Tested: Flexima RV mattress

Originally designed for boats but now finding their way into campers and RVs, the Australian-made Flexima mattresses are designed to offer the durable ‘springiness’ of an innerspring mattress, without the complexity and weight of metal framework and springs.

The Flexima Nautic mattress is primarily designed to meet the requirements of marine bedding: comfort, customised size, ‘breathability’ and, significantly, no metal parts that can corrode. A bonus is a mattress that is lighter than one with metal frame and springs.

The inner springs in the Flexima mattress are made from resilient plastic material, not steel wire as you find in most caravan and domestic mattress.

The Flexima mattresses are available in three spring-rate grades, for standard, comfort and premium degrees of softness. There are also three foam thicknesses available: 140mm, 180mm and 220mm.

The plastic springs slide into cavities in the foam, and the beauty of this design is that the plastic springs can be replaced with stiffer or softer ones, if your needs change.

Flexima also offers a ‘pillow-top’ soft-foam cover that can be zipped onto the mattress, for additional comfort.

The removable and washable mattress cover material has inbuilt mesh vents to prevent condensation build-up inside the mattress and the cover material is 45-percent Lyocell that is said to be hypo-allergenic and anti-microbial.

Most caravan, motorhome and camper trailer mattresses come in standard sizes, but Flexima has a template kit that allows buyers to measure up for custom sizing that includes, curves, cut-outs and tapers - vertically and horizontally.

My better half and I bought a Flexima 140mm mattress for our slide-on camper, following the failure of yet another self-inflating foam mattress after two years of use. We opted for a zipped-together pair of singles that made up into a queen size.

We’ve been sleeping on this mattress during camping trips over the past eight months - in both very cold and very hot weather - and found that it’s easily the best mattress we’ve ever had. It insulates well against cold coming up from beneath the mattress, yet doesn’t get ‘sweaty’ in hot weather.

We like it so much we're planning to buy a Flexima for our home bed when the existing innerspring one gets tired.

At the time of writing, pricing for the standard 140mm mattress (including GST) were: single (up to 900 mm wide) from $1287; double (up to 1400mm wide) from $2090 and queen (up to 1600mm wide) from $2310. These prices are for rectangular mattresses, including rounded corners if required. Custom sizes are quoted individually.

We bought ours from the importer, Eco Marine Bedding, in Sydney. Prices for the 'soft-topper' overlay start at $670, so it all comes down to how much you're prepared to pay for a comfy night's sleep when out in the middle of no-where...