Customer Rating:      Summary: Great Product Comment: I have a bad back, and slept on this for a month when I visited India. It was wonderful! I never had any back pain in the morning, which had been the case when I have slept on a futon or the ground. I will admit that the Therm-a-rest Dream Time is expensive, but it is hard to beat from a comfort standpoint. By the way, you can control how firm or soft it is to some extent by how much air you put into the self-inflating pad.
Although it would probably not be a great choice for back packing, it does roll up in a fairly compact roll for transport. The model I got was the extra large, which is the 30" wide self-inflating pad with a foam pad on top. It has a removable, washable fleece cover over both pads. I would purchase it again and highly recommend it to others.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Very comfortable. Comment: I've used this Mattress for number of days now. It is very comfortable.
I use it instead of much thicker inflatable bed. I've found them to have pressure spots, but this mattress from Therm-a-rest, though much thinner, does not have pressure spots.
Cons: #1 The price. #2 The mattress tends to slip on hardwood floors.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Terrific! Comment: A therm-a-rest with a cusion inside a heavy cover. Even better than my old therm-a-rest!!
Customer Rating:      Summary: FANTASTIC MAT, NOT SMALL BUT VERY COMFORTABLE Comment: My wife and I are mid 40's and were concerned that we would find sleeping on ground very uncomfortable, but this mat is a winner. It is bulky, not practicle if you are thinking of carrying it on your back for example, but if you have space in a car/caravan, then we recommend it without reservation. It has an air mattress in it, which makes it comfy and it self inflates. It is large enough width wise not to worry about rolling off it at night. A great product.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Expensive but worth it? Comment: The negative reviews I have seen on this sleeping pad all point to its expense.
Everyone seems to agree that this is perhaps the most comfortable option out there for a car camping sleeping pad.
It certainly beats the overly-bouncy Aerobed air mattress that we were using.
You can get much the same comfort by simply buying a tri-fold 4" mattress. In fact, this is what I wanted, however my wife thinks that they are "slippery and not as comfortable at the folds".
The fleece topping on the Thermarest Dreamtime is very nice to the touch. The air-mattress allows me to get it a touch firmer than an all foam mattress. Not to mention that if rolled tightly it takes up 1/2 the space. Personally, we will probably NOT roll them tightly in order to not compress the foam (as space is not an issue). Because of this, I sorta wish the compression straps were a few inches longer.
It is basically a good quality self-inflating air mattress (foam inside a two valve air mattress) with a normal foam pad over it, both inside a cover that is a very nice fleece on top and polyurethane underneath (and thus less likely to get dirty).
It is one of the warmest pads you can get with a total R value of 8. (It can get very, very cold at night with a regular air mattress sucking away all your body heat)
Some have said that it is expensive because it is "memory foam". I have memory foam at home and this is not memory foam, however you do not want real memory foam in this application as it would double its weight and it would not unfurl very well in the cold.
In short, the individual components may not cost ThermARest anywhere near what they sell it for, but they were the ones to do the research to implement a well thought out design (just the right thickness of foam and air mattress) and market it and manufacture it well enough that you can easily buy it most anywhere without worrying about the quality.
A big selling point are the two straps that keep two (or more) pads tightly together in roughly the same dimensions as a queen sized bed as well as straps to hold it together rolled (both of which the LuxuryCamp pad lacks, which I purchased for my kids). This pad is easily twice as bulky as the LuxuryCamp pads (the next step down in the ThermaRest line).
For this level of portable sleeping comfort, you do not have many options unless you decide to spend the time to build your own, or bring along a bulkier mattress (and even those can easily run you over $100 if they are well made).
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