whose comfort is it?)

Exactly, Fred! My partner looked at my thin, beat up foam pad used after the Utah walk and the GDT plus a year of road tripping, and marveled how I side slept on this foam pad on slick rock! She, OTOH, has trouble on a foam pad with her hips on the side even when new.

So, do I go by Fred Bar’s comfort level? Paul Mags’ comfort level? Or Joan’s? Or is some other blogger’s opinion the correct baseline? EDIT: And should I also base pad suggestion based on age, gender, or personality? (Some “saltier” people are comfortable on ANYTHING!).

I could give you a recommendation for *my* side sleeping preferences on a foam pad, others would disagree. Some websites will tell you foam pads are terrible for side sleeping..and the comments section will turn around and contradict it how they sleep fine on their side for a different pad than what the author stated.

So, we are left with no definitive answer. Yes, comfort is a subjective term. But a good overall term as a caveat. And how you sleep is a simply how you sleep. And has no bearing if the pad is comfortable or not except for *YOU*.

Hell, I even wrote it plainly:

The disadvantages of foams pads are that they are not as comfortable as other types and for certain sleeping styles (Some side sleepers find them uncomfortable Other don’t mind.)

Sure, I could give you a bullshit answer if you want. But people on this site know me better. So, you won’t get an answer based on sleeping styles and what is pad is ideal because that is going to be so different from person to person. I may as well tell you which flavor of ice cream is the best, too. (Pistachio for me, if you are curious. 🙂 )

You are right! You had a disclaimer: “Your ideal pad may change based on hiking style, way of sleeping, budget, time of year, conditions faced, etc. ”

However, the word COMFORT is used many times to describe these pads (whose comfort is it?) and then there is a “quick and dirty overview of the pads” with recommendations based on certain criteria such as weight, seasons, durability, type, comfort(!), warmth and price. This disclaimer is then turned around by the fact that you do recommendations based on hiking style/weight (ultralight? traditionalist? minimalist?), budget (price), time of year (2, 3, 4 seasons) and even durability but not way of sleeping. These are all properties that match a human to the product. I still would have liked to have read about this, at least in terms of recommendation like you did for everything else.

No, not tongue in cheek. I carry a spare tire (and a compressor!)…I sure as hell don’t carry a spare pad! 😛

A good night’s sleep is paramount to enjoying a camping trip

No doubt. But a light pack can be awesome for enjoying a *hiking* trip. 🙂

Ah! Makes more sense. Thx for sharing!

Sorry, Paul, I would have included more details with my original comment if I hadn’t been in a hurry and had to be somewhere. I got this formula by taking the numbers in the table you re-published, the hammock hanging one, and plugged it into a calculator to find the best-fit line. I make no claims whatsoever to it’s accuracy, especially since warmth is such and individual, subjective thing, and I didn’t come up with the numbers to begin with and don’t know how they came up with them. But, I do think it’s mildly interesting, and I hope it’s useful as a starting point for folks to compare pads.

And LET me know more of the specific reference you are making if you could. 🙂 Assuming you are talking about comfort with a pad, we need more variables than three of course.

Can’t say my luck has been the same. 🙁

Desert hiking, winter backpacking as a sit pad on the snow benches, cowboy camping in the desert on the Colorado Plateau, all things that are inflatable killers My partner, who treats gear far better than I, had to send her NeoAir back recently. My ProLite (as I had two leaks in two different NeoAirs!) lasted one season of backpacking in Colorado and Utah. :O

I readily admit I am hard on gear and I tend to go in areas where there aren’t maintained trails. OTOH, my good friend Cam has hiked far more than I and in gnarly places and never had a problem.

No matter how you dice it, though, anything they sell a repair kit for is not going to be as durable as simple foam. 🙂