Reviews · 7 min read

I Tried Six Pillows, Two Prescriptions And A Massage Gun. Ten Minutes Of Neck Training Did What None Of Them Could.

Two years, $1,045.98 in receipts before the pharmacy, and a neck that still woke me at four in the morning. The thing that finally moved it cost less than the pillows did and takes ten minutes, three mornings a week.

By Chris Bennett

Senior writer · Sep 17, 2026 · 7 min read

Two Years Of Buying Things For My Neck

It started the way it starts for most people who sit at a desk. A stiff morning here and there, then a stiff morning every day, then the one where I could not check my blind spot without turning my whole chest. By the second winter I was waking at four with my right hand already on the back of my neck.

So I bought things. First a pillow, because a pillow is the obvious answer and the ad said so. When that one did nothing I bought a better one. Then a firmer one, then a softer one, then the expensive one. Then a massage gun, because a physio friend had one on her desk. Somewhere in there a doctor wrote me two prescriptions.

Here is what the pillows and the gun cost, in the order I paid for them:

The two prescriptions are not in the table because my copay is not yours. One was a muscle relaxant that made me useless by eight in the evening. The other was an anti-inflammatory that worked for exactly as long as the bottle lasted.

Why None Of It Could Have Worked

Every one of those things is good at one job. None of that job was my problem.

The Derila is cheap and the ad is the best thing about it. It is a contoured foam block, and a contoured foam block is what most "neck pillows" are. The Casper is the best plain pillow I have owned, for a back sleeper who does not hurt. The Coop wins on adjustability: you pull fill out of it until your head sits where you want, and it is the one I still sleep on. The Tempur is the best contour of the bunch, dense and slow, and it took me three weeks to stop noticing it. The Brooklinen is the softest and, it turns out, the wrong material. The Purple is the coolest to sleep on and the most expensive, and it is the one I returned.

Someone did test this properly. In 2009 an Australian group put 106 side sleepers on five different pillows, a week on each, plus their own pillow as the control. Rubber (latex) came out best for waking neck pain and sleep quality. Feather came out worst, so badly the authors wrote that it "should not be recommended". The contour foam pillow, the shape most neck pillows copy, showed no advantage over a regular shaped one. I had bought one feather pillow and three foam ones and zero rubber ones.

But even the winner in that trial only meant fewer people waking sore on a good week. Nobody in it stopped hurting because of a pillow, and that is the point. A pillow decides where your neck sits for eight hours. It does nothing about what your neck can hold up for the other sixteen.

The massage gun wins on the twenty minutes after you use it. It works on the surface, and the surface was not the problem. By the afternoon my neck was back where it started. The prescriptions turn the signal down. That is what they are for, and mine did it. They do not make the muscle underneath any more able to carry a head around all day, which is a five kilogram job that nothing else in the house was doing.

What A Neck Actually Needs, According To Three Trials

What finally changed my mind was reading the trials that had been sitting in the open the whole time. Three of them, all on people with the kind of neck I had.

In 2003, JAMA published a Finnish trial of 180 office workers, women aged 25 to 53, all with chronic neck pain. One third did strength training for the neck for a year. One third did endurance work. One third were told to stretch and do cardio. At twelve months, both training groups had less pain and less disability than the control group, and the strength group's neck flexion strength had gone up 110 percent.

In 2008, a Danish group took 48 women with a painful upper trapezius, the muscle that runs from the neck to the shoulder, and had them do specific strength work for that muscle for ten weeks. Their worst pain on a 100 point scale fell by 35 points, about 79 percent. The group that did general cycling instead got a 5 point drop that wore off.

Then the one that decided it for me. In 2011, the same Danish lab put 198 office workers with frequent neck and shoulder pain on a band exercise for either two minutes a day or twelve minutes a day, five days a week, for ten weeks. Both groups came out with less pain than the controls: 1.4 points on a 10 point scale for the two minute group, 1.9 for the twelve minute group. Two minutes.

Read together, the dose is small and the ingredient is specific. The muscle that hurts has to be the muscle doing the work, the work has to get harder over weeks, and it has to happen often. None of my $1,045.98 did any of that. So before I bought one more thing, I wrote down what it would have to do:

1. Load the neck muscles directly. Not the surface, not the signal. The muscles that hold the head up have to be the ones working.
2. Get heavier in small steps. Every trial that worked was progressive. A fixed band or a pillow has one setting.
3. Front, back, both sides and turning. The Finnish trial trained flexion, extension and rotation, and the strength came up in all three.
4. Ten minutes at home, before work. Anything that needs a gym or a drive is something I stop doing in week three. Two minutes a day worked in Copenhagen. I gave myself ten.

I priced what could pass. A chain head strap is $35 at DMoose: cheapest by a mile, packs flat, and the plates swing under your chin, so it is really an extension tool. The Iron Neck 3.0 lists at $349 and the Pro at $599, and it is the best thing here for rotation and the kind of slow rehab work a physio would set. A four way neck machine is the gym standard: Titan sells one for $539.97, or a $149.97 version that bolts onto a power rack, and it wins on stability if you have the room and the rack.

Ten Minutes, Three Mornings A Week

What I ended up with is a two pound nylon frame that sits on my head like a helmet with no top, with a threaded sleeve over each ear that takes an ordinary weight plate. The frame is the Kensui EZ-HELM V2: $199, one size with three pad sizes, in stock.

Week one I used no plates at all. The frame clips to a resistance band, and I did slow nods, slow looks up, slow turns, ten of each, sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee. Week three I put a 2.5 pound plate on each side. By week eight it was 7.5 a side. That is the whole method: the same four moves, a little heavier every couple of weeks, ten minutes, three mornings.

The one that passed all four

Kensui EZ-HELM V2

$199 · one size, three pad sizes, in stock · 4.75 out of 5 from 135 reviews

• Any 2 inch Olympic plate goes on the ear sleeves, so the load climbs 2.5 pounds a side at a time, for as long as you like. Rated to 100 pounds. Rubric one and two.
• Nods, extensions, side bends and turns from one frame, sitting, standing or lying on a bench. A band clips on for day one. Rubric three.
• Two pounds empty, lives in the bag it ships in, ten minutes at the kitchen table. Rubric four.

What changed, and what I will not claim. I am not a doctor and one man's neck is not a trial, so I am not going to tell you this treats anything. I can tell you what happened. The four a.m. wake ups stopped somewhere in week five, and I only noticed because I slept through to the alarm three days running. Checking the blind spot went back to being a thing my neck does rather than a thing my chest does. The morning stiffness is still there on the days after I skip, which tells me what is doing the work. I am sleeping on the $89 Coop, and it is a fine pillow. It was never the pillow's job.

What 135 Owners Say

The product page shows 4.75 out of 5 from 135 reviews. I read them from the bottom up, because the low ones tell you more.

The wobble is the real complaint. Six of the 135 reviews sit at three stars or under. Three of those say the frame shifts side to side, two say a front or back pad came loose, and one says it is too expensive for what it is. I get the shift on side bends when the chin strap is loose and not otherwise: cinch it until the frame does not turn when you shake your head, and keep the side bends slow. My pads have stayed put. The owner whose pads came off fixed them with hockey tape and gave it four stars anyway.

The price. Two hundred dollars for a nylon frame and two sleeves is real money. It is also $150 less than the cheapest Iron Neck, $341 less than the Titan machine, and $846.98 less than what I spent on pillows and a gun that were never going to load a muscle.

Before You Buy