Inflatable air mattresses which are essentially big air balloons which you sleep on have notoriously low R-values and are no good at all for sleeping on in winter or autumn.įor campsite camping, the comfortof your SIM is still the main consideration in our opinion. However a low R-Value (<2) could mean you end up getting cold in the night. We recommend an R-Value of 3 or higher for 3-season use, and 5 or higher if you will be lying on the ground in winter too. So a high R-Value means that the heat that your body generates and escapes through your sleeping bag onto one side of the mat will not get through to the ground. R-Value is a measure of how much resistance to heat transfer your mattress has. If you’re planning on sleeping directly on the floor with either mat or mattress then take note of the ‘R-value’ for any potential purchase. This also helps stop the heat escape problem which lying on the ground can incur. In this article we concentrate on our experience and recommendations for the choice of best self inflating mattress, and so the size and weight of the product is of less concern than how comfortable it is and how well it stays inflated etc.īoth camping mats and camping SIMs can also be used on top of a camp bed or ‘cot’ (as the Americans say) for more of a bed-like experience. Primary aim is to provide a bed-like sleeping experience.Quite heavy – will generally require the car to transport them around.Contains ‘rebound foam’ inside which is breathable, comfortable and warm.Used chiefly for backpacking tent trips but unlikely to be used at a campsite if you’ve brought the car and can transport something thicker.Main use is as a heat insulator to prevent heat escaping out of your body into the ground.May self inflate slightly or can be physically blown into for to inflate.At Camping Secrets, we generally distinguish between a Camping Mat and a Camping Mattress as follows: Moving to the present day and there’s now an extremely wide variety of camping mats and camping mattresses on the market – some of them self inflate (the topic of this article) whereas others require pumping – either via a hand pump, pump bag (a simple way of filling a bag with dry air which can then be squeezed into the SIM via a valve) or electric pump. Invariably I’d wake up stiff as a board, but that’s a story for another time! When I first started out tent camping, the self inflators were rather thin (about 2.5cm / 1 inch thick) and I could always feel the ground pressing up against my hips as I tried to get to sleep on my side. Self Inflating Mattresses or SIMs have come a long way over the past 10 years or so.
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