air mattress reviews

Backpackers hiking past a tarn off the Highline Trail (CDT) in Wyoming's Wind River Range.

The Best Backpacking Gear of 2023

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By Michael Lanza

Glacier National Park. The Wind River Range. The Maze District of Canyonlands National Park. Iceland. The John Muir Trail, Wonderland Trail, and Teton Crest Trail. Yosemite. The Grand Canyon. Yellowstone. Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. Southern Utah’s Escalante canyons. The North Cascades and Pasayten Wilderness. The High Uintas Wilderness. The Tour du Mont Blanc. These are just some of the numerous places where I’ve tested the backpacking gear and apparel reviewed at The Big Outside—so that I can give you honest and thorough, field-tested opinions that help you find the best gear for your adventures.

And that’s exactly how I came up with these picks for today’s best backpacking gear.

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A young boy in a sleeping bag while backpacking in Sequoia National Park.

10 Pro Tips For Staying Warm in a Sleeping Bag

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By Michael Lanza

Head into the mountains in summer, or almost anywhere in fall or spring, and you can encounter nighttime and morning temperatures anywhere from the 40s Fahrenheit to well below freezing. That’s more than cold enough to pose a real risk of hypothermia or, at the least, result in a miserable night for you or a partner or child you’ve taken backpacking or camping—and would like to take more. Here’s the good news: The very simple techniques outlined in this article can turn a potentially unpleasant night into a comfortable one.

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The Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT air mattress.

Review: Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT Air Mattress

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Insulated Air Mattress
Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT
$200, 11.5 oz./330g (size regular short, not including stuff sack or pump sack)
Sizes: four sizes from 20×66 inches/51x168cm to 25×77 inches/64x176cm
backcountry.com

Choosing the absolute lightest air mattress you find doesn’t always go well: The hours of sleep lost to discomfort may exceed the weight savings in ounces. Put another way, the personal energy lost through a poor night of sleep may eclipse what you gain from shaving a few ounces of pack weight. The latest iteration of Therm-a-Rest’s ultralight NeoAir XLite air mats, the NXT, will flip that equation to the positive side of the energy ledger for many backpackers, as it did for me on several spring and summer backpacking trips.

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Nemo Tensor Insulated Air Mattress.

Review: Nemo Tensor Insulated Air Mattress

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Insulated Air Mattress
Nemo Tensor Insulated Air Mattress
$200, 13 oz. (regular mummy, not including stuff sack or pump bag)
Sizes: four sizes from 20×72 inches to 25×76 inches
backcountry.com

The search for the right backpacking air mattress tends to boil down to two competing objectives: finding a mat with the lowest possible weight without compromising on comfort. And different people will define comfort differently—thus affecting the weight of their air mat choice. But many backpackers and other users may find Nemo’s Tensor Insulated hits a sweet balance between those competing objectives, as I did sleeping on it for eight nights on a nearly 130-mile, August hike through the High Sierra, much of it on the John Muir Trail, and for four nights in early September in the Wind River Range.

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The Sea to Summit Ether Light Extreme Insulated Air Mattress.

Review: Sea to Summit Ether Light XT Extreme Insulated Air Mattress

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Insulated Air Mattress
Sea to Summit Ether Light XT Extreme Insulated Air Mattress
$219, 1 lb. 9 oz. (unisex regular)
Sizes: four unisex and two women’s sizes
backcountry.com

On several nights in early winter, as temperatures slipped into the teens and single digits Fahrenheit outside my tent on the snow on two separate trips in Idaho’s Boise and Boulder Mountains, I zipped up snugly inside my sleeping bag and lay on this fat, well-insulated air mattress, briefly considering that I might feel cold before morning. And every morning, I awoke after sleeping longer and later than I normally do in my bed at home, feeling incredibly well rested and realizing my 0-degree bag combined with this air mat were only pushed to their limits (for me) when the temps dropped to within a few ticks of 0° F.

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