Companion forum thread to:

Lightweight Inflatable Sleeping Mats - State of the Market Report 2011 Part 2: Test Results and Mini-Reviews

Readers: I am FRIED after reading this and all the mini-reviews very closely. If you see a typo, error, or (God forbid) broken link, please PM me the details so that I can fix it. Tomorrow. After the airmats currently floating in my vision have faded into distant memory.

Edited by addiebedford on 08/23/2011 16:41:49 MDT.

EXCELLENT!!!

Wonderfully put together. I can appreciate all the time that goes into collecting all this data and sharing it in an informative, well written manner. Thanks!

Coming back later to learn a bit more. Thanks for putting in all the effort. And congrats on getting the Richard Nisley approval.

edited for clarity.

Edited by WarrenGreer on 08/23/2011 23:11:18 MDT.

This review represents an awesome amount amount of dedication! The BPL staff has been working on this for over a year.

Want another nifty graph? It would be cool to see mass, area and R value all rolled into one. To do this the area could be normalized so mass vs. R value can be plotted. This is useful because airmats are often available in different sizes, yet only a few sizes are tested. Yeah I'm an airmat nerd :)

Edited by Bender on 08/23/2011 22:45:33 MDT.

I go away for a while, and I come back to great articles like this. Sweet!

This is the kind of review i really like.
Great info to be found nowhere else.

An amazing amount of information. Thanks for taking the time to put together such a comprehensive report!

I love BPL :)

Great Work!

This line though is due to a mistake in the data:

"However, the three Therm-a-Rest NeoAir mats do not have quite similar M/L ratios - which is curious."

There is a mistake in the M/L column for the Neoairs - makes more sense when corrected.

Edited by andydolman on 08/24/2011 09:31:06 MDT.

Articles like this are exactly why I love BPL...and continue to renew my subscription.

GREAT WORK!

I've had a Warmlite DAM for many years, though I don't use it much due to it's weight. I find it inflates fairly easily with the supplied inflation bag. However, my original inflation bag did lose its ability to inflate the bag easily after ten years or so. After I noticed the problem I ordered a new inflation bag, and the problem was solved.

Excellent job - many thanks for such an in-depth review. On a related topic (that was only touched on in part 1), I intend to make my own arc-sleepingbag / quilt (and may also upgrade my mat in the process.) Has anyone got any mat preferences for use with arcs/quilts?

Edited by olivernissen on 08/24/2011 16:34:40 MDT.

You've not included the Isuka Peak Lite, which is popular in Japan, and which is PDG (Pretty Damn Good)...

I'm surprised this neat little gadget wasn't mentioned in the review. Inexpensive, lightweight, and does an exceptionally good job of inflating my Exped Synmat UL7 small (64" X 20' X 2.8"). One filling of the Instaflator will completely fill my mat with no problem and no breath moisture. Highly recommended !!!


http://www.geartalkwithjasonklass.com/2010/10/instaflator-closer-look.html

Edited by bevans on 08/24/2011 19:52:51 MDT.

Thank you!

-mox

Edited by moxford on 08/25/2011 13:46:26 MDT.

Without reading the whole article, I'd like to know what M/L and R/T are. (It'd be nice if definitions for these quantities appeared somewhere near the table(s) they're used, and/or in the glossary.) What are they? I don't need an explanation of the rationale - I just want to know what the units are, say. I didn't find this in the article with a quick search.

Edited by northwesterner on 08/25/2011 22:13:16 MDT.

So I'll do my best to answer the questions I'm suited to answer:

Andy Dolman wrote:
"However, the three Therm-a-Rest NeoAir mats do not have quite similar M/L ratios - which is curious."

There is a mistake in the M/L column for the Neoairs - makes more sense when corrected.

I'll look into this and see if my head has defuzzed since the rush of proofing/publishing everything. If not, it won't be corrected until Roger can verify the numbers.

Andrew Shapira wrote:
Without reading the whole article, I'd like to know what M/L and R/T are.

The glib answer is to read the entire article, because that question is answered in the graph sections up above.

The serious answer is that the last three columns provide the data used in some of the graphs in the Comparative R-value section. M/L is Mass (listed as Weight in the graph, which doesn't help the confusion) normalized for length. R/T is the average of the Rmax/Thickness and the Rmin/Thickness.

I hope this helps, and I hope Roger returns soon! :)
Thanks all.
Addie

Great stuff....there's all the info you need to make an informed pad decision.

The recently announced NeoAir Xtherm looks like it will blow the doors off of every pad in this test, in terms of R-value for the weight.

Just an FYI, I posted on this over on the bikepacking forums.

Alpacka rafts use something similar, but it isn't designed to take advantage of the Bernoulli principal.

Would love to see someone go head to head, alpacka inflator vs. instaflator. (Or at least do a detailed comparison.)