I’m going to guess that you’ve slept on a few air mattresses in your time. Whether they were $10 pads that sat 6 inches off the ground, or nice ones with built-in electric pumps, you almost certainly woke up on a mattress with significantly less air inside than when you went to sleep. My friends, it doesn’t have to be this way.
You’ll pay a bit more up front, but it’s absolutely worth investing in an air mattress with a Never Flat pump. This combines a standard, fast, and loud built-in electric pump with a nearly silent secondary pump that maintains your preferred firmness level throughout the night.
You just select your desired air level with one dial, turn the other one to “Inflate,” and the mattress will fill with air until it reaches your chosen firmness. From then on, as long as it’s plugged in, it’ll use that second pump add air as it slowly leaks out, even with multiple people sleeping on top, meaning you won’t wake up in a sunken valley in the middle of a half-inflated bed.
I have this one, and recently slept on it for several consecutive as my Casper was in the back of a moving truck on its way to Texas. I certainly never forgot that I was sleeping on an air mattress, but it sits high like a real bed, and the Never Flat system did its job nearly silently. It was the best air mattress experience of my life.
Serta also sells a basically-identical version with a washable pillow-top cover that should make it just a bit more comfortable. I sort of wish I had bought this one, but I might just buy a memory foam pad to accomplish the same thing.