Hest Dually Camping Mattress Review
Active Gear Review is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Like many company founding stories, Hest was started by someone looking to solve a personal problem: uncomfortable sleep while car camping. Their mission, as they state, is to “Revolutionize the way you sleep outdoors.” With a range of products including mattresses, pillows, and sheets, Hest aims to bring the comforts of home to outdoor adventures. The Dually mattress, reviewed here, is a two-person mattress pad available in various sizes to fit truck beds, vans, and campers. At 3.9” thick and featuring two layers of foam, it provides serious cushioning wherever your vehicle takes you. Hest also includes a thoughtful set of features to enhance the experience. Read on for our full Hest Dually mattress review.
Hest Dually Sleeping Comfort
Let’s start where it probably matters most: sleeping comfort. Unlike cheaper or simpler mattress pads, the Dually includes two layers of “high-performance poly foams,” which Hest claims are used in leading home mattresses. The upper layer is softer, designed to contour to your body shape, and made with temperature-resilient foam to prevent hardening in cold weather. The bottom layer features a stiffer foam to provide support. To ensure the foam performs as designed, Hest uses a stretch-woven nylon surface fabric on top, which allows the foam to respond naturally to body pressure.
Combined with the excellent Hest Camp Pillow, the Dually is a great place to lie down at night!
As soon as you lie down on the Hest Dually, you immediately feel the benefits of the high-quality design. It’s simply a very comfortable mattress. The foam does an excellent job of cradling your body and relieving pressure points. It’s on the softer side of mattress firmness, reminiscent of a soft Tempur-Pedic mattress. As a side sleeper, I slept really well because the mattress allowed my body to sink into the right positions. However, those who prefer a firm mattress might find it lacking in support. While I loved the feel, I do think the lower layer of foam could be even stiffer. When my weight wasn’t evenly distributed, I could almost feel the ground through my elbows and knees. In a camper mattress, especially one designed for car and truck bed camping, you move around a lot for activities like getting dressed in awkward positions, and a firmer feel would be beneficial for that.
The stretch fabric on the top of the mattress allows you to get the full use of the foam. Combined with the Hest Fitted Sheet, which also has a stretchy fabric, you sink right into the comfortable foam.
When folded, you get the added benefit of a bench seat/couch.
While the stock mattress in our camper trailer is much firmer, making it better for non-sleeping activities, I would still choose the Hest Dually for sleeping comfort any day. If you have the space, you could easily place a cheap, stiffer foam mattress underneath it to act as a “box spring”. In addition to using the Dually in our camper, we set it up in our den, where our two-year-old daughter loved playing and napping on it with us. Remember when considering the purchase, this mattress works just as well setup in a house for travel or as a guest bed. Another great benefit of a foam mattress over an air mattress is that it eliminates partner disturbance. My wife and I both appreciated that my natural tossing and turning didn’t bother her.
Worked just as well as a super comfortable portable mattress in a house for guests or when traveling (assuming you’ve got space in your car)
Additional Features
A great night’s sleep is usually enough to make a mattress worthwhile, but Hest also included additional quality-of-life features to elevate the Dually. To improve portability, the mattress has a hinge that allows it to fold for easier transportation. While folded, a set of buckles keeps it strapped together so it doesn’t flop open. Convenient carrying handles make it much easier to transport compared to bear-hugging a long, unwieldy mattress.
The handle and buckles make it much easier to transport the Hest Dually mattress when needed.
To ensure durability, Hest thoughtfully uses a rugged, abrasion-resistant lower fabric that keeps water out and protects the bottom from dirt and sand. Folding the Dually isn’t just for carrying convenience—it also serves a functional purpose inside our square-drop camper. With limited floor space, we maximize room by folding the mattress into a couch that sits against the wall furthest from the door. When folded, the Dually is about 7.8” thick, which is just tall enough to make it comfortable for sitting, changing clothes, or reading. While the soft foam makes the seat a bit squishier than ideal, it still works well.
Abrasion and water resistant fabric lines the bottom of the Dually, adding excellent durability.
For those storing the mattress at home during the off-season or when not in use, the folding design saves space. A nice touch is the two storage pockets located at the top of each side of the mattress, perfectly sized for a phone, keys, headlamps, or other small items you want nearby while sleeping. However, we use a fitted sheet on our mattress for easy cleaning, which blocks access to the pocket. I wish that Hest had considered this with the wonderful sheet you can purchase from them, which otherwise fits the Dually perfectly. You can still reach it by lifting the sheet, but it’s something to consider if this feature is important to you.
There are storage pockets at the ends of the mattress for small items like keys and phones. However, they are a bit inconvenient when using a sheet on the mattress.
The Hest Camp Pillow is SUPER comfortable and folds up into a portable package that makes it great for storing when not in use. Seriously, this pillow is as good as what you have at home.
Sizing Options of the Hest Dually
While Hest offers a range of mattress options for solo sleepers, the Dually is, as the name suggests, only available in double widths designed for two people—or for those who enjoy extra room to stretch out. Fortunately, the four available sizes cover most common camper and truck bed dimensions. Our camper came stock with a single-layer foam mattress sized 59” x 80”, so we chose the Dually Queen option at 60” x 78”, which worked out great. The Dually is also available in 50” x 78”, 60” x 72”, and 50” x 64”.
Final Thoughts on the Hest Dually – Price and Value
The price of the Hest Dually is something to consider when evaluating options. Ranging from $499 to $649 depending on size, it is one of the most expensive camping mattresses on the market. There are solid alternatives, such as the Exped Megamat, which offers excellent comfort at a lower price point. However, the added convenience of the Dually’s features—including its larger size options, easy folding mechanism, and lack of time-consuming inflation—add to its value proposition. For more information about the Hest Dually, visit: hest.com, rei.com or amazon.com.
