Pillow Face-Off: Coop Home Goods vs. MyPillow
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If your pillow has gone flat for the umpteenth time and you’re shopping for a replacement, look no further. In Consumer Reports first-ever tests of 10 pillows, we discovered a few that offer lasting support.
For this face-off, we pitted the lesser-known Coop Home Goods Original Adjustable pillow (sold online and at chiropractic offices), against the popular MyPillow Premium (sold online and at Bed Bath & Beyond). Both pillows rate in the top half of our pillow ratings, and they cost about the same.
“These two pillows have different materials inside, and one is adjustable,” says Chris Regan, the Consumer Reports project leader in charge of testing pillows. “These factors make a real difference in how much support each offers sleepers.”
Both pillow manufacturers offer a full refund within a trial period—with the Coop, you have 100 days to try out the pillow; with the MyPillow, you have 60 days. Both pillows can be washed and dried, according to their labels. Read on to find out who wins this pillow fight.
For more on pillows, see our pillow buying guide. To see all the pillows we test, check out our full pillow ratings.
Vitals
Coop Home Goods
The Coop Home Goods Premium Adjustable Loft pillow is made of shredded memory foam and comes with a bag of extra foam and instructions for adjusting the filling to suit your sleep style—side sleepers can make the pillow thicker; back sleepers can remove some foam for a thinner pillow. We test the pillow both ways. According to the manufacturer’s instructions, you can wash and dry the entire pillow, or remove the cover to wash and dry. This pillow comes in a king or queen size.
MyPillow
The MyPillow Premium, the higher-end version of the MyPillow Classic, is stuffed with chunks of foam, and according to the manufacturer’s instructions, is machine washable and dryable. It doesn’t have a removable cover, though. This pillow comes in king and queen sizes.
Test by Test
Support: In this test, we assess how well each pillow supports the head and neck of people of all sizes—petite, average, and large or tall—whether they sleep on their side or back. We use a pressure mat to analyze roughly 1,600 pressure points and note areas where the pillow is too soft or too firm around the head or doesn’t offer adequate support.
Both pillows earn an Excellent rating for how well they support side sleepers, but only the Coop pillow earns an Excellent score for supporting back sleepers as well; MyPillow earns a mediocre Good rating.
Although the MyPillow offers decent support, our panel of testers noticed that the foam chunks inside the MyPillow had an annoying problem of sometimes shifting and bunching up in one spot while they were sleeping on it. The Coop is the clear winner in this test.
Resilience: To simulate use over time, we place a 225-pound evenly distributed load on each pillow that has been placed in room set to 80 percent humidity with a temperature of 98.6° F to mimic body heat, and we leave it for 96 hours. We measure the thickness and firmness of the pillow after we take it out of the chamber and again after hand-fluffing it. Pillows that return to their original shape score well in this test.
The Coop pillow earns an Excellent rating for resilience—it returns to its original shape with little or no change. The MyPillow earns a Good rating—it bounces back a little, but not to its original height. The Coop wins again.
Use and preference: We ask a panel of testers to rate the pillows based on a number of criteria that machines can’t measure, such as whether the pillow conforms well to the head and whether the cover is comfortable. Testers also note if the pillow looks sturdy—whether the stitching is even or coming apart—plus whether the pillow has a removable cover that you can wash separately. Altogether, this makes up our use and preference rating.
The Coop pillow earns an Excellent rating for having a removable cover you can clean and sturdy stitching, and our testers noted it conformed nicely to their heads. Our testers also rated the feel of the Coop’s cover higher than the MyPillow’s. The MyPillow earns only a Good rating—it didn’t conform to our testers’ heads as well, and they didn’t like the cover material as much. The winner here: the Coop.
Breathability: A pillow that traps heat and makes you sweaty can cause uncomfortable sleep. So to see how well a pillow dissipates heat, we check how insulating it is by measuring the temperature between the head and the pillow after 60 minutes of use. We also use a humidity sensor to evaluate how breathable a pillow is. In these tests, the MyPillow earns a slightly better rating of Excellent to the Coop’s Very Good. MyPillow wins this round.
The Winner
Although it sleeps slightly warmer than the MyPillow, the Coop wins handily in this contest. It offers great support for side and back sleepers—and costs $10 less than the MyPillow. The fact that you can customize the amount of foam stuffing just as you like it is a perk that the MyPillow can’t match. Plus, you have 40 days more to try out the Coop than the MyPillow before you have to decide whether you want to return it for a refund.
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