Found out my cheap sleeping pad has a lower R-value than a cardboard box

Honestly I was just browsing gear forums last night and stumbled on someone's breakdown of sleeping pad insulation. They actually tested common materials with a thermal camera and found that a standard cardboard box has an R-value of about 2.5. Meanwhile my $30 foam pad from Amazon clocked in at 2.0. I literally checked my own pad's specs and yeah, it says R-2.0 right on the tag. No wonder I froze my butt off last October at that campsite near Lake Placid when temps dropped to 38 degrees. I just figured sleeping pads were all basically the same. Has anyone else bothered to check their pad's actual R-value or am I the last person to realize this matters?

2 comments

2 Comments

emery1016d ago

Oh wait hold on, a CARDBOARD BOX has a higher R-value than some sleeping pads?! That's actually insane to think about. I mean I knew those super cheap pads weren't great but I didn't realize they were literally worse than a pizza box or whatever. I've been using this old foam pad from a garage sale for like three years now and I just assumed it was fine because it was thick enough to not feel the ground. Now I'm wondering if I've been basically sleeping on a thin piece of fabric the whole time. That Lake Placid story makes so much sense now because I had a similar experience in the mountains last fall and I just blamed it on the tent not being warm enough. Really wish I had checked this stuff before buying gear blindly.

grace_knight1916d ago

Toss that garage sale pad now, you're literally losing body heat straight into the dirt.