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Using a travel pillow often makes me feel overly jowls-conscious. Seeing a basset hound or late-career Robert Mitchum has a similar effect.
Because snoozing in the economy cabin of a plane involves sitting upright, the laws of gravity dictate that your chin will eventually droop toward your clavicle and/or shoulders. Letting your head bob and sag on its own in this situation puts a strain on the spine, but smooshing your face onto a U-shaped pillow that’s around your neck places a lot of pressure on the jaw, cheeks, throat, and other jowly parts pressing into the memory foam.
A solution devised by Cabeau, a popular maker of carefully designed travel pillows, is the company’s “Exclusive S3 Seat Strap System,” a pair of Velcro strips on the back of the pillow that you can use to secure the thing to your airplane seat’s headrest. Thoughtfully, the straps are designed to be tucked into the gap between your headrest seat cushion and your seat back, meaning they don't obstruct the seat-back screen for the person behind you.
Raised side supports and an adjustable clasp on the front of the pillow further limit wobbling. Set it all up properly and, Cabeau says, your head and spine will be held “in perfect alignment” while you doze.
But when I tried out Cabeau’s Evolution S3 pillow during a long flight last year, I found the arrangement too immobilizing. As a matter of fact, I kind of felt like I had been put in traction at the hospital.
What’s more, the pillow’s high, bulky sides become oppressive after a while and make wearing over-ear headphones difficult, especially for flyers under, say, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, like my husband, Frank, who sometimes helps me test travel accessories and is a short king. In our ranking of the most popular neck pillows, published here at Frommer's last summer, we put Cabeau in fifth place out of five.
Evidently aware of complaints like ours, the company has now introduced a streamlined version—the Slim TNE S3 Deluxe ($59.99)—that has been "crafted for smaller frames” and “works with all headphones!” per the promotional materials.
Is Cabeau's "sleeker, slimmer" travel pillow better than previous versions?
Tireless consumer advocates that we are, Frank and I duly tested the updated pillow during a recent long-haul flight to and from Europe. Both of us found the latest iteration to be a marked improvement.
The sides of the horseshoe-shaped pillow have indeed been made less bulky in order to avoid crowding your ears and making you feel like you’re stuck in a heavy neck brace. Frank could use both his over-ear headphones and his peripheral vision without polyurethane impediment. Though I consider myself, at 5 feet, 10 inches tall, of average rather than small stature, I also preferred not being suffocated in my sleep.
Further upgrades: The straps for securing the pillow to the headrest are of a springier, stretchier material than on the previous version, and the adjustable toggle clasp on the front has been replaced with another Velcro strap—sorry, “Patented Headcatch Technology”—that allows you to close the front of the pillow, but not in the viselike, strangulating way of the toggle clasp.
Taken together, all of these changes make the pillow less restrictive while maintaining the item’s supportive capabilities. And isn’t that what we want when we sleep—to be kept in proper alignment, sure, but also to be comfortable? Cabeau’s latest finds a better balance between being held and being throttled.
The primary drawback is the assembly required. It seems like asking a lot to expect people to watch an instruction video in order to take a nap, but you’ll probably want to consult the clips on Cabeau’s website to make sure you use all the straps properly.
Final score
As with our earlier travel pillow ranking, Frank and I separately scored the Cabeau Slim TNE S3 Deluxe using my proprietary PACES rubric. PACES stands for: Portability, Adjustability, Comfort, Ease of use, and Support.
Both of us rated the pillow with a score of 1 to 5 in each of those categories and then combined our two totals for the final score. A perfect rating would be 50.
Our PACES score for the Cabeau Slim TNE S3: 42.5.
Here's the full breakdown for each letter in the PACES acronym:
- Portability: 9 (out of 10)
- Adjustability: 9
- Comfort: 8
- Ease of use: 8.5
- Support: 8
The last time we did this, Cabeau’s Evolution S3 earned a 35. If we had included the current pillow on that ranking, its score would put the pillow in second place, behind only the Trtl Travel Pillow, which we gave a 46 out of 50.
Update your scorecards accordingly.