The Robens Air Impact Single 3.8 Sleeping Mat is seriously light at the price, and makes the difference between a good night's sleep and, well, no night's sleep.

There are, I know, a lot of hardcore bare-bones tourers among you who will assert that sleeping mats and the like are an unnecessary luxury and dead weight when bike camping. I would disagree. Find a compact, lightweight sleeping mat and it can make all the difference.

Robens' mission is to produce high performance camping equipment at a good price. The company has a variety of different types of sleeping mat, catering to different users and different comfort requirements.

The Air Impact Single is the lightest model of mat that Robens offer, with the 3.8cm being the thicker of the two options. The thinner model is the 2.5cm which is about 100g lighter. Both are designed to be a balance between comfort and weight/packsize for backpacking or bikepacking.

Coming with its own drawstring bag, rolled up, the mat has a decent packsize of just 26cm x 17cm. It'll fit into a pannier or on top of a rack with no bother at all. Opened out, it's 182cm x 51cm and 3.8cm thick, so it'll be full length for most people, but not if you're over 6 foot.

It has varying thickness throughout, to cater to providing warmth and insulation to the bits of the body that need it most without unnecessary extra weight. The shape is also designed to keep unnecessary weight to a minimum, with trimmed corners at head and feet. It's self-inflating, and uses a high performance valve for quick inflation and deflation.

Sleeping on it was comfortable enough to give a decent night's kip, but ultimately it's an ultralight backpacking mat and therefore not designed for princess and the pea types. The crucial thing was that it gave cushioning, protected the body from the cold of the ground and generally improved comfort, with the minimum of extra weight in the bag. The slightly sticky stripes down the middle meant that my sleeping bag (and me) didn't end up sliding off the thing during the night too.

There are only a few models of sleeping mat available on the market that match this sort of weight, packsize and performance/comfort, and by far the majority of them are a good bit more expensive than the Robens. £45 marks a genuine bargain for a well performing super light sleeping mat that reliably does just what it's supposed to.

Verdict

Light, compact and does just what it's supposed to, at a very reasonable price.