Jade Voyager vs Gaiam Essentials 6mm: Which One Should You Buy?

The Jade Voyager is 1.6 mm of USA-made natural rubber that folds to roughly the size of a yoga block, at $49.95. The Gaiam Essentials is 6 mm of soft PVC foam with a carrying sling at a $22.13 list price.

The thin one costs more and grips far better. The thick one costs less and is much nicer to kneel on. Neither is trying to be a complete mat, and knowing which compromise you want makes this an easy decision.

The Voyager is real Jade rubber, open-cell, and GearLab scored it 9 out of 10 for dry grip and 7 wet. Those numbers put a $50 travel mat level with mats at $150, and grip is genuinely the reason people buy it. It works from the first unroll.

The Gaiam has a textured sticky PVC finish that holds fine while your hands are dry. GearLab measured Gaiam’s comparable 6 mm foam at 6 out of 10 dry and 4 wet, which is as far as it goes: usable in a cool room for a gentle class, unreliable once your palms are damp. Soft foam also moves under a standing foot, so balances feel less settled on it.

GearLab scored the Voyager 2 out of 10 for comfort and support, near the bottom of a 19-mat test. At 1.6 mm there is essentially nothing between your knee and the floor, and on tile or hardwood that becomes obvious inside a class.

Six millimetres of soft foam is forgiving on knees, elbows and spine, and for anyone doing a gentle practice or floor work at home it is the most useful thing a cheap mat can offer. If you are buying one mat and you practice on a hard floor, this is the one.

The Voyager folds rather than rolls, down to roughly the footprint of a block, and weighs about 1.5 pounds. GearLab weighed its sample at 1.8 and called it the lightest mat in its test. It goes inside a day bag or a carry-on, which is the entire reason it exists.

The Gaiam is 3.5 pounds and rolls to a fat tube. The included sling makes it easy to sling over a shoulder, so carrying it to a class is no trouble, but it travels on the outside of a bag and takes real space in a closet.

The Gaiam is 72″ and the Voyager 68″, so the cheap mat is four inches longer. Both are 24 inches wide, the older narrow standard, which shows up in wide-legged poses.

Worth checking before you order: Gaiam sells the Essentials in two lengths. The Amazon listing is the 72″ with the sling, and gaiam.com sells a 68″ at a lower price. Jade makes only one Voyager, though the Jade Travel is the slightly thicker packable option in the same family.

The Voyager is so light that it wants a surface to grip against. On carpet, grass or laid over a studio mat it stays put and feels great. On smooth polished boards it can shift, which is the most common complaint owners raise, and the visible scrim backing is not the same as a properly textured underside.

The Gaiam has a textured finish on both faces, so either side practices, and its weight keeps it planted on hard floors. Its problem is the top surface rather than the bottom one.

The Voyager is very thin rubber and can tear at the edges if it snags on something; GearLab scored its materials 4 out of 10 for that reason. Jade covers it for a year and excludes sun damage. Because it folds and lives in a bag, drying it properly matters, since a mat put away damp is how odor starts. Its care and cleaning scored 8 out of 10, so it is otherwise easy to look after.

The Gaiam foam takes compression set. Knees and elbows leave dents that gradually stop springing back, and GearLab has found the same foam in Gaiam’s Premium mats showing compression over time. Gaiam advertises a lifetime guarantee, which is unusual at this price and covers manufacturing defects rather than that kind of wear.

$49.95 against a $22.13 list. Check the current Essentials price on Amazon, where individual colors are discounted independently and it is often several dollars under list. Jade sells the Voyager on jadeyoga.com and it is not on Amazon.

Paying more than twice as much for a quarter of the material only makes sense if packability is what you need. If it is, nothing at this price does it as well, and Jade plants a tree for every mat sold.

Get the Gaiam Essentials if this is your only mat and it stays home. It is comfortable, it is long enough, the sling is included, and it is latex free where the Voyager is not. Plan on a towel if you sweat, and expect dents where you kneel.

Get the Voyager if the mat has to travel. It packs smaller than anything else with genuine grip, it weighs a pound and a half, and the rubber is the same material Jade puts in mats at three times the price. Buy it as a second mat and practice on carpet when you can.