I had that couch and notice a glaring omission: it's VERY uncomfortable. Hard as concrete slabs. That's it's primary function and it fails. Also when trying to move it around my apartment the particle wood/cardboard sides started tearing within it. Are they innovative? Yes. Excellent? No.
Exactly. We have the same couch as well (in a small guest room)and it's fantastic in theory (lots of internal storage space, incredibly easy to convert between bed & couch) but in practice it makes for an uncomfortable bed as well as an uncomfortable couch. As you said, the Ikea particle board is also quite fragile.
We ended up purchasing a down mattress pad (for ~15% of the price of the couch) for when it is used as a bed and it makes it bearable as a bed, but now we have to store the mattress pad in the couch itself.
After living with the couch for a year I would happily pay twice as much for a similar design that is executed better. Unfortunately no such thing exists as far as I can tell!
