstable and ‘motion transfer’ is very noticeable – you will have to contend with a high level of partner disturbance.

You can also feel the springs press into your body during normal sleep movements, which makes it very unpleasant to move around in.

The Big W Mattress responds excessively to normal sleep movements. In basic terms, this means that changing sleep positions (and intimate activities) will involve abnormal levels of mattress movement.

Please note that our responsiveness scales are just a guide and preferred responsiveness levels will vary between individuals. It’s worth noting also that innerspring mattresses are generally more responsive than foam mattresses.

The finer details

The mattress has a height of 18cm, much lower than most other mattress in a box products. A low mattress height doesn’t always indicate poor quality, but in this case it certainly does.

You wouldn’t even put this in a guest room, your guests deserve better.

Edge support is poor and there is no sugar coating anything with this mattress – all aspects of this product are nothing better than awful.

It is worth noting that the Big W Mattress does not hold any eco / non-toxic certifications, nor does it have any form of warranty or trial period. Most of the major names in the mattress in a box market in Australia are well padded with solid warranties and trial periods.

What bed base should I use?

As with most mattresses, we recommend the Big W Mattress to be used with a solid bed frame (such as the Sleep Republic Pro Base), or a solid ensemble base (with the slats no longer than 8 cm apart).

A bed frame (with flexible slats) may still be adequate, but again, we strongly recommend that the distance between each slat is less than 8 cm. Use of an unsupportive mattress foundation will usually void the mattress warranty.

Sleep Republic Pro Base

Furthermore, we do not recommend the Big W Mattress to be used with an adjustable (electric) bed base as this will also void the warranty. Here is our full list of mattresses that are compatible with an adjustable bed base.

It’s worth noting here that mattress firmness, performance, and durability will vary with different bed bases.

Available sizes

The Big W Mattress is only available in a queen size, so this may limit some potential buyers.

Here are Australia’s standard bed (mattress) sizes in 2022.

Final verdict

As much as the price of the Big W Mattress may be seductive, it takes the title as the worst mattress we have tested in 8 years. It is severely lacking in comfort and wouldn’t be suitable as a permanent mattress. You wouldn’t even put this in a guest room, your guests deserve better.

Bedbuyer’s rating:  1 / 5

Here are our ratings for each category:

As you would expect, there are definitely better products in this price category. For just a little extra spend, the options below are significantly better and worth stretching the budget for.

Did you know? Bedbuyer recently announced Australia’s Top 12 Mattress in a Box for 2022.

If you have any questions about the Big W Mattress, comment below or please contact us!

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