There is a brand on Amazon (Zinus) that sells reasonable quality foam mattresses with low markups. I bought their Queen [0] for $289, and have been happy with it. I'm assuming that Amazon will also eventually introduce an Amazon Basics version and suck up all the profit...
I bought a California king from Zinus, they sent me two of them, and didn’t want the second one back. I paid less than 300, and now my parents have a free mattress too. One gripe was the lack of warnings on the box. I accidentally punctured the plastic trying to drag the package into my bedroom and one puncture was like a deploy mechanism that left me trapped in a door way as the mattress slowly inflated on me. We laughed about it, but I’m a large man, I can only imagine how a small person or child would have dealt with that situation.
Similar thing happened to an ikea spring mattress I bought for my guest rooms. Cut open the plastic and it pretty violently sprung open and whacked me in the face.
Bought one of those recently, most comfortable mattress I've ever had, and the cost was amazing. No idea why one would pay $3000 for a Temper-Pedic. Even if this mattress only lasted a few years I could buy 10 of them and still come out ahead.
not joking: i bought 2, and use one as the 'box spring'. it's pretty amazing sleeping on 24" of queen memory foam for less than half the cost of a single shitty mattress 10 years ago.
He was remarking that a box spring is there to provide certain things and that using another mattress instead of a box spring might not provide those benefits.
A few years ago when first moving to Seattle I bought a Queen spring mattress which has a thin memory foam pillowtop layer (effectively equivalent to a mattress pad). Less than $300. I've found it to be much better than the pure foam or pure spring beds I've experienced in hotels. I haven't had any overheating problems, except for when I briefly tried adding a plasticky bed bug prevention mattress cover which would have heated up any bed.
Thanks! I'll check it out - my $100 Ikea queen being near half a decade old and none too comfy even when new, it's pretty far past time I replaced it with something. This'll be a good place to start looking!
I use a spring mattress that has a layer of foam on top (see other comment). There are no heat problems, as long as you don't add a mattress cover. If you want to keep things extra cool regardless of mattress, try breathable satin sheets.
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Zinus-Memory-Green-Mattress-Queen/dp/...