Travel pillows have always baffled me. Almost every element of their design conflicts with their intended use. The dumb plushy neck cast design playbook most follow caters to a sleeping style that’s unnatural to the majority of humanity. Even worse, the more comfortable iterations are also the most unwieldy to carry. And yet millions still lug them around the world.
Mercifully, Italian Travel accessory maker Banale is applying some basic common sense to the category via a fully-funded Kickstarter project dubbed the Omni-Pillow.
Yes, it can act like a typical neck pillow with a few notable upgrades including a hole for routing headphone cables, a catcher loop for attaching a blanket and a dedicated pocket for precious valuables like a wallet or phone. But it can also transform into a traditional pillow if you’re like me and prefer to sleep with your head leaned against the airplane cabin walls, or resting on the tray table.
Since the Omni is made from memory foam, it’s comfortable and also highly compressible. A waterproof stuff sack (which shrinks the entire pillow down to roughly the size of a mango for stowage) ships with every pillow for easy packing.
You can even strap the Omni on a standard bed pillow as a topper, which will make fans of memory foam pillows at home happy, and it features a machine washable cover for smart hygiene.
The downside? Right now you can only obtain one by supporting the Kickstarter campaign for ~$54 and hope it ships by the estimated delivery date of April 2018. The project has already blown the doors off its initial funding goal of $12,000, though, so there is a stronger chance this traveler’s dream becomes a reality.
