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

The Gaiam Premium 6mm is $29.98, sold in more sporting-goods aisles than any other mat we cover, and it took OutdoorGearLab’s Best First Yoga Mat award. The Jade Voyager is $49.95, 1.6 mm thick, and grips like mats costing three times as much.

Neither is trying to be the other. One is thick and slippery, the other is grippy and thin. If you want one mat to practice on, the cheaper mat is the better answer, which is not how these comparisons usually go.

GearLab put the Gaiam Premium 11th of 19 at 62 of 100: 6 of 10 dry grip, 4 wet, 6.5 for comfort and support, 8 for care and cleaning, 6 for materials. Middling across the board, with the Best First Yoga Mat award reflecting the price as much as the performance.

The Voyager placed 18th at 51 of 100, but the shape of its scorecard is different: 9 of 10 dry grip, 7 wet, and then 2 of 10 for comfort and 4 for materials. It beats the Gaiam handily on the one thing it does and trails it badly everywhere else.

The weighting explains the ranking gap. GearLab scores comfort and support at 35 percent of the total, grip at 30, materials at 20, and ease of use at 15. A mat that takes a 2 in the heaviest category cannot finish high whatever else it does. Read the individual columns rather than the overall number if you already know which one you care about.

Traction comes from the surface rather than the thickness. Jade puts the same open-cell natural rubber on the Voyager that it uses on its full-size mats, and rubber is tacky by nature, so a thin sheet holds a palm as well as a thick one. No break-in, no waiting.

The Gaiam is soft PVC foam with a textured sticky finish. It works with dry hands and gives up quickly once there is moisture: 4 of 10 wet is genuinely weak, and a towel is what most Gaiam owners end up using in a warm class. If grip is the thing that has frustrated you before, the Gaiam will frustrate you again.

Worth being fair to the Gaiam here: 6 of 10 dry is not unusable, it is ordinary. It holds a slow, steady practice on a carpeted floor without incident. The complaint people have is that it gives up right when a class gets demanding, which is also when you least want to be thinking about your hands.

Six millimeters of soft foam is forgiving under a knee, and that is what makes early kneeling and floor work bearable. GearLab scored the Gaiam 6.5 of 10 for comfort and support, held back by the foam compressing under a concentrated load rather than by a lack of thickness.

The Voyager scored 2 of 10. On hardwood or tile you feel the floor immediately and every pose with a bone against the ground wants something folded underneath. On carpet, or laid over a studio’s rental mat, that stops applying, which is the situation Jade designed it for.

The Gaiam, and GearLab agrees. Its Best First Yoga Mat award went to this mat for a reason: at $29.98 it does not punish you for finding out yoga is not your thing, and its thickness covers the discomfort that puts new practitioners off. Its weaknesses are the kind you can work around with a towel.

The Voyager is a specialist tool. Nearly all of its negative reviews come from people who bought it as a cheap first mat and then tried to kneel on a wood floor. Cushion is exactly what a beginner needs most, and it is the one thing the Voyager does not have.

There is a middle path worth knowing about. If you like the idea of Jade rubber but need something to actually practice on, Jade sells the Level One at 4 mm and the Travel at 3.2 mm, both of which keep the grip and add enough cushion to work on a hard floor. The Voyager is the thinnest thing Jade makes, not the default.

The Voyager folds rather than rolls, down to roughly the size of a yoga block, so it lies flat in a suitcase. Jade lists it at just over 1.5 pounds and GearLab measured 1.8. Nothing at this price packs better.

The Gaiam is 3.3pounds, confirmed on GearLab’s scale, and rolls thick because of the 6 mm. It straps to a bag easily enough and will not go inside one. Neither mat comes with a strap.

The Gaiam is latex-free PVC foam. GearLab scored its materials 6 of 10. It is cheap to make, comfortable, and not recyclable in any practical sense, which is the standard trade at this price.

The Voyager is natural rubber made in the USA, and Jade plants a tree for every mat it sells, more than two million so far. That is a program rather than a certification. GearLab scored its materials 4 of 10, which reflects how little material is there rather than the quality of the rubber. Jade also describes its rubber as 99 percent latex free, which is not the same as latex free if you have an allergy.

Both are short-horizon mats. The Gaiam’s foam takes a permanent compression under the standing spots and its surface thins where hands and feet land, typically giving a year or two of heavy use. Gaiam covers it with a lifetime guarantee, which addresses a mat that fails rather than a mat that wears, so it is worth less than it reads.

The Voyager loses tack slowly, creases along its fold lines, and tears at the edges if it snags. Jade covers it for a year and excludes sun damage and harsh cleaners, both of which genuinely degrade natural rubber. Neither of these is a mat you plan to keep.

$29.98 against $49.95, so the thicker mat is also the cheaper one by about $20. Gaiam sells the Premium through Amazon and everywhere else, in four reversible two-color combinations, so check the current Gaiam Premium price at Amazon before paying list.

The Voyager comes from jadeyoga.com or a yoga retailer in five colorways, and its price barely moves. Comparing these on value only makes sense if you are buying your single mat, and then the Gaiam wins on cost and thickness while asking you to accept a towel.

Buy the Gaiam Premium if this is your mat. It is thicker, cheaper, available everywhere, and it is the mat GearLab picked as the best first one. Plan on a towel for anything warm, because 4 of 10 wet grip is the real limitation and no amount of foam offsets it.

Buy the Voyager if you already have a mat and want a second one that folds into luggage. Its grip is the equal of mats at ten times the price, and that genuinely is worth $50 as a supplement. If you want Jade rubber with enough thickness to practice on, our Jade Level One vs Voyager comparison covers the step up.