Casper Foam Pillow with Snow Technology review

The Casper Foam Pillow with Snow Technology exists to answer a question as old as sleep itself: How do you keep a hot head cool at night? It does so adroitly, combining 'old-fashioned' memory foam with some more recent advancements – pulled from its celebrated line of mattresses – that really work, even if the ultimate result isn’t quite on the level of sticking your head in the refrigerator for five minutes. (We would not recommend doing that, by the way.)

Whether it’s one of the best pillows for you depends on how hot you get while you sleep; if overheating isn’t a major concern for you, then the pillow’s $45 price increase on Casper’s regular, nearly identical Foam Pillow will not be worth it. But, the Foam Pillow with Snow Technology does fulfill its advertised, cooling promise, while also offering a significant upgrade on Casper’s original pillow design — at least as far as my head is concerned.

Casper Foam Pillow with Snow: Size + price

The pillow comes in two sizes: Standard, measuring 16x24 inches, and King, measuring 16x32 inches; the 1.25-inch gusset is the same on each. You don’t have the option of selecting different loft sizes; this truly is a one-size-fits-all purchase. The smaller pillow is priced at $139 and the larger at $169, and both are available at casper.com as well as other online retailers such as Amazon. In addition, the pillow is covered by Casper’s one-year limited Pillow Warranty.

Casper Foam Pillow with Snow Technology: Design

This new pillow from mattress-by-mail pioneer Casper is almost identical to the company’s previous Foam Pillow in shape and general design: A zippered cover conceals three layers of memory foam (both low and high density, regular and viscoelastic polyurethane), which have been dotted with hundreds of perforations to help wick away heat while you sleep. The foam ensures that the pillow both supports your head and neck in any sleep position and that the pillow maintains its shape, all with no fluffing required. The pillow’s removable cover is machine washable.

The big difference between the first Foam Pillow and this Snow Technology version is, er, the Snow Technology. This consists of a 'cool-touch outer layer', where the fabric is infused with phase-change material and HeatDelete Bands – or graphite strips positioned between the layers of foam to dial back their natural insulative properties. The same tech also powers some of the best cooling mattresses around (head to our Casper Wave Hybrid Snow mattress review for a look at the specific model). 

Casper Foam Pillow with Snow Technology: Performance

Like Casper’s mattresses, the Foam Pillow with Snow Technology arrives vacuum packed in a box that seems much too small for it.

Image 1 of 2

Cut open its plastic pouch, and the pillow unrolls by itself. Upon opening my pillow package, I detected no off-putting smells; the pillow was ready for use immediately.

With the exception of one week I was out of town, I slept on the Foam Pillow with Snow Technology every night for nearly two months, including at least a few days with a bout of fever-inducing illness. The pillow mostly lived up to Casper’s claims. I tend to sweat a lot when I’m sick, but I’ve never been bothered by that less than I was when using this pillow. On regular nights, the effect was somewhat less noticeable, but I was always comfortable. That said, the pillow doesn’t so much cool you down as it does keep you from overheating; it hardly works miracles, but it’s good at applying realistic solutions to this one particular problem.

It does so in another way, too. I tend not to love foam pillows, as the material used to make them frequently fails to provide the kind of support I prefer. But Casper managed that here — the pillow always kept my head firmly cradled without making me feel like the foam was compacting under my weight or breaking apart from the inside out. The flip side of this is that the pillow is in no way flimsy, which means if you tend to flip it, slide it, squish it or hug it at night (as I do), it’s going to be an unforgiving sleep partner. I eventually adjusted to this, but it did take me a while.

Should I buy the Casper Foam Pillow with Snow Technology?

I’ve been a Casper partisan for years, having really enjoyed their original mattress, pillow, and bedding designs. (It’s one of the few cases where it’s a good thing when someone’s work puts you to sleep.) In some ways, the Foam Pillow with Snow Technology is my favorite Casper product yet. By merging the company’s mattress and pillow approaches in a smart way, it does exactly what Casper promises, with predictably few frills. After two months of use, it’s in just as good a condition as it was when it popped out of the box and I’m looking forward to spending considerably more time “testing” it in every sleep scenario from A to Zzz.

But if you don’t need what it has to offer, it’s a tough, expensive sell. Its $139 price is steep on its own, but it seems even higher when you consider that the ordinary Foam Pillow — which uses the same perforated foam that Casper brags will “keep you comfortably asleep all night long” — rings in at $89. (Casper’s standard pillow costs $65.) You are, then, paying $50 more for a slightly different cover and those HeatDelete bands. Good as this pillow may be, that’s pushing it unless a hot head is keeping you awake at night.

If it is, however, this is an enticing option among the pillows we’ve tested, offering generally better cooling than the equivalently priced Purple Harmony Pillow and a firmer, more consistent experience than the far less expensive Coop Home Goods Original Pillow (though that one is size adjustable and comes with a five-year warranty). Even if the Foam Pillow with Snow Technology isn’t for everyone, if it’s for you, expect to appreciate how it lets cooler heads prevail.