Reviewer Information

• Name: Cora Hussey
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
• Height: 5'9" (175 cm)
• Weight: 155 lb (70 kg)
• Email address: cahhmc "at" yahoo "dot" com
• City, State, Country: Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Date: February 17, 2004

Basic Product Information

• Year of Manufacture: 2004
• URL: http://www.pacoutdoor.com/
• Listed weight: 23 oz (650 g)
• Weight as delivered:
  • Pad: 1 lb 7 oz (670 g)
  • Stuff Sack: 0.6 oz (18 g)
  • Repair Kit: 0.5 oz (16 g)
  • Total: 24 oz (704 g)
• Measured Stuffed size: Tubular 5 x 11 in (12 x 28 cm)
• Inflated size
  • Advertised: 20 x 72 x 2.5 in (51 x 183 x 6.3 cm)
  • Measured: Shaped Rectangle 20 x 71 x 3 in (51 x 181 x 8 cm)

Preliminary Information

• Date of arrival: February 6, 2004
• Contents of package (contents were complete):
  • Max Thermo sleeping mat
  • Stuff sack
  • Repair kit
  • Hang tag booklet with care and use instructions
• Condition upon arrival: Excellent
• The mat was easy to use right out of the box
• The mat was exactly what I had expected from looking at the website

Product Description

+ General:

The Max Thermo sleeping mat is a manually inflatable sleeping mat with six defined air channels and synthetic fill insulation inside each of the air channels. The Max Thermo has an inflation valve with plastic on the outside and brass screw fittings. The design is for me to inflate the mat entirely with my lungs. In other words, whereas some foam inflatable mattresses expand and inflate themselves a little bit, the synthetic fill in the Max Thermo provides little to no outward pressure toward inflation. The Max Thermo also does not use a pump, presumably because it matters little to synthetic insulation if it gets wet, but it matters a great deal to similarly designed mats with down fill rather than synthetic because down clumps and becomes useless when wet.

The top fabric of the mat has small diamond ripstop lines in red fabric, and the bottom fabric is plain, black, and feels thicker than the top. Insul Mat advertises it to be 50 denier ripstop on the top, and 70 denier on the bottom. The main four central channels are welded through to separate one another, and the two outermost channels have something like a baffle (where the weld can separate a bit) to connect them to the next inner channels. The seams on the outer rim are flat welded to bond the 70D and 50D fabrics together, and I measured the weld at 0.3 in (0.9 cm) wide.

The included stuff sack has a drawstring with a plastic cordlock. It also has a pocket on the inside of the bottom to store the repair kit. The repair kit consists of one piece of the red fabric and one piece of the black fabric, roughly cut to 4 x 4 in (10 x 10 cm) each, one tube of "Mat - Fix A" adhesive, and a piece of paper with repair instructions. Here is a picture of the repair kit poking partway out of the pocket at the bottom of the stuff sack (the stuff sack is turned inside out):

+ Details and Other Notes:

Air travels along the top and bottom of the mat between the channels. Both the stuff sack and the Max Thermo mat are marked with the brand Insul Mat. The instructions state that the mat should be packed by first flattening, and then folding to fit the stuff sack length and rolling.

Field Testing Plan

Trip Details:

I plan to test the Max Thermo on 5-8 trips over the next six months. Two or three of these will be skiing or snowshoeing trips, and the remainder will be spring and early summer trips. The locations would include the Sierras and the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests in California. Weather will probably include wind, rain, snow, and temperatures ranging from 70 F (20 C) to far below freezing. The trips would include abrasive, wet, and sunlit conditions. Elevations would average between 8,000'-11,000' (2,400-3,000 m) with a standard deviation of 3,000' (900 m), and the trips would be mostly in mountainous terrain.

Test Plan Details:

I plan to test the following aspects of the Max Thermo:

• Squishiness, warmth and insulation, support, and comfort in different sleeping configurations
• Lounging potential on lakes and against trees
• Weatherproofness, including cold and wet, of outer fabric and insulation
• The slippage factor both used alone and on other pads
• Packability and ability to use it to support frameless packs
• Ease of inflation and deflation
• Durability, resistance to puncturing, and ease of maintenance and care

Initial Tests and Personal Observations

After opening the packaging, the first thing I was impressed with was the stuffed size of the pad. Even with the synthetic fill, the mat is surprisingly compact. At first I was skeptical that I would ever get the mat back into the stuff sack, but after learning to fold the mat nearly in thirds and rolling it up, it fits nicely back into the sack with some fiddling. Here is a picture of it folded and rolled up in the stuff sack in my hand:

However, that initial surprise at the size only lasted a moment, and I almost immediately rolled the Max Thermo out and began inflating it. The first inflation took some pressure to pry the sticky fabric top and bottom layers apart, but after that I deflated it, inflated it, and repeated six times. I came up with about 15-20 breaths (15 full size breaths, 20 comfortably sized) to inflate the pad to a comfortable firmness (not drum-tight, but not soft enough for my hips to touch the floor through it). This was about four times the number of breaths I need to inflate some of my other self-inflating mattresses, but I think 20 is still not an exceptionally high number for a manually-inflatable mattress.

I then lounged on the Max Thermo on my floor for a while. The first thing I noticed was that sounds of my turning around on the mat actually echoed within it since it was so thick. The Max Thermo also has the interesting trait of whenever I pushed down with some part of me, another part of me would go up. So shifting my feet would make the head portion inflate more, shifting my shoulders would push my knees up, and so on. But once I got settled, the Max Thermo was indeed very comfortable.

One thing that I did note was that the insulation in the mat did not seem to be attached to the sides or the welding, rather, it could fold over and be pushed around in the air channels. I was not paying attention the first few times I deflated the mat, and a part of the insulation folded under itself. I fixed this easily by pushing the insulation back into place with my finger when the mat was inflated again. Since the instruction book did not mention anything about being careful while rolling I assume it will not be an issue. The insulation seems to be mainly there to prevent cold air convection, and an easily fixable fold in the insulation would probably not affect that too much. However, field testing will help answer this.

Overall, this is by far the thickest mat I have ever owned, and it is also the one which packs down the smallest. It felt comfortable for the hour or so I lay on it, and it packs and unpacks easily. I am looking forward to see how it performs.

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Reviews > Sleep Gear > Pads and Air Mattresses > Insul Mat Max-Thermo > Cora Hussey > Initial Report