Exped

Mega Pillow

Exped missed the mark.

Familiarity:

I've used it several times

I love both my Exped megamat 10 and Deep Sleep so I decided to try their pillow. I was mainly looking for a comfortable pillow for car camping between hikes that would still back down small enough to use backpacking. Exped seemed like the best of both worlds but unfortunately unlike their other products this one just missed the mark for me. They COULD have made an incredible packable pillow if they designed the pillow more like their mats with some foam or padding added to it. Unfortunately all this pillow really is, is a fleece pillowcase with an inflatable pool toy stuffed inside it. The fleece like cover is soft, but only has a paper thin batting behind it (which gets caught in the Velcro when you remove the beach ball inside to wash the pillow case. It feels like trying to sleep on a beach ball shoved inside a pillow case, and is noisy no matter where you have it inflated to. I ended up sewing a small rectangle sack with a thin combination of pillow stuffing and shredded memory foam I harvested from old pillows around the house and slid that inside of the exped pillow case over their inflatable bladder and it gave it a slightly better face feel and still was able to roll it back up in their original small stuff sack. This might it slightly better but still has the pool toy inflatable feel and sound. Disappointed because their mats are incredible, but just seems like they slapped the pillow idea together with lack of attention compared to their mats. Keeping mine as a back up but switched to the Thermarest cinch pillow for car / cot camping after trying one at a store. I hope Exped eventually does a redesign to make what could be a great pillow.