Outdoor Retailer: All Season NeoAir from Therm-a-Rest

by Alicia MacLeay
January 22, 2011

The four-season NeoAir mattress, thicker and warmer than the original NeoAir.

Winter ultralighters, Therm-a-Rest is adding an all-season NeoAir mattress to their sleeping pad lineup.

The all-season version (final name to be determined), uses the same Reflective Barrier and Triangular Core Matrix layers as the original NeoAir mattress, but with two additional layers of reflective barrier, instead of one.

Therm-a-Rest says the two types of layers work together to boost warmth and reduce heat loss in NeoAir pads: The Triangular Core Matrix, which looks and acts like an internal truss system, has hundreds of individual cells that reduce conductive heat loss to the ground by restricting the movement of warmed air; the Reflective Barriers radiate heat back to the user.

The all-season NeoAir will have an R-value of 4.9, weigh 19 ounces, and be 2.5 inches thick. (For comparison, a Therm-a-Rest ProLite Plus has an R-value of 3.8, weighs 24 ounces, and is 1.5 inches thick).

The all season NeoAir will have a much more durable shell material than the original NeoAir, says Kerri Dellisanti of Cascade Designs. The original NeoAir shell has uses 30 denier high tenacity ripstop nylon on its top and bottom. The all-season NeoAir will have a 75 denier polyester top shell and a 70 denier nylon bottom.

The all-season NeoAir comes with a stuff sack air pump and field repair kit, and will be available in July of 2011.

Here's hoping you never need that repair kit, but it's interesting to note that a completely flat all-season NeoAir would have an R-value of 1.5.