Looking for a new pillow with a cool touch and great support? So was I, until I purchased the Harmony pillow from Purple. Here is my review of what some people believe to be the best latex pillow sold in 2021.
Purple Mattresses
Purple sells high-tech, high-comfort mattresses over the internet, not unlike Casper, Tuft and Needle, Saatva, Nectar, Avocado, Layla, or any other of other brands. Purple has set themselves apart with their innovative “Purple Grid,” a honeycomb-shaped latex grid that the company uses across all its mattresses and some of its pillows.
The grid is quite soft, but also supportive and slightly springy. It doesn’t get crushed down and doesn’t need to be fluffed in the morning — it bounces right back to how it was before you slept.
The Purple grid is tucked away inside the pillow, so you don’t know it’s there, except if you examine the pillow quite closely. Rather, the pillow feels like a pillow and the mattresses feel like mattresses, regardless of what’s inside. It’s the same way where a coil springs mattresses might have hundreds of springs inside them, but you aren’t supposed to feel them.
In other words, if the Purple Grid sounds a bit too high-tech for you, don’t worry because it blends right in and you will probably never think of it again.
Purple Harmony Pillow
Purple has a very extensive page about the Harmony pillow, filled with extensive explanations of what’s in the pillow — the “Grid Hex gel layer and Talalay latex core” and so forth — so we won’t do through that here.
The pillow is at the high end of what you’d expect, $159 to be exact. If you want it in the king size (wider), it’s $199.
The Harmony is sold in three heights – low, medium, and high. Low is for stomach sleepers, medium is for back and side sleepers, and high is for back/side sleepers who are particularly tall or who simply prefer a higher neck angle when sleeping.
I purchased the normal width in the medium height, which is what I’d expect most people would be buying. It cost me $159 plus tax, so about $173 (shipping is free).
I would note that shipping times are quite slow, compared to current expectations. It took 12 days to get the pillow to me. That’s not a terrible wait, but in this world of lighting fast shipping from Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, and their ilk, 12 days seemed like a long time to wait, especially if you are ordering the pillow because you aren’t sleeping well or if you have neck pain!
Sleeping With The Harmony Pillow
I’ve been using Coco-Mat natural latex pillows for some time, but after some recent discomfort I was ready for a switch. The Harmony seemed like a logical choice as it offered what I liked about latex pillows but also offered more structure than the shredded natural latex in the Coco-Mat pillows, which tend to get lumpy after a night of sleeping.
The Harmony pillow is quite heavy, which means handling it day to day is a bit odd, but this doesn’t affect the sleeping experience. Once it’s in a case on your bed the extra weight gives it a nice stability, so it’s not prone to sliding off the bed or behind the mattress.
The Harmony pillow is very sort, but also supportive thanks to the structure of the latex — which gives until a point where it starts to firm up. You can’t feel the waffle-like pattern when sleeping. In fact, you can tell the pillow is more springy than a natural latex pillow and much springy than down, but with a more natural feel than most synthetic down (anti-allergenic) pillows I’ve used.
I find the pillow to be quite comfortable. It stays quite cool and it doesn’t get lumpy, which means it never gets tough and hurts my ear, which happens with my shredded latex pillows.
Long-Term Thoughts
Having used the pillow for some months now, I’m still quite happy with it. The Harmony is keeping my feeling cool through the summer and I still like the springy feel it has. That said, I’m not super picky about my pillows these days.
My wife has had neck pain issues, which was one of the reasons we purchased the pillow and felt that the price was justified. I asked her about the Purple Harmony pillow she’s been using and she noted that “the verdict is still out” and that while her sore neck has partially improved, the pillow wasn’t a surefire fix.
So it turns out that I like her pillow more than she does, which wasn’t the goal, but it’s an improvement over the previous pillow — a Casper Original Pillow, which I honestly never really liked but she prefers.
Closing Thoughts
The Purple Harmony pillow has the strengths and weaknesses of most latex pillows, but I really do like it. The price is considerable — there is no getting around that — but I’m enjoying the pillow and it’s at least partially resolved a neck pain issue in my household. It’s hard to say that the Harmony bring a lot of value to the table, but between my experience and friends’ recommendations of it it seems like a good choice if you are OK with the price. There are cheaper latex pillows of course, but finding one from a trusted brand for less can be a challenge.