Manduka PRO Long & Wide vs Lululemon The (Big) Mat: Which One Should You Buy?

The PRO Long & Wide is 79″ × 52″, which is less a long mat than a floor. Unrolled it covers the width of two standard mats set side by side, and at 22 pounds it is not going anywhere once you put it down. Lululemon’s (Big) Mat is 84″ × 28″: the longest mainstream mat most people will find, in a width that still behaves like a mat.

So the price gap, $288 against $128, is not really buying you more mat of the same kind. One of these is home gym equipment you install in a room. The other is a large mat you can still roll up and put in a car.

On raw area it is not close: about 4,100 square inches for the Manduka against about 2,350 for the Lululemon, so the PRO Long & Wide covers roughly three quarters more floor. But the shapes solve different problems. Fifty-two inches of width lets you move sideways through a flow without checking where the edge went, take a wide-legged pose at any angle, and share the mat with a partner, a toddler, or a dog that has opinions about savasana.

Eighty-four inches of length solves the other common complaint. If you are six feet or taller, your heels hang off most mats and your hands creep past the front edge in down dog, and the (Big) Mat is one of the few mats that simply ends the problem. Its 28 inches of width is generous by normal standards too, just not in the same conversation as 52.

The PRO Long & Wide weighs 22 pounds and rolls into a cylinder more than four feet long. No strap holds it, no bag fits it, and moving it between rooms is a two-handed job. Buy it for a space you already have, not for a space you hope to clear each evening.

The (Big) Mat is 7.1 pounds, which is heavy for a mat and trivial next to the Manduka. It still makes a long, fat roll that pokes out of standard mat bags, and carrying it on a shoulder across town several times a week gets old. Driving it to a studio is fine.

Both of these are bigger cuts of mats GearLab tested in their standard sizes, so the surface behavior is known. The standard PRO scored 9 out of 10 for dry grip and 7 wet and took first place overall out of 19 mats. The standard Lululemon Mat scored 6.5 dry and 4.5 wet.

The timing complicates that. A new PRO surface is slick, and it takes a few weeks of regular practice before the grip arrives. Manduka has dropped its old salt-scrub advice and now says the slickness resolves with use, which it does. The (Big) Mat needs no such patience: the polyurethane face grips immediately and takes sweat into itself rather than letting it film over the top. It also gives up sooner in a genuinely wet class, where the PRO, being closed-cell, never absorbs anything at all and wants a towel.

Both mats earned a perfect 10 for comfort and support in their standard sizes, which is a good reminder that thickness alone does not decide this. Both get there by being dense rather than soft. You feel the floor through either one, and neither wobbles under a standing balance.

The Manduka’s extra millimeter shows up in long kneeling holds, and its surface is firm and dry to the touch. The Lululemon is slightly more forgiving where the polyurethane meets your palms. If padding under sore knees is what you are shopping for, both are the wrong direction and a folded blanket is the cheap fix.

Dense closed-cell PVC barely wears. GearLab’s testers have run into PRO mats still in service after twenty years, and Manduka’s lifetime guarantee works out in the fine print to roughly ten years of regular use, one replacement, proof of purchase from an authorized seller. On Amazon that means sold and shipped by Amazon itself, not a marketplace seller.

The (Big) Mat’s grip lives in a polyurethane layer on top of the rubber, and owners of the standard version regularly report flaking or peeling after a couple of years of heavy use, accelerated by harsh cleaners and soaking. Lululemon’s Quality Promise covers gear that does not perform as designed but names no term at all. The warranty terms line up with how the two materials actually wear.

The (Big) Mat is reversible, and the textured rubber underside is the reason GearLab gave the standard version its award for mixed fitness routines. Flip it for anything that would chew up a coated face: dumbbells, trainers, dragging a kettlebell across a corner.

The PRO Long & Wide answers that differently. Its underside is a dot-pattern grip meant for the floor rather than for practice, but the PVC shrugs off careless ownership, and 52 inches of width is what makes a home gym corner work: room for a bench, room for two people stretching, room to drop a weight without hitting hardwood.

List prices are $288 and $128. The Manduka comes in black or midnight at last count and sells through manduka.com and Amazon, where large PRO sizes do get discounted. Buy it sold and shipped by Amazon if the guarantee is part of what you are paying for.

The (Big) Mat comes in black and only from lululemon.com or a Lululemon store. No marketplace listings, no sales worth waiting for. If you want the Manduka build but not the width, the 85″ PRO Long is $96 cheaper at the standard 26 inches, and the PRO Squared goes the other way at 78″ × 78″.

Buy the PRO Long & Wide if you have the room and want to stop thinking about the edges of your mat. It is the longer-lived surface, it is backed by an actual written guarantee, and the width is a genuinely different way to practice. You are paying $160 more and giving up all portability.

Buy the (Big) Mat if you want maximum length in something one person can carry, grip that works from the first unroll, or a mat that doubles as a lifting surface. It costs less than half as much and will need replacing sooner. For the narrower version of this same matchup, our PRO Long vs the (Big) Mat page compares 85 inches of length against 84, and The Mat vs the (Big) Mat covers the cheaper Lululemon size.