In-depth Comparison (2024): Beckham Hotel Collection Pillow vs. Pacific Coast Double DownAround Pillow

Polyester Fiber (Down Alternative)

The Beckham Hotel Collection Pillow is very soft and very thin, providing a potential option for stomach-sleepers. However, back-sleepers and side-sleepers should be aware that they might not receive enough support. When I sleep on it, the pillow goes flat underneath me.

The Beckham pillow is similar in softness to the Sleepgram pillow, but I measure the Beckham pillow at 6 inches of starting loft instead of the 10 inches for the Sleepgram pillow, which means the Beckham pillow feels even thinner. The polyester fibers compress significantly when I lay my head on the pillow, and because the polyester fibers glide smoothly without much friction, I get the impression that all the stuffing moves out of the way when I lie down. The Beckham pillow doesn't provide enough support for me in most situations.

The thickness and softness of the pillow bring to my mind a duvet folded in half, but the tendency for the polyester fibers to glide magnifies the comparison for me. When I shift my weight, the top layer of fabric will shift with me while I feel the bottom layer glide away, almost as if I were indeed sleeping on a folded duvet with the two layers sliding away from each other.

The Beckham pillow has the moniker "Hotel Collection Pillow," suggesting that it is similar to pillows found in hotels. In my experience staying at hotels like the Ritz Carlton, St. Regis, and Intercontinental, I've found that higher end hotels tend to use puffier pillows that are soft but still substantial. There is no strong connection in my mind between the pillows I've experienced at luxury hotels and the Beckham pillows that I purchased. Of course, I haven't stayed at every hotel out there, so I can't rule anything out definitively.

I do like the sateen stripes on the fabric, and the seams of the pillow are double-stitched, which give me more confidence in the construction of the pillow. However, the amount of fill material seams lacking to me in the pillows I purchased. While the Beckham pillow has a great price point, I feel like I get what I pay for because the amount of fill material per pillow also appears to be proportionally lower. For stomach-sleepers who want a thin, soft pillow, the Beckham pillow can be a great option, but for back-sleepers and side-sleepers, I'd recommend investing in more support.

Down and Feather

The Pacific Coast Double DownAround Pillow is a down and feather pillow that uses a double-chamber design like the Chamberlain Down Dual-Chamber Pillow. However, I see a huge difference in quality.

Most notably, even though the Pacific Coast pillow uses a dual-chamber design that keeps feathers in the inner chamber and down in the outer layer, I can still feel the quills from the feathers when I lie down. In contrast, the Chamberlain Down pillow feels like sleeping on air because the down layer feels more robust. I suspect this is because of a difference in the size of down clusters used by each pillow. The Pacific Coast website lists the down fill power, which measures the size of the down clusters, at 550 in the Double DownAround Pillow. The Chamberlain website lists the fill power at 600+, which means that the down clusters are larger in the Chamberlan Down Dual-Chamber Pillow. Larger clusters tend to be better at trapping air and providing loft.

In the Pacific Coast pillow I have, feathers are sticking out of the stitching along the seams, as shown in the picture below. This gives me low confidence in the construction quality of the pillow.

Another consideration is that I can hear a rustling noise inside the Pacific Coast pillow I have when I push down on it. The noise is relatively loud, and I'd compare it to the crinkling of a plastic grocery bag in terms of loudness and nature. The sound appears to originate from the inner chamber. Since a pillow is something I put my ear against when I sleep, the last adjective I'd want to use to describe it is "noisy." I can hear a crinkling in the Puredown pillow and Chamberlain Down pillow fabrics if I rustle them and concentrate on listening, but I wouldn't consider noise to be an issue for those two pillows. The Pacific Coast pillow I have is much louder to my ears and in a completely different league of noise.

The Pacific Coast Double DownAround Pillow comes in a Soft, Medium, and Firm version on their website as of my time of purchase. I ordered the pillow from Amazon, and I didn't see the firmness specified in the listing when I purchased. I ended up receiving the Soft version, which I prefer to use for stomach-sleeping. It's possible that the Medium and Firm versions can work for back-sleeping and side-sleeping, but based on my experience with the perceived construction quality of the Soft pillow, I don't intend to try the other options.

Finally, it's worth noting that the Pacific Coast pillow, like all down and feather pillows, would require regular fluffing to restore the loft. Because down and feather pillows work by trapping air, which escapes after an extended period of sleeping, down and feather pillows benefit from a fluff that pumps air back in.