In-depth Comparison (2024): MyPillow Premium Series Pillow vs. Pacific Coast Double DownAround Pillow

Shredded Foam

The MyPillow Premium Series Pillow dominates hours of late-night commercials, but the pillow disappoints in person. MyPillow uses large chunks of shredded foam with an elastic nature. As a result, the pillow is lumpy and bouncy. I would not recommend the MyPillow due to these comfort issues and the lack of adjustability.

The MyPillow doesn't come with a separate removable cover, and the pillow encasing cannot be unzipped, which means the pillow loft can't be adjusted. Instead, it comes in four different loft levels coded as colors, in increasing order of filling level: White, Yellow, Green, and Blue. I ordered the Green fill level after using the selection tool on the MyPillow site.

I measure the loft at about 7.5 inches, and the fill is pretty firm. The pillow barely compresses when I lay my head down passively. The loft is slightly too high for my comfort level when I sleep on my side, though I don't mind when I sleep on my back. The Green level pillow is too thick and firm for stomach-sleepers, but the White or Yellow fill level might work for that purpose. Because the pillow can't be adjusted, sleepers have to hope that one of the four fill levels happens to fit perfectly for them and hope that they choose the correct one on the first try.

My main issue with the pillow, though, is the nature of the shredded foam filling. The Saybrook and Coop pillows use softer foam and mix the foam with polyester fibers, so those pillows don't feel lumpy to me. On the other hand, MyPillow uses large chunks of firm foam without any polyester fiber, so the pillow is noticeably lumpy. The pieces of foam also have an elastic bounce. The MyPillow reminds me of a bag of packing peanuts in the firmness, the lumpiness, and the slight elasticity. When I shift my weight on the pillow, I can feel the elasticity of the foam. The jiggling of the elastic foam can be distracting as I try to fall asleep.

Based on the MyPillow website, it looks like there are two main differences between the MyPillow Classic Series and MyPillow Premium Series. First, the MyPillow Premium has a shorter width, coming in at 16.5 inches wide compared to the 18.5 inches of the MyPillow Classic. I would not expect this difference to affect my sleeping experience on the MyPillow. Second, the MyPillow Premium comes in four loft levels (White, Yellow, Green, and Blue), while the MyPillow Classic only comes in two (Medium and Firm). This is also not a difference that would affect my review since my main complaint is the lumpiness and bounciness.

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.