gbedford wrote:A quick check is to squeeze the mat between thumb and forefinger. If the dent stays any length of time then the mat is low density, cheap, nasty, little insulation and padding and will fall apart easily.
That's what I've always thought too. That a foam mat that holds a dent for more than a fraction of a second is inferior and won't last. But what about memory foam?
On a road trip last year I bought a cheap foam mat. When I pinched it it would remain dented for a while, slowly filling back in. I thought, "What a piece of junk!", but it's all that was available.
Now here's the thing. It has turned out to be a *great* piece of gear. The dent always fills back eventually and looks like new. I can't say yet that it will last 10 years but it impressed me enough that I went back to the same place this year and bought another. As for density, this particular foam is equivalent to EVA30.
Now maybe a pad that springs back in 50ms is superior, but I've revised my idea of what resilience means with respect to foam mats. Also, I think there may be another metric, one that measures how much it compresses under load, that is important to consider. That's something a little harder to measure but you can usually feel it if the difference is enough.
