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One of life’s great struggles is attempting to sleep while traveling. Whether you’re in a car or on a plane, sleeping while sitting up straight is nearly impossible. Fidgeting around to get comfortable can turn into an endless process that yields no sleep. And even if you do manage to fall asleep, you risk waking up with serious neck and back pain. But what can you do to solve your travel sleep woes? The answer is a travel neck pillow.
If you’re setting out on a long trip, a travel neck pillow is a great item to have on hand. Portable, easy to store, and capable of providing excellent neck and back support, nothing better helps you to sleep while sitting up than a travel neck pillow.
What is a Travel Neck Pillow?
Contents
A travel neck pillow is a pillow designed to help you sleep while sitting up straight in a chair. They’re named travel neck pillows because, whether you’re traveling on a plane or in a car, the only way to sleep is to do so while sitting up.
These pillows are typically U-shaped, designed to wrap around your neck so that you have support on the back and sides of your body. There are, however, other styles available. Portable, comfortable, and easy to store away, travel neck pillows are the perfect travel sleep companion.
What are the Benefits of a Travel Neck Pillow?
For the most part, travel neck pillows are fairly basic items. Their main purpose is to help people sleep while sitting straight up in a car or plane.
Soft, flexible, and lightweight, they are very easy to store and transport from place to place, meaning you can always have one on hand just in case. Additionally, the comfort and support capabilities of a travel neck pillow will help you to prevent back and neck injuries while in the midst of traveling.
Who are the Contenders for Best Travel Neck Pillow?
Purefly Travel Pillow
Equipped with a one-click inflation button, the Purefly Travel Pillow is capable of inflating to the size of your choice with little to no effort required. With a soothing velvet exterior that can be removed for easy cleaning, it provides superb comfort and functionality. Lightweight and compact, it’s ridiculously easy to store away and transport within its included pack sack.
Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow
Designed with a memory foam cushion, this Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow forms to your neck, providing you with the personalized and specific comfort you need. A bamboo exterior offers your neck a comfortable, cooling, and relieving texture that will leave you feeling refreshed all day long. The machine-washable exterior is easy to unzip and remove. It can be cleaned and maintained with minimal effort.
ONWEGO Inflatable U-Shape Neck Travel Pillow
An inflatable neck travel pillow, this ONWEGO pillow can be fully inflated with just two breaths, allowing for quick and convenient use. With a cotton and polyester hybrid exterior, it provides your neck with supreme comfort while also wicking away sweat. Weighing less than 3 ounces and capable of being stored compactly into its included travel bag, it is beyond easy to transport from place to place.
Considerations for Choosing the Right Travel Neck Pillow
All in all, travel neck pillows are fairly basic items. Most are U-shaped and designed to fit around your neck snugly, providing support and cushion so that you can rest your weary head while sitting up straight. However, this does not mean that all travel neck pillows are created equally. They may all seem the same, but the truth is that they possess quite a few characteristics which set them apart. These characteristics revolve around the amount of support they provide, the comfort they offer, how portable they are, and whether or not they possess any additional features.
Support
In order for a travel neck pillow to work appropriately, it must be able to provide support to your neck and head. If it doesn’t provide enough support to keep your neck and head in place without effort, it is quite simply not doing its job.
Comfort
It should go without saying that an uncomfortable travel neck pillow is a poor travel neck pillow. Though everyone has a different definition of what’s comfortable to them, there are some feelings that are so undeniably uncomfortable that their discomfort becomes a thing of fact. Make sure the travel neck pillow you choose is plenty comfortable.
Portability
Because you’re, more often than not, going to be taking your travel neck pillow on the road or in the sky, it’s important that it’s portable. While some pillows are inflatable and capable of being folded up compactly, others are made of soft materials that can squish into compromising areas. Don’t overlook portability.
Additional Features
Travel neck pillows come with a number of additional features that serve to make them as functional and useful as possible. These features include everything from internal heating devices, to internal inflation pumps, to additional support mechanisms, and more.
Support
Purefly Travel Pillow
An inflatable pillow that can be blown up to suit your specific, individual preferences, the Purefly Travel Pillow provides you with a great deal of neck and head support, regardless of your body’s shape and style. With a raised-neck support, it keeps your head and neck locked in, ensuring that your body stays in one place at all times.
Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow
Filled with high-quality memory foam, this Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow provides excellent head and neck support regardless of the shape of your body. Because it clings snugly to each shape and curve of your body, it keeps your head and neck locked in place at all times.
ONWEGO Inflatable U-Shape Neck Travel Pillow
Like the Purefly Travel Pillow, this ONWEGO travel neck pillow is inflatable and is capable of increasing and decreasing its size to meet your specific needs. This ensures that it will fit snugly to your head and neck, providing you with terrific support.
Comfort
Purefly Travel Pillow
Lined with a micro-velvet fabric, the Purefly Travel Pillow feels good to the touch, offering a comfortable texture to your skin. Due to its construction, it’s able to wick away sweat, keeping heat from building up, and ultimately keeping you cool at all times.
Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow
With a bamboo fiber exterior liner, this Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow provides a soft touch while sacrificing nothing in the way of ventilation and heat reduction. Because of bamboo’s cooling properties, it ensures that you’re always having a calm, comfortable sleep.
ONWEGO Inflatable U-Shape Neck Travel Pillow
With a liner made out of both cotton and polyester, this ONWEGO travel neck pillow is soft to the touch, but capable of venting out a great deal of heat. Its smooth inner seam ensures that you will not be itching and scratching while you’re trying to doze off.
Portability
Purefly Travel Pillow
An inflatable travel pillow, deflate and store compactly in a bag of any size. Weighing just 4.8 ounces, and with a drawstring storage bag included, it is beyond easy to transport from place to place.
ONWEGO Inflatable U-Shape Neck Travel Pillow
Because it’s inflatable and because it weighs only 3 ounces, this ONWEGO travel neck pillow is easy to store and carry around. With an attached storage sack included, you will always have something on hand to carry it around in.
Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow
When compared to the Prefly Travel Pillow and ONWEGO travel neck pillow in our top 3, this Essence of Bamboo travel neck pillow pales in comparison on the issue of portability. Unfortunately, it’s superb support capabilities keep it from being flexible. It’s not easy to fold up and place in a bag.
Additional Features
Purefly Travel Pillow
Equipped with a 1-click, internal, built-in inflation device, the Purefly Travel Pillow can be blown up to capacity in just a matter of seconds with a minimal exertion of effort. With an easy-to-carry storage bag included with it, it is simple to both put away and transport from place to place.
ONWEGO Inflatable U-Shape Neck Travel Pillow
Unlike the Purefly Travel Pillow, this ONWEGO travel neck pillow does not come equipped with a built-in inflation device. But like the Purefly Travel Pillow, it does come with a very nice and convenient storage bag. This allows you to carry it from place to place with general ease.
Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow
When it comes to additional features, the Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow really doesn’t have any. It’s a basic travel neck pillow that provides endless comfort, top-notch support, and effortless functionality without the use of any bells and whistles.
Our Travel Neck Pillow Reviews
Classic Brands U-Shape Memory Foam Travel Pillow – Best Cheap
While not quite as comfortable as some high-end pillows, this Classic Brands travel neck pillow provides a lot of comfort at a very affordable price. Stuffed with memory foam, it form fits to every curve and shape of your neck, ensuring a comfort that is personalized to you and everyone else who uses it. A velour exterior is soft to the touch, but does begin to trap body heat after a while, resulting in sweat buildup. All in all, if you’re looking for a highly-functional travel neck pillow at a very affordable price, you should definitely take a look at this.
Pros:
- Form fitting memory foam cushion
- Soft velour exterior
Cons:
- Has a tendency to trap body heat
- A little large; more difficult to store than other travel neck pillows
Essence of Bamboo Travel Neck Pillow – Best for the Money
For a travel neck pillow in its price range, this Essence of Bamboo pillow is easily the best travel neck pillow you’re going to find. Stuffed with cushiony memory foam, it form fits to every shape and curve of your body, ensuring maximum comfort regardless of who’s using it. Lined with a machine-washable bamboo exterior, it provides you top-notch comfort while also keeping your neck cool and sweatless. If you’re looking for a phenomenal travel neck pillow at a very reasonable price, you definitely need to give this one a look.
Pros:
- Form fits to your personal shape
- Comfortable and cool bamboo exterior
Cons:
- Not enough memory foam for some tastes
- Not as easy to store as other neck pillows
Purefly Travel Pillow – Best Overall
Equipped with incredible storage, transport, and comfort capabilities, the Purefly Travel Pillow is the best travel neck pillow on the market today. An inflatable neck pillow with the ability to blow up to your desired size, it comes with a one-click inflation button that works both quickly and easily. Lined with a fine, micro-velvet exterior, it provides you with supreme comfort while sacrificing nothing in the way of breathability. If you’re looking for the best travel neck pillow on the market, you can’t go wrong with the Purefly Travel Pillow.
Pros:
- Inflates quickly and easily
- Comfortable micro-velvet exterior
- Very easy to store
Cons:
- A little heavy
In Conclusion
Long car and plane rides can be truly grueling affairs, and whether you want to or not, you almost always ending up falling asleep. But sleeping while sitting up is about the most uncomfortable thing you could ever partake in. You’re almost sure to wake up with some form of neck or back pain. What you need is a travel neck pillow.
Comfortable, portable, and highly-functional pillows like the Purefly Travel Pillow offer superb neck and back support as well as effortless use. If you’re planning a long trip in your near future, you should absolutely invest in a travel neck pillow.
Also check out: Our guide to the best neck massagers on the market