Review: Elegear Self Inflating Camping Mattress

I like to think that we know what we’re doing when it comes to camping, after all we have been doing it for many years now. 

And mostly we’ve got it all down to a fine art. There is one area where we struggle a bit though, and that is our sleeping arrangements. Over the last decade or so we have tried many different options, SIMs, airbeds (both cheap and expensive) and camp beds and nothing has been a permanent solution.

Our current set up is a random assortment of cheap airbeds (one of which has a slow puncture) and a single campbed that one of the kids usually sleeps in as Luke and I find it too narrow. 

When Elegear offered one of their self inflating mattresses to review, I was keen to try it out, although I’ll admit I wasn’t getting my hopes up.

First Impressions

Having said that, first impressions were good. I liked how compact it was when packed up. As all campers know, space is often at a premium when camping and anything that makes life easier is a bonus. 

The Elegear mattress has an integrated foot pump, which is really handy as it means you don’t need to worry about remembering a pump. It inflates in a couple of minutes with a little bit of effort. Likewise, to deflate, just open the valve on the pillow and let the air out (then get your kids to roll around on it) and then roll up. I also found that it went back into its bag very easily, which makes a nice change!

Field Test

We’ve just got back from a long weekend camping trip and used the Elegear self inflating mattress for 3 nights. 

Luke is 6 foot 3 and quite broad, so sleeping with him on an airbed is usually miserable. Every time he moves I get flung around like I’m on the high seas, I find that traditional airbeds are also quite noisy. We had no such problems with the Elegear mattress. 

The Elegear mattress was thick and supportive

The mattress is 4 inches thick and we found it to be very firm, although we probably overinflated it a little bit to start with, which is easily fixed. We both found it very stable and supportive all night and it didn’t go down at all. 

It has an integrated pillow which adds to the supportiveness. We both agreed that we slept really well for the whole trip and we were very impressed. In fact, it’s probably the best we’ve ever slept when camping. We will definitely use the Elegear mattress on all future trips. As it’s good quality, I expect it to last for a while, but I imagine that any leaks can be easily repaired. 

The Elegear mattress has a built in pillow for extra support and comfort

Overall a great bit of kit and very happy that it’s now part of our set up. I will try to remember to come back and rereview once we’ve used it for a while.

Here’s a little video I put together with the help of my delightful children:

Have you cracked the conundrum of getting a good night’s sleep when camping? 

If you like the look of the Elegear Sleeping Pad you can buy it here (UK) or here (US)