The 10 Best Two-Person Camping Pads
Editor's Notes
May 17, 2019:
Two-person sleeping pads are especially useful for campers, car-sleepers, and for homeowners without a guest bed who might need to accommodate guests in a pinch. Each of these three groups will have different expectations from their pad. We've focused on camping in our ranking, but it's true that many of these are multipurpose units. The Hikenture Inflatable, for instance, is a good pick for road-tripping adventurers who may need to put their back seats down and sleep in the car from time to time. It's just fine for the great outdoors, too, but with a mediocre R-value (a measure of insulating power), it's not a good pick for camping in the colder months.
Here's where models like the Exped Slim Comfort Duo 7.5, with an R-value of 6.4, make their stage entrance. This one can really do it all. It's constructed well, so it's more resistant to tears and punctures than most of the others, and its low-temperature rating lends it well to four-season use. Our #1 pick is its cozier, costlier, and all around better older sibling, the Exped MegaMat Duo 10. Its insulation guarantees you won't feel the chill of the cold ground in the middle of the night, nor will the pad lose air, droop, and cause your body to sag and make contact with the earth beneath you. Sure, it's a lot of money for a pad, but it's probably the closest you can get to sleeping in a bed while you're in a tent.
Worth mentioning is our #3 pick, the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Camper, which features an innovative independent-valve system. This clever design affords each partner the freedom to tweak their chamber's firmness to their liking. What seems too firm to you might be just what I need to wake up without soreness in my back, or vice versa. With this one, each partner gets to do things his or her own way without having to sleep alone.