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I'd never needed a neck pillow. I've long been one of those "pull myself up by my bootstraps" kind of flyers who has braved multiple, 12+ hour long international flights with whatever the airline decided to give me. Despite tossing and turning myself in crappy, cramped modern flight conditions for hours at a time, I still managed to get myself to some acceptable amount of sleep no matter what.
But back in October I decided to try my hand at a travellers neck pillow from Travelrest ($30) off of the recommendation of my go-to product review website Wirecutter in anticipation of an upcoming trip to New York. I didn't "need" the pillow, but I wanted to test one out for the content, and to see if it would make the never-pleasurable task of long-distance travel slightly more bearable.
It didn't.
The Travelrest is a U-shaped ring of memory foam that contours around the wearer's neck, letting you rest your head to either side against the foam without putting strain on your spine. It comes with a travel bag (and a bonus pair of cheap earplugs) and collapses into a quarter of it's size when compressed. As of now, it is Wirecutter's favorite travel pillow, and I thoroughly trust their reviews.
When you wear it, the pillow feels like you've got a bunch of memory foam wrapped around your neck. It's not heavy, and it does it's job. With it on, I could lean my head to one side or the other with the head-against-a-pillow sensation that we all know and love without any strain to my neck.
Yet, the problem is that it simply didn't help. I tested this pillow with about 30 hours of travel. On an early morning flight to New York (6 hrs) at the end of October, I wore it and tried to get some shut eye. Perhaps I just wasn't tired, but the pillow didn't help me nod off, and I quickly found it uncomfortable to have a pillow wrapped around my neck while just sitting in my seat. I intended to wear the pillow back to Portland, and after a week of terrible sleep I was beat, but I forgot that I had it with me and passed out on the flight.
I vowed to give it another shot, and I did so, over the holidays, on a round trip to and from New Zealand. These flights are about 12 hours long each, most of which take place overnight, where the cabin is dimmed for about eight hours intended for sleep. International travel sucks the life out of you, so I figured this would be the chance to see if it made the usually very uncomfortable task of trying to sleep over the bumpy ass Pacific Ocean any easier.
As it turns out, neck support isn't really the problem with trying to sleep on a plane: it's posture. When I try to sleep sitting up, all of my bodyweight sinks onto my tailbone, which quickly becomes uncomfortable, bordering on painful (if you want to simulate the sensation have a friend punch you at the top of your butt, then imagine that while trying to sleep). Guess what's not on my tailbone? My neck. Though the increased neck support was nice, I suppose, it didn't help me in having to reposition myself in a weird penumbral dream/sleep state while the plane shook, which was the actual source of my discomfort.
On the way back, it was worse. For some reason, the plane was about five degrees hotter than it was on the way there, and I woke up at some hellish hour in the middle of the ocean with a sweaty neck. Fuck no, my friends!
Assuming that all neck pillows are about as good as one another (I will) and that this one is slightly better than the rest, I was planning on giving this a tepid "if your neck is screwed up this will probably help, but whatever" review. Then, I remembered a few shorter, domestic flights I had on my vacation. On those flights, I immdiately passed out in my seat without any issue, with my neck pillow securely in my backpack in the overhead compartment. I didn't need the pillow because I was exhausted. That was what helped me get to sleep, being tired.
A neck pillow doesn't help you sleep, isn't particularly comfortable to wear otherwise, looks silly and takes up precious space in your luggage. Save your $30 and suffer like a normal human being, or do what every rich person does and pop a Xanax and pass out before your flight starts.
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