The Gaiam Essentials is a 10mm NBR foam mat with a carrying sling at a budget price. Best Products editor Cat Bowen, a daily runner with sore joints, bought one and found kneeling and seated poses comfortable on hardwood for the first time, and that it was thick enough to soften the noise of dropped weights. Her one complaint was the length.
Full review
Bought to make floor work bearable
Best Products senior editor Cat Bowen runs every day and describes her joints as haggard. A standard thin mat on her hardwood floors was uncomfortable on her knees, wrists and tailbone, so she bought the Gaiam Essentials, the 2/5-inch thick version of Gaiam's basic mat, for under $30.
Comfortable kneeling and seated poses
In her own practice, she reports that bhekasana no longer made her knees hurt and sitting in sukhasana was comfortable. She also found it works as a lifting mat: it was thick enough to absorb the sound of weights hitting the floor, which matters in an apartment.
On unboxing, Bowen noted only a mild new-mat smell rather than the strong odor she had met with other mats, and she cleans it by wiping it down with a sponge.
Build and size
Best Products lists the mat at 72 by 24 inches and 2/5 inch thick, made of NBR foam and free of PVC and several phthalates, with a strap for carrying. Bowen's one reservation is length: she is the exact length of the mat and said it could definitely be longer.
Strengths
- +Made kneeling and seated poses comfortable on hardwood floors for Best Products' tester
- +Thick enough to absorb the sound of dropped weights, per Best Products
- +Only a mild new-mat smell out of the box, per Best Products
- +Wipes clean with a sponge and comes with a carrying strap
Watch-outs
- −Best Products' tester, who is the same length as the mat, said it could definitely be longer
- −At 10mm it is the thinnest mat on this page, with less padding than the half-inch and 1-inch options
How it compares
At 10mm it is the thinnest mat on this page: a little thinner than the half-inch Amazon Basics (12.7mm) and ProsourceFit Extra Thick (13mm), and far thinner than the 1-inch BalanceFrom GoCloud. At 72 inches it is shorter than the 74-inch Amazon Basics.
Rating sources
“It’s thick, it’s luxurious, it’s affordable, and darn it, it’s just dang comfy.”
Not in the average — we derived this score from the review's words, and a publisher printed a score for this product, so the printed number counts instead.
Our 5.0 score is the average of 1 of the scored reviews above. 1 derived score above is not in the average because a publisher printed a score for this product. Ratings marked * were derived from the reviewer’s written analysis or video transcript — the publisher didn’t print an explicit numeric score, so we inferred one from their own words. Click through to verify. More about methodology.
