3 Parts Cooling

The Dozase ThermaCool Adjustable Pillow does a lot of things well. Of all the pillows we tested, it was the only one that used “Triple-Action Cooling,” which essentially means Dosaze incorporated cooling technology into every aspect of the pillow.

1. The ThermaCool cover, for instance, is icy-cold to the touch and uses a proprietary bamboo blend that you can literally feel with your hands.
2. Their cooling fill is designed to wick away body heat as it transfers into the pillow. This essentially guarantees the pillow doesn’t get hot after a few minutes of sleeping on it (a problem we ran into with a few other brands).
3. Also, I really liked the supportive ventilated core that allowed airflow through the center of the pillow, pulling out the heat and letting cooler air in.

Each feature was fine alone. Together, they really went a long way to making this pillow stand out from the other brands on my list. I was genuinely impressed with how cooling it was. Most of the issues that I had with the other brands is that they use one or maybe two features to stand out, but the Dosaze used cooling gels, airflow, and ice-cold fabrics together to make a really compelling pillow package.

2 Parts Comfort

If the cooling wasn’t enough, what took the Dosaze ThermaCool Pillow over the top for me was its comfort and support. Dosaze combines some technologies here (something they seem to enjoy doing with this pillow) and created the ThermaCool with a structural supportive core, and then a shredded adjustable fill surrounding it.

This does two things.

First, the supportive core can help keep your neck and head aligned, reducing neck pain and back issues. Also, it provided a “floor” to the pillow so it was soft, but it didn’t feel like I was falling through the bed when I laid my head on it.

Second, the adjustable fill made everything super plush and comfortable. Think the best of a soft, plush pillow mixed with a supportive neck-pain-reducing one. On top of that, the fill is adjustable and can be added or removed, tailoring the pillow to whatever height or firmness you want. While some brands (like Coop) do this, the gel core meant it didn’t feel like the pillow was unstable or too soft. I was genuinely impressed.

All of this together earned the Dosaze ThermaCool Adjustable Pillow our top spot!

The Coop is one of our other well-reviewed pillows that has gained a lot of popularity recently, and it was one of the best we slept on. We loved the cooling gel-infused memory foam and the adjustability it offered (although it’s standard fill was just fine for us).

Coop has a few pillows, and the Eden (the one we tested) has an adjustable fill. The fill is a “cooling gel-infused” foam that is designed to help promote inner cooling and wick away heat. Overall, we thought the pillow provided decent cooling. Our main issue with the Coop was that the fill (which is mostly microfiber) tended to feel floppy and flat at times and not particularly structural.

We always try to include a solid Value Pick in our reviews, and we think the SlumberCloud UltraCool Pillow fits the bill. Using what they claim is “NASA-inspired technology,” the SlumberCloud is a down alternative with lots of loft. They don’t offer adjustable fill for this model and instead solve the problem of customization through two size/loft options: King or Standard, and Soft/Medium or Medium/Firm.

The main cooling feature of the pillow is its cover, so there isn’t anything particularly “cooling” about its fill material. For a budget pillow, however, it’s still a great option.

If the SlumberCloud is the value option, the TempurPeric Breeze Pro+ is the luxury option on the other side of the spectrum. Nearly 2.5x our top two picks, the TempurPedic isn’t for anyone looking to save money on their cooling pillow!

That being said, you do get plenty of features for such a high price tag (as you should). First, the pillow is a memory foam core with a cooling gel infusion. Of all the pillows, this one was the firmest right out of the box. In fact, anyone with a lighter head (read, women) might struggle to sleep on something that doesn’t give when you lay your head down. As a result, this makes it tough for stomach sleepers since your head won’t ever be level with your spine.

The outer cover is a cool-touch material that also has gel bands, so you get two levels of cooling. Overall, the pillow does a fantastic job of staying cool, but for this price, you might as well buy a window unit and run the AC overnight.

The MyPillow, flatly, isn’t a great cooling pillow. Generally, we didn’t love the MyPillow for a few reasons. First, it has another one of those gimmicky-feeling features (similar to the Marlow pillow), only this time in the form of “interlocking foam pieces.” They market irregular pieces of foam as an interlocking structure that creates something rigid when it just doesn’t really work that way in reality.

Regarding cooling, there are no technologies that cause this pillow to really help at night. It does have one thing going for it, mainly the fact that it’s just a light pillow in general. If you love how the MyPillow feels, however, we recommend something like a cooling pillow cover (Dozase has one called the ThermaCool Cover, for example).

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The Casper Snow Foam Pillow has a few features packed into it: four cooling strips along the pillow (known as HeatDelete Bands), AirScape foam to dissipate heat, and a triple-foam design.

The “Snow” technology, as they call it on their website, is not clearly defined, but we assume that it’s the result of the cooling strips and the AirScape foam. The AirScape foam is designed to have micro-perforations, which essentially means it’s riddled with intentional holes to allow airflow to circulate. More airflow typically leads to more cooling, so it’s a nice feature to have.

Instead of making one side fully gel-cooled, they decided to design it with four patches of cooling (although it seems easier to just make the entire thing gel-cooled?).

Regarding comfort, the pillow is great and provides all the support you should expect from a totally foam construction.

Latex fills an interesting niche in pillow technology, and if you like squishy, bouncy pillows, you’ll likely love the Purple Harmony. The Purple is a hypoallergenic latex, and its construction is slightly firm with an expected elastic squish to it. Latex is renowned for its cleanliness (no foam or fiber to hold in dust), and it can wick moisture well since it doesn’t absorb it.

Purple is famous for its honeycomb design on all of its products, and the Harmony also includes it. They claim it helps to distribute weight, but in this format, it’s more of a way to distribute the cooling gell across the pillow. The outer cover on the pillow is thin and breathable, so the cooling gel inside the honeycomb really does all the heavy lifting here regarding cooling power.

We loved the pillow; it’s just probably not designed explicitly as a cooling pillow.

The Marlow Pillow was mediocre, in our opinion, and one of the features seemed like a marketing gimmick and not a real feature.

First, the company doesn’t prioritize cooling as a main feature of this pillow. Instead, they treat it as a cool (pun intended) bonus feature. The cooling mechanism is described as a gel-infused memory foam and a breathable cover, which are all okay.

The real “silly” feeling aspect of this pillow was how they hyped up what amounted to a zipper. First, the addition of a zipper on the side of the pillow “for airflow” doesn’t really generate an internal breeze like they would have you believe. Second, Marlow also asserts that opening the zippers is the best way to adjust the loft of the pillow itself. Opening the zipper makes it fluffier, and closing it makes it denser. In reality, this would just compress the pillow before your head even hits it, so it’s just not doing anything.

We would pass on this as a cooling pillow for those reasons.