For more than two decades I considered myself a hardened dirt bag when it came to camping. I’d pop a tent nearly anywhere, and easily spent more than 100 nights sleeping in the back of my Tacoma with just a sleeping bag on top of a thin camping pad. Hell, on multiple occasions I slept under the stars, barely a bivouac between myself and the elements.
Photo courtesy Luno
This Camping Air Mattress Revolutionized My Truck Camping Setup
Then I turned 40.
My joints now regularly ache. I’ve had to enact routine morning stretching sessions on top of a semi-regular yoga practice just to feel “normal.” A career spent typing has me worried about arthritis and impending wrist fatigue, and 25 years of snowboarding has whittled my knee cartilage down to almost nothing. I’m not the dirt bag I once was. Yet, I still want to camp as much as possible and more importantly, want my daughter to grow up in the outdoors with her dad. Enter the Luno Air Mattress, a camping mattress custom-fitted to my (or your) vehicle that makes car camping comfortable again.
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How the Luno Air Mattress fits my Toyota Tacoma
Fits like a glove. Photo: Tim Wenger
The Rumpl acts as a perfect comforter. Photo: Tim Wenger
I drive a 2006 Toyota Tacoma with a 6-foot bed. When ordering the Luno Air Mattress, I was prompted to enter my vehicle make and model, and choose the specifics like bed size. Tacomas of all varieties are incredibly popular in Colorado, where I live, and around the US, so it didn’t surprise me that the fit was readily available for mine. The order arrived within two weeks.
It’s possible to order the Luno Truck Sleeping Bundle, which includes an inflatable pillow that, by maintaining a different temperature on each side, caters to both hot and cold nights. You can also opt for the Luno Air+Foam Pro Camping Mattress, which sleeps one and can fit in a truck, car, or a tent. Mattresses are also available for 5-foot truck beds.
The mattress arrived rolled in a box and included an electric air pump, which charged enough to fill the mattress in about 30 minutes via the accompanying USB to mini-USB chord. Note that the pump receives the mini, so you’ll need a USB plug to charge the air pump. Once charged, I pumped up each side of the mattress in a couple minutes. I appreciated the two-chamber design because my wife and I like different mattress firmness, and we were able to appease both preferences.
It’s tough to gauge how firm to blow up an air mattress without having first slept on it, so I brought the pump with us in case we needed to add or release air at the campsite. Going forward, I won’t blow up the mattress until we get to the campsite to save space when packing in the back of our truck. I blew it up at home this time because I wanted to make sure everything worked. When deflated and stored in the box, it’s easy to add the mattress to our existing camping gear that we pack into the back of the truck.
When aired up, the mattress slid right into the truck bed. It’s fitted to the location of the wheel wells, and left about an inch of space at the bottom near the gate. We have a topper, and I opened the side window to load pillows and sleeping bags, as well as a couple Rumpl blankets (the Chris Burkard edition, mind you) in case the sleeping bags were too warm.
What to know about the Luno Air Mattress
The Luno Air Mattress and the Luno Air+Foam Mattress. Photo: Tim Wenger
How the pump fits the valve. Photo: Tim Wenger
Pumping up to perfection. Photo: Tim Wenger
The Luno Air Mattress for a 6-foot truck bed costs $329.99 is made of what the brand dubbed TitanTUFF™ nylon, which is waterproof 300D material that cleans easily. We got some dirt on our mattress on this first use and I easily washed it off with cold water and a towel. It packs back down into a 10″ x 22″ bag when not in use. When inflated, the mattress stands about four inches in height, and while it’s quite durable, it’s also very light. When fitting it into my truck I literally tossed into place. The company claims people up to 6’7” can comfortably sleep on the mattress, though I find it doubtful someone who is that tall can comfortably sleep in the back of a 6-foot truck bed with or without a mattress. The mattress fits whether the tailgate is open or down.
To pump up the mattress, connect the air pump to the inflation valve on each side and fill to your desired firmness. The pump has a valve for both inflating and deflating the mattress, though I was able to deflate mine just fine by forcing most of the air out by hand, and then forcing the rest out as I rolled it up to store, much like you’d do with an inflatable stand-up paddleboard.
How we slept on the Luno Air Mattress
Russell slept quite well, but woke up early as usual. Photo: Tim Wenger
Plenty of space. Photo: Tim Wenger
My wife and I are each about 5’7” and our daughter is nearly three years old. We also camp with our dog, a 29-pound terrier mix that often insists on sleeping at a perpendicular angle to the rest of us. The mattress fit the three humans quite comfortably, with our daughter in the middle, and the dog down at the bottom near the gate.
The Luno Air Mattress made the experience more like sleeping in a bed than anything I’ve ever experienced while camping, particularly given the Rumpl blankets acting as a bedspread. Not quite “home-esque,” but a far cry from sleeping on a thin air pad with a sleeping bag, or in a tent on unlevel ground with the occasional tree root poking me in the shoulder. It elevated sleeping in the truck to near-glamping status, not least because actually being comfortable while camping helps to prevent the frustrating “unplanned 5 AM wakeup due to being freezing and sore” thing that has long plagued me as a camper.
We went to bed around 9:30 PM (we have a toddler, remember), and while I awoke a couple times throughout the night, I avoided the typical camping experience of waking up so frequently that it seems as though three days must have passed when in reality it’s only been two hours. When I awoke for good around 6 AM, I felt surprisingly refreshed, and enjoyed 30 minutes or so of solitude before the rest of the family woke up.
Overall, adding the Luno Air Mattress to our camping setup feels appropriate both given our age and the amount of time my wife and I spend camping. It’s a testament to the next step in our lives as outdoors-people – one built around sustaining this lifestyle for as long as possible and building traditions for our young family. There’s no shame in being comfortable – rather, I now find myself questioning why I roughed it for so long. 