[leadin]Tired of bad sleep on bulky, leaky air mattresses, one camping junkie created something new.[/leadin]
CompREST, a Canadian startup, offers a plush, open-cell foam pad that’s 2 inches thick but rolls up small. For easier transport, the mattress can be “deflated” by using a vacuum bag and a small pump.
“Foam is good, it’s reliable, never pops… your bed at home is likely made of foam,” said Sawyer Pahl of CompREST. “But foam pads are just too big for camping.”
Vacuum-Packable Mattress
The point of the CompREST’s vacuum-packable design is to make an “extremely comfortable” pad that will never pop and packs up small.
Pahl calls the category the “outdoor bed marketplace,” and it aims at car campers, base camp expeditioners, canoe campers, and music-festival goers, not the backpacking set.
The pad is 74″x25″ and 2″ thick when not vacuumed for storage. It weighs 4.4 pounds total (the pump is 2.6 pounds) making it too heavy to tote on a bike or in a pack a long ways into the woods.
Advantage Of Foam Pad
Foam cannot leak or shrink at night during temperature changes. It has a higher insulation value than air in a traditional inflatable mattress (although many quality inflatables are also insulated and work very well).
For car camping, a pad like the CompREST will never deflate to leave you sleeping on rocks.
The inner foam is wrapped in a cover that’s waterproof on the bottom, with breathable lycra on top for comfort.
The pump unit doubles as a USB charger, as should any well thought out electrical appliance these days.
The pump’s lithium-ion batteries will do 20 compressions on a single charge, the company says. And even if the battery dies, at least you’ve got a bed to sleep on.
Without testing, it’s hard to say how comfortable this foam pad would be on hard or uneven ground. It’s a cool idea, but with a particularly small market — people who want more comfort than a thin “backpacking” style pad, but need the packability to fit a plush “outdoors bed” into the trunk of their car or in a pack for a short hike into a camp site.
It’s for sale now on Kickstater for $139, including the pad, pump and vacuum bags for storage.
This may not be rocket science, but looking at sleeping pads from the other side of the equation has led to what could be a neat new way of staying comfortable at night in the outdoors.
