NeoAir XLite – Aluminized Baffles Wearing Off ?!?

mec will take care of you should something happen regardless

Well, I heard back from Cascade Designs, and they have offered to replace the pad for me .

I figure that I'll stick with the XLite for now. I will keep an eye out for this problem, and should the pad degrade on a trip, it's May and I won't need the higher R-value until the fall.

The rep didn't say much else, so I will try to follow up with some questions.

I have already heard back from the rep that responded to my customer service query. I had a response in my inbox in less than 20 minutes.

He has not heard of any kind of production stoppage to correct any problems on the pad, and in fact said that they were behind on filling their orders (I think most of us here already realized that). He also made it clear that Cascade Designs would take care of this problem, sending me as many replacement pads as necessary until they had the issue resolved. My pad is the first that has been brought to his attention with this specific problem, so it is probably too early to say how CD will address it.

Anyway, I am extremely pleased with the customer service response, and I think I'm comfortable sticking with a replacement XLite for the time being. I'll probably pick up a Ridgerest for the interim, something I'll want for winter camping regardless.

They had initial quality issues with the original NeoAir – mostly leaks and delamination of baffles. I am not surprised that they are having potential issues with this new pad as well. It takes them a while to work the kinks out but I dislike them using the general public as a trial group.

On a long trip with quality issues, customer service is irrelevant.

On the other hand Cascade Designs is really pushing the UL envelope for a comfortable sleep pad. So even if they are using us as Beta testers their new technology they have brought in should be commended. At some point use from a small number of testers will only catch so many of the problems. They need to be field tested in large numbers to really find any systemic issues.

Using the general public for that and providing a good warrenty is a good way for us to get the product in our hands a year earlier.

We should have a plan to not die if any piece of equipment fails. For example in winter you should have a plan to survive if your sleeping pad fails or else you shouldn't carry an inflatable pad. Same with any component of gear.

The best way to have beta testers is to give them the goods for free and not charge over $150 for failure. We obviously have a different definition of 'acceptable liability.'

|On a long trip with quality issues, customer service is irrelevant.

I agree but by the statistics of activity by the general public long trips are not the majority, but practically the exception when it comes to outdoor pursuits. Secondly the onus is really on the user to thoroughly test their gear before a serious endeavor, both subjective (footwear fit) and objective (sleeping pad durability).

Using the general public as a trial group seems like the best way to tweak any designs. At that point they've already honed the product to the point that they aren't getting some absurdly high failure rate.. ie, the product will work for the majority of people.

Cascade Designs doesn't force anyone to be beta testers, that is your choice. Same goes with the first year of a new model car..

all air mats have issues at some point or another … just look at the POE fun …

you dont want the possibiity of a failure? … get a ridgerest or another foamy … which is why many mountaineers use em …

"The best way to have beta testers is to give them the goods for free and not charge over $150 for failure. We obviously have a different definition of 'acceptable liability.'"

I think you're missing something here, though. Cascade Designs is having trouble keeping up with demand, but they're not getting overwhelmed with returns. REI would be discouraging people from buying Neoair pads if they were getting a lot of returns on them, but they aren't.

Their defect rate might be higher than we'd like, but so far it's nowhere near to high enough to fit into your definition of a beta test.

That said, if there were a lot of failures in their pads, I'd agree with you, but they'd also be in a world of financial hurt if they were standing behind a poorly QA'd product.

No – not missing anything. There are two parts to the equation: supply and demand. You say that they are having trouble keeping up with demand but we obviously have no idea how many they initially produced so saying the items are in high demand isn't really true (not to mention the local MEC has a ton of them for sale).

"but they're not getting overwhelmed with returns. REI would be discouraging people from buying Neoair pads if they were getting a lot of returns on them, but they aren't."

Do you work for REI or MSR / Cascade Designs? How could you possibly know this?

"That said, if there were a lot of failures in their pads, I'd agree with you, but they'd also be in a world of financial hurt if they were standing behind a poorly QA'd product."

Confused by this. Again, without knowing how many they have produced thus far and since it has only been a couple of months on the market, I can't see how you could possibly make this statement. Give the users some time. On these forums alone there have been some failures, including leaks after a use or two. I also don't think that one product line would bury the company from a financial perspective.

FWIW, there were a LOT of posted failures of the original NeoAir before they got control of their QC.

do you have numbers for neo-air returns etc?
your relative 'a lot of posts' in the forum is a pretty unsolid number. So 50 people here? Is that uniform failure, representative of broad population? etc

the primary thing is you never, ever, have to 'beta test' for this company, so I don't really see what the problem is. people buy cars the first year they come out.

" Secondly the onus is really on the user to thoroughly test their gear before a serious endeavor, both subjective (footwear fit) and objective (sleeping pad durability)."

I really disagree with this, Matt. The pads are very expensive and suggest long term quality regardless if you are a weekend warrior or a week long trekker. Using the term 'serious endeavor' is a misnomer in this case because there are failures when using the pads the first night. Should we expect failures only with 'serious endeavors?'

If the product has been tested to do it's intended job, then failure will not occur when used in the manner that the product was intended for. What constitutes failure in this case? Failure when testing in a controlled environment in, say, one's backyard? Or failure on day 5 into a 10 day trip 200 miles from civilization after it was 'thoroughly tested' in the backyard?

I also don't like your first year of a new model car analogy. I have never had a new car completely fail after driving it for a day. I have never been stranded. And I have never had a failure that meant I could not get it fixed the same or next day. A sleeping pad is a different animal.

"do you have numbers for neo-air returns etc?
your relative 'a lot of posts' in the forum is a pretty unsolid number. So 50 people here? Is that uniform failure, representative of broad population? etc"

This was my point in my previous post. We don't HAVE THE NUMBERS.

Stop with the car analogy – it is really quite wrong.

Sorry I will never agree with premise that the cost of something correlates to durability or quality as a product. Surely a full blown failure on night 1 with a new product is unacceptable. I only suggest one test their gear as best they can prior to a trip where the failure of it could be disastrous. Thus it is in one's interest to test an item in real-usage conditions as best as possible in time frame/setting with lower consequences and have a backup (foam pad?) in case of failure. per your example, if you are on a 10 day trip and have managed to find a location 200 miles from civilization (other than alaska or NWT let me know where..) the onus is on you for due diligence of your gear, and a backyard test is probably a low bar to test one's system.

BD debuted stainless steel crampons recently and there has been some serious hubub about the front point failure. If I was planning a greater range expedition or a seriously challenging route in my backyard, I'd be really hesitant to use them. If I was going up the south side of Mt. Hood as a usual thing for me, I'd be fine to use them.

As for the first year car analogy, I ended up with a first year dodge neon (no direct choice of my own) and let me tell you, many, many times was I left stranded, and many times requiring repairs that took longer than a day to complete. No it didnt die the first day off the lot but it didn't have longevity or reliability either. The mechanic I had generally didn't speak well of the car and indicated I wasn't alone in my problems. This was something that cost many thousands of dollars, not hundred or two hundred dollar piece of plastic intended for camping.

At the end of the day if you see thermarest/CD behaving in that they use full-paying customers as fullon beta testers, they have every right to do this with or without their warranty as you have ever choice in the world to spend the money or not on the newest model that comes out. Which is more likely, that they do really crappy QC and totally let the end users beta test and work from that, or that they try to get to some level of success (70, 80, 90, 95%?) and then move from then? Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. The later sounds much more plausible.

i guess thats all i have to say. to complain about what a company does when the company is generally speaking positive and attempting to push the envelope for light weight/performance, especially with the wonderful warranty they have, doesn't seem like they are hanging someone out to dry.

apologies for the thread drift. I'll keep an eye on my xlite this spring/summer and see if I notice any durability issues.

"No – not missing anything. There are two parts to the equation: supply and demand. You say that they are having trouble keeping up with demand but we obviously have no idea how many they initially produced so saying the items are in high demand isn't really true (not to mention the local MEC has a ton of them for sale). "

You're missing a lot, apparently.

"Do you work for REI or MSR / Cascade Designs? How could you possibly know this?"

I have something called "ears" and I talk to folks. One reason I like REI is that their staff are pretty open about this sort of thing — they're not paid on commission, so they have an incentive to sell customers the right thing to keep returns down. Some of their reps have told me that when they have products with high return rates, they stop selling them.

"Confused by this. Again, without knowing how many they have produced thus far and since it has only been a couple of months on the market, I can't see how you could possibly make this statement."

Various models of Neoairs have been on the market for a couple of years now, and I've run into quite a few people who love them on the trails.

"Give the users some time. On these forums alone there have been some failures, including leaks after a use or two. I also don't think that one product line would bury the company from a financial perspective."

Hyperbole isn't a good debating tactic. Neither is putting words in someone else's mouth.

"FWIW, there were a LOT of posted failures of the original NeoAir before they got control of their QC."

I know. And it's pretty obvious that they've put quite a bit of effort into fixing that mistake, whatever the cause.

I've no idea how many or if beta testing – but I've had a couple failures of the XLites this spring. Eventually, one of their quality control engineers talked to me, and said that the problems I had, along with other folks problems with keeping air in the pad, had led them to halt distribution and review and improve their testing prior to shipment. They do "test" each pad before shipping, and that process hopefully is better now than at first. He did not detail what they will be doing differently.

"You're missing a lot, apparently."

Well, what you learn in first year economics is to not generalize about supply and demand without understanding the concepts. I am missing as much as you because you do not have any figures to support your claim.

"As for the first year car analogy, I ended up with a first year dodge neon (no direct choice of my own) and let me tell you, many, many times was I left stranded, and many times requiring repairs that took longer than a day to complete."

Sorry to hear about that. However, the Neon in comparison to the 'class' is relatively inexpensive. For example, a Honda Civic is more money but would likely not have these problems and is promoted as such. It costs more but there are benefits with ownership, one of which is reliability.

With respect to the NeoAir, this is one very expensive pad in comparison to the class and is promoted as providing benefits over other, much cheaper offerings. When it works, the pad is great. However, these failures that we keep hearing about suggest poor QC by the company. Honda simply would not offer such a car to the market as the Neon and I would expect Cascade Designs to do the same with respect to their pads. Honda would do its testing beforehand.

I perfer to have the product 1 year sooner and deal with issues then wait until the product is perfect. Others may have a different opinion and therefore choose not to be an early adopter.

One other thing might be that this pealing of the reflectix may be a single pad issue or a bad batch pf reflectix neither of which would have shown up in an extended beta. They seem to have dealt with the leaking pad problem by improving QC.

For me this is an acceptable response and buisness plan.

David and Greg, I'm kind of in the middle between the two of you. I originally tried to purchase the old NeoAir (in the infamous Backwoods.com sale in January), but because of a shipping mix-up, Backwoods replaced the pads that never arrived with the new XLites because they no longer had the old ones in stock. I knew going in that there could be issues, but I figured I could trust Cascade Designs customer service.

That said, I would prefer some of these issues to be resolved sooner. My pad might have a bad batch of aluminization on the baffles, but better beta testing might have discovered that issue (it's not like I've actually used the pad very much). I knew the risks ahead of time, and I chose to deal with the possible fallout, which I am now. I still wish the initial quality was better, even if I know that CD will figure out–eventually.

"Well, what you learn in first year economics is to not generalize about supply and demand without understanding the concepts. I am missing as much as you because you do not have any figures to support your claim."

Clearly then, you need to do a lot of reviewing.

"Clearly then, you need to do a lot of reviewing."

I have a Masters in Economics. But since you are being deliberately beligerant and antagonistic about concepts that may excape you, maybe you should just stick with taking pictures.

"I have a Masters in Economics. But since you are being deliberately beligerant and antagonistic about concepts that may excape you, maybe you should just stick with taking pictures."

I guess I shouldn't have expected any better. Oh well, it's not my loss.

This is nonsense. You are not "beta testers" you are consumers. You do not have the metrics to perform beta testing on these products.

Just because the reflective surface is peeling off a bit doesn't mean the pad isn't meeting the advertised "R" parameters or that CD isn't aware of this happening. That's something that you as a consumer have assumed to be an issue and because customer service is excellent at CD, they give you a new pad to keep you happy, it's not an admission of a problem.

A leaky pad is obviously a problem and we as consumers can evaluate that but until you have the equipment to measure "R" value loss, making the assumption that the pad is failing may be a false assumption. It may be that the "R" value is increased by only .5% by coating the baffles with a reflective coating. If you are only losing 10% of the coating then the R value is not impacted significantly. My point is that you don't know the design parameters so how do you know it's a failure.

I think the poor design decision was that Cascade Designs made the pad transparent. If they had made the pad solid you wouldn't perceive a problem until you started to get cold when you believed the pad should be sufficient to keep you warm.

I remember hearing the same kind of complaint about the Montbell stretch bags. Montbell used a translucent material that allowed you to see the distribution of the down. If the down didn't appear to be packed into the tubes, many users thought they were under-filled. It's easy to shift the down around in these bags and many people like to be able to do that (I do) so is this a design feature or a flaw? Mine has tested accurate to it's rating but I can see thin spots in the down distribution and occasionally shake the bag to redistribute the down. Do I think other sleeping bags suffer from this problem as well… of course, but you just can't see it happen.

Don't assume you know the design parameters, you don't.

"I have a Masters in Economics. But since you are being deliberately beligerant and antagonistic about concepts that may excape you, maybe you should just stick with taking pictures."

Geez David.

Ryan