I did the photography for this review of the Zenbivy 3D Flex last year with my friend Jason Lorch from Tyres and Soles. I ended up with this uber-comfortable mattress and have been using it lately when camping out of my car. If you have the space, as it’s big and bulky, then I highly recommend one of these things. It’s not something for your backpack though. The pillows? Well, I think if you have enough space from the mattress then you have enough space for a couple of normal pillows. I always find blowup pillows a little noisy under the head. Now on with the review!!
Cut to the Chase
Do you want to sleep like the dead? The Zenbivy 3D Flex Mattress is the comfiest basecamp mattress we’ve ever used! If you want an end to uncomfortable nights, painful hips or back and are thinking “If only I could bring my bed on these damn trips”, then look no further. With a supportive 4-way stretch design with a fully flat edge-to-edge surface so you won’t roll off the edge, and 3 inches of dreamy support with an inflation time of seconds, you really should stop losing sleep over it and join the Zenbivy (sleep-like the dead) army.
| Pros: Feels like your home mattress 3″ Thickness provides amazing comfort Supportive 4-way Stretch Impressive heat loss capabilities (R-value of 7) Low-profile retains good head space in vehicles or low-pitched tents One-way reversible valve keeps air in while inflating Valve allows for customizable comfort with its slow-deflation “button” | Cons: Not cheap, but neither is back surgery. |
Zenbivy 3D Flex Mattress – Review
Roughing it has its place, but once you get to a certain age you’ve been there, done that, and got the t-shirt, so now it’s a time for some luxury in your life. The Zenbivy 3D Flex Mattress is the luxurious basecamp mattress packing 3 inches of self-inflating horizontally-cored foam to give you the most comfortable night’s sleep possible. No peas were harmed during this test.
Getting a good night’s sleep is crucial to the way you feel the following day. This is even more important if you need to be at your peak performance for a race. Sleep has been linked to performance levels and if you simply can’t sleep due to crappy mattresses, then this needs to change.
Fortunately, Zenbivy is the master in making bedtime a very comfortable experience for campers. If you’re a car camper looking to upgrade to a superior mattress for those weekends away or someone who’s taken to the van life and on the road for weeks, months, or years at a time looking for a reliable and consistent good night’s sleep, the Zenbivy Flex 3D mattress is one to check out.
We’ve reviewed their Zenbivy bed in the past and it has become our go-to sleeping bag (bed) for all our overnight adventures. More on that here. When you combine the Zenbivy bed with the 3D Flex mattress, it provides the same levels of sleep you would find at home in your own bed, and there’s nothing like sleeping in your bed.
Features
The Flex™ 3D Mattress is the ultimate ultra-comfortable basecamp mattress.
The Zenbivy Flex 3D Mattress has been designed to look and feel just like your home mattress. The 4-way stretch knit top provides excellent support combined with a luxuriously soft flat top surface that is usable from edge to edge cradling you just like your mattress at home.
The 4-way stretch fabric allows the mattress to “flex” with your shape and movement, so the top feels softer and more supportive than other camp mattresses—even at firm air pressures.
Hip comfort is crucial for a good night’s sleep so Zenbivy made sure to eliminate hip soreness with the vertical side walls providing 3 inches of self-inflating horizontally-cored foam to raise your body from the ground to give you the most comfortable night’s sleep possible and still low enough in vertical height to fit into any vehicle.
The R-Value is a measure of the transfer of temperature from one side of a material (in this case a mat) to the other. Eliminating heat transfer into the ground is an important part of how a mattress retains its heat and how quickly you can lose body heat into the ground. The Zenbivy Flex 3D Mattress delivers an impressive R-value of 7 due to the horizontally-cored foam design which drastically reduces cold spots found on most vertically-cored mattresses.
A one-way reversible valve keeps air in while inflating and allows for customizable comfort with its slow-deflation “button”. When it’s time to pack up, the entire valve pops out for an instant, hassle-free deflation. Then pop the “deflation” valve side back in and the air stays out as you continue to roll.
Set-Up
Setting up the Zenbivy 3D Flex mattress is a very simple affair. It took us no more than a minute or two from unpacking to fully inflated. The carry sack doubles as an Inflation Dry Sack for fast manual inflation and doubles as a storage bag for the mattress.
Simply roll the mattress out onto the ground, connect the carry sack, to the one-way reversible valve, close the top loop of the carry sack to capture some air, then push down on the inflated carry sack and all that air forces its way into the valve, filling the mattress. It only took us 3 bags of air to fill the Zenbivy 3D Flex mattress. This is very fast! Faster than any foot pump we’ve used. It’s also silent so it won’t annoy any nearby campers.
Note, be sure to close off the other valve on the opposite corner of the mattress, or you will be there for eternity trying to inflate it, just like we did the first time, ahem.
It only took us 3 bags of air to fill the Zenbivy 3D Flex mattress. This is very fast! Faster than any foot pump we’ve used. It’s also silent so it won’t annoy any nearby campers.
The Zenbivy Flex 3D Mattress has the appearance of a traditional home bed.
We tested the largest of the three sizes. A fully inflated size of 52″ x 78″ (132 x 198 x 8cm), and a packed weight of 7 lb 11 oz (3.49 kg). The tester is 6′ 2″ and weighs around 86kgs.
The Zenbivy Comfort Factor
Talk about crying yourself to sleep. We almost cried ourselves to sleep with tears of joy on the first night. The comfort levels with the Flex 3D mattress are so close to the bed you would sleep in at home that it’s a joy to sleep on. It has a supportive, yet soft firmness which evenly spreads your body weight to prevent the build-up of pressure points, particularly in your neck, back, and hips, similar to an orthopaedic mattress.
Undoubtedly, the Flex 3D is the most comfortable camping mattress we’ve ever used, and we’ve used quite a few over the years. Previous car camping mattresses were double the height and 10 times as noisy with comical support levels. You know the types, where you move, and your partner gets ejected into the air.
A 3-inch thick mattress is a perfect height. It provides enough thickness for the mattress to feel bottomless in almost every sleep position and doesn’t take up too much headroom in your tent or car. It works everywhere! Even in low-pitched tents.
The 4-way stretch fabric allows this mattress to “flex” with your shape and movement, which evenly spreads your body weight to prevent the build-up of pressure points, particularly in your neck, back, and hips, similar to an orthopedic mattress, even at firm air pressures.
The Zenbivy pillows offer a luxuriously soft cover for your face, and good levels of head and neck support. It also packs down into a teeny-weeny sack.
Another plus is the flat surface of the Flex 3D mattress. This means you use the entire surface area and never feel like you are about to roll off the edge. The flat surface, even under firm pressures, remains flat which is perfect for stretching.
What amazed us is that the height is only 3 inches, but the support is almost equal to that of our orthopaedic mattress at home, which would be closer to 6 or 8 inches. The 4-way stretch 50d polyester knit provides a soft comfort to the surface and the Urethane foam gives it a supportive, yet supple cushioning.
The low height of the mattress is also a bonus because it doesn’t overly reduce the head height in the vehicle or if you have a low-pitched tent.
Packing up
When you’re all done and ready to pack up, just unplug the two-way valve, allow it to deflate, then roll it up and store it in the carry sack. For what the Flex 3D provides, it doesn’t take up that much space (66 x 20cm packed size). You can easily store it in the boot of your car or under the storage shelving in your van.
It’s not cheap. But how much do you value your sleep and your body? If you compare it to a home mattress, how much would you spend on one and what’s the lifetime of those? 5 or 10 years? I know our parents had the same mattress for double that. So if you take that into account, and do a lot of car camping, and do put a value on sleep and body health, then we think it’s definitely worth the dollars.
Full tech specs here.
Conclusions
We’ll say it again! The Zenbivy 3D Flex Mattress is the comfiest basecamp mattress we’ve ever used! If you want an end to uncomfortable nights, painful hips, or back in the morning and are thinking “If only I could bring my own bed on these damn trips“, then look no further. With a supportive 4-way stretch design with a fully flat edge-to-edge surface so you won’t roll off the edge, and 3 inches of dreamy support with an inflation time of seconds, you really should stop losing sleep over it and join the Zenbivy (sleep-like the dead) army.
Where to Buy
You can purchase directly from the Zenbivy website.
Guest Author
Jason Lorch
I was born and grew up in Wales but I’m now a fully-fledged Aussie: a passionate mountain biker, hiker and general nature addict. I’m also a bit of a muso and enjoy a good craft beer now and again (probably too often). I hope what we do here at Tyres and Soles will inspire people to get out there and experience first-hand, the natural wonders surrounding them. So, pump up those tyres, and don your favourite boots. Grab a mate, a partner, or a pet… and head out into nature. But tell us all about it when you get back.