Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Please don't buy this for your pillow. It does not stay cool long enough for this. Most people who are angry have purchased this to use under their heads. This is not an item to sleep on top of. It will not stay cool for more than 30 minutes max, and yes, it does absorb body heat. Don't use it for a dog mat. It will absorb body heat and become warm after around 30 minutes. It is good to cool you down when you are too hot, but not to "keep" you cool through the night or day. The "clumps and the hardness", is normal for these. Put it against your body to warm it up, then gently reshift the clumps around. As the inner material warms up, it becomes more fluid. If it arrives hard and lump, warm it up and shift the insides around first. If that doesn't work, then send it back. Clumping is normal, and many of these were shipped on hot or cold container ships, the insides shift around. In case you are wondering, NO this was not an item sent to me for review. I purchased this with no contact from Linenspa. I decided to chance purchasing it sight unseen because a family member had absconded with my other cooling pads. This cooling pad is larger than many, but is a fair price. Reality is, most of those cooling pads are made of the exact same material, they are simply different sizes. This one is no different from others I have tried that do not say they have "phase change material". Phase change material is a fancy name for something that absorbs and releases energy. It is what most of these cool pads are made from, even if they do not use the fancy terms. These are not designed to stay cold long term, unless you are using one that is connected to electricity or to a cooling unit. These are designed to feel cooler than the ambient temperature in the room. Because they feel cooler than your skin, they feel as if they are "sucking heat from your body". It feels that way because it is doing this in a round about way. By the way, don't make the mistake of "touching it with your hand" and deciding it isn't cool. Put it on your skin for a few seconds, trust me, it is cool. The problem with many of these pads is that the heat from your body goes into the pad as you press your warmer temp against it. It does not take long for your body to heat up the pad, sometimes in as short a time as ten minutes. (Think of a nice hot day. The pool is 83 degrees. When you first jump in, it's freezing! Then you adjust to the temp and it feels good. This is a good explanation of why these pads are initially so cold feeling but warm up fast.) When this happens, the pad no longer feels cool to the touch and is not as refreshing as it was. The pad needs to be traded for a second pad that has been allowed to reach room temp. Putting the pad in the freezer for an hour or two or even in the fridge can help cool it down faster and keep it cooler for longer periods of time. This pad has "sections". That means that the sections heat up, but the rest of the pad does not heat as quickly. The way I use it is as follows.. I only rest on one or two sections at a time, then I can turn the pad around and rest on one or two other sections while the first two begin to cool back off by dissipating the heat into the air. This is a larger pad so there is room to do this if you are not resting your torso on it. This pad does stay cooler for a longer period of time, I never reached more than 30 minutes per section, but that 30 minutes was ample time to stop a hot flash, cool me down enough until the a/c kicked in, or cool me off if I was waiting for a fever reducer to kick in. What amazes me is that this pad feels freezing even after sitting in a room that has a temp of 83 degrees. When placed against my body, it can make me shiver at first. Often, if you are a "leg out from under the cover" type of person, you can put your leg or a foot on a pad to help cool your body off. I keep mine where I can place my forearm on it if needed. These pads work great for hot flashes because they provide instant coolness. If you keep three of them, then you have one that in use, one that is warmer and cooling off and a spare cool one. This will allow you to switch between them and it is what I do when needed. Don't fall under the assumption that you only need one and it will keep you cold all night. You need at least two. Purchase one and try it. If it helps, purchase a second one. These are not "soft" like pillows so if you have a problem with sleeping on anything that isn't pillow soft, try using it under your shoulder/neck, under your arm or under a leg as I suggested above. They are a firm surface that isn't very yielding. They aren't stiff like plywood, they are more like carpet without padding, they have a slight amount of give.