Short answer – because the man who started 3beds back in the day had back problems.

Long answer – because we realized there was no buffer zone between the marketing of the companies that make the air mattresses and the people who buy them. Nobody out there to really test and review these products and tell people what’s worth their buck.

Now, we are no nutrition experts and can’t protect people from getting bad cereal, but we chose to do what we can and know – and we gathered a small team that knows air mattresses.

The evolution of the review process?

When we started 3Beds.com, the review process was very simple and it relied on our opinions. That is the kind of reviews you will most likely find out there when searching for information on how to choose the best air mattress.

We took it to the next level – we went scientific in analysis and comparisons

While the initial reviews were credible and we were diligent about testing the airbeds, looking back at those days now, we couldn’t really say what will happen to the air mattress in the long run.

So, instead of mere analysis and opinions that we had when we were starting out, today you’ll see something like this for every inflatable.

When people showed interest in how we scrutinize the beds, we raised the stakes

We took a step back and rethought the whole process, lying on the beds and abusing them for a week wasn’t enough anymore.

For two reasons:

• The reviews lacked in the time aspect of the quality ratings
• We couldn’t cover the 100s of good air mattresses that are worth testing

The new review process

We thought of ways to cover what happens to a mattress in a prolonged use and we thought of ways to review more air mattresses.

So, we came up with a few tests that could be done without us sleeping on the mattresses (there’s only a few of us after all). That’s where Oscar came in (with his fancy degree 2MATE degree from Penn State).

He helped us take the whole thing to the next level.

We made sure that it stays simple for you

You can take a look at the rating of an air mattress and not worry about anything else.

But if you are a sucker for details and like to know, you can learn about the review process and all the 26 quality ratings assign to each mattress before we boil all that down to ratings in 5 quality aspects and finally, one OVERALL RATING OR 3B RATING, as we like to call it.

The 26 factors boil down to ratings of an air mattress in these 5 quality aspects:

• Comfort
• Durability
• Air retention
• Pump
• Value for money

Each of these receive ratings on a scale from 0 to 100 and the 3B rating (Overall) of the air mattress is the average.

You can read about the full scope of what goes into it on the How we review page.