After a six-year-old decided to use our old air bed as a trampoline, it was time to go on the hunt for a new one. We don’t use it often, but we do enjoy a little extra comfort when we do go camping and, of course, there are always those times when there are more stay-over guests than beds! Since we had one of those occasions happening in about a month – my daughter and husband together with our four adorable granddaughters, time was of the essence!
Call it laziness – I call it being time-poor, I’m a dedicated online shopper. The first thing I did was search the brands I know. Same old, same old. But, as happens, when you go searching, an ad to the right of my search caught my eye… Insta-Bed with neverFLAT™ technology. Now I’ll admit to wondering if that meant it was puncture-proof. It isn’t. But it does overcome the biggest and most unpleasant obstacle to air bed use. Let me explain:
neverFLAT© technology means your air bed stays at the same firmness throughout the night
If you’ve ever slept on an air bed, you’ll know that getting the air pressure right can be the difference between either feeling you’ll bounce off if you move or that you’re in a sagging crevice which will be like climbing Everest when you try to get up. But it gets worse because the level of firmness you start with doesn’t last very long. There are two reasons:
- Hot air expands and cool air contracts. This means that as the night cools down, your air bed with start to sag as the air molecules inside ‘shrink’.
- The fabric of the air bed stretches as it warms. This means that even as the air inside is ‘shrinking, the cover is stretching making the bed even saggier. But unlike The Saggy, Baggy Elephant, your air bed isn’t going to grow up and fill that skin!
Crawling over their site, I saw that Insta-Bed claims to have licked both problems with their neverFlat™ second pump system. It sounded logical and plausible! You start by determining your optimal comfort pressure and then…
“The neverFLAT™ internal sensors continuously monitor pressure throughout the night, and auto-engage a silent secondary pump to keep you comfortable all night”
So, given that it had the other ‘must-have’ that I insist on – an internal automatic inflate/deflate pump, I checked out prices. Firstly, the bed is no more expensive than any quality air bed. Secondly, and here was a big surprise, buying directly from Insta-Bed was cheaper than buying from Amazon!!! (Note that I use a shipping consolidator so shipping to Australia was easy. If you don’t use a consolidator, Amazon will ship internationally.)
The Verdict:
First, here’s what I ordered. Yeah, it’s over the top but I couldn’t resist it 🙂
When I saw those drink holders, I could just see my 13 and 9-year-old boys hunkered down in front of a Saturday night movie! In fact, the bed arrived on Friday and the boys volunteered to put it through its paces on Sunday morning at 2:30 AM!
Hmmm… another explanation is needed here! My boys are rugby fanatics. The match was Australia vs Wales which was an evening match in Wales but an ungodly hour here in Brisbane! My role in this is just to wake them and then go back to bed. We set up the bed and made the comfort adjustments on Saturday afternoon and I then duly woke them at the allotted time and then headed straight back to my real bed.
When I woke at around six and checked on the boys they were both sound asleep where I had left them. The youngest woke a little after 9:00 am and the 13-year-old shortly thereafter.
“How was the bed, boys?”
“Great! Can we leave it up?”
So there you have it! Two young, middle of the night, rugby fanatics have spoken. I’ll give you my daughter’s verdict in a couple of weeks 🙂
We paid $159.95 for our bed which included the bonus headboard, a carry bag and the obligatory repair kit.
You can check out the full range of all sizes and styles, including an interesting ‘pillowtop’ model here…
If you need to ship internationally the Amazon range may suit better…
