Airplane Foot Hammocks Work Surprisingly Well. But Only Sometimes.

To test the foot hammock, I found three Wirecutter staffers who were each taking flights of at least six hours and who could be categorized as short, mid-height, and tall.

One reason I focused on user height was because I noticed, while reading through foot-hammock reviews online, that shorter people seemed to be particular fans (including many who were around 5 feet tall and under), possibly because their legs could hang with their knees extended. Some foot-hammock brands even note a height limit for the product (for one brand, it was 5-foot-7).

Our three testers’ experiences aligned with my hypothesis that height would make a difference in comfort. The shortest tester (a little over 5-foot-3) said she would use the hammock again. She liked that the hammock allowed her to stretch out more than she usually could on a flight, with her feet hanging under her seat but over her bag. She also liked that she had multiple options for leg positioning, so her feet didn’t cramp.

The mid-height tester (5-foot-5) felt meh about the hammock. They liked that they could swing their feet around during the flight to keep blood circulating, but they ultimately found the hammock too frustrating to use again. “I’m not particularly tall, but my legs are way longer than my torso,” they told me. They said they had to lengthen the foot hammock’s straps so their feet were almost on the ground or lean their seat way back in order to comfortably use it.

The tallest tester (5-foot-11) was not a fan, saying the foot hammock was “nearly impossible to use” unless he leaned really far back, and even then he found it awkward and uncomfortable. If he’d had a personal item in front of him, he told me, he wouldn’t have been able to use the foot hammock at all. “I think it would be nice if you had no one in front of you and your legs barely reach under the seat,” he told me, “but otherwise it’s a miss.”

I also talked to staffers who had used foot hammocks in the past. The biggest fan was a 4-foot-11 Wirecutter strategist who bought a foot hammock for her 17-hour flight to the Philippines. “Having short legs, my feet don’t rest at a comfortable position on planes unless I prop them up on my backpack under the seat,” she told me. The foot hammock allowed her to keep her legs elevated without setting them on her personal item. She said she would specifically recommend the hammock to her petite friends headed off on long flights.

Another fan is 5-foot-4, and she bought a foot hammock for her 13-hour flight to Japan. She said she was “very pleasantly surprised” by it. “It allowed me to avoid that endless cycle of switching which leg I crossed every 20 to 30 minutes while I slept,” she told me. She thought her short legs were “optimal” for the hammock because she was able to use it with only a very slight bend in the knees.

This tester told me that her 6-foot-5 boyfriend also found the hammock comfortable, challenging the idea that height is an exclusive factor in foot-hammock satisfaction. (I didn’t include him in the chart below because I wasn’t able to interview him myself.) Additionally, two colleagues, both under 5-foot-5, told me they had tried a foot hammock but didn’t find it memorable enough to use it again. In other words, individuals — and likely airplane seats and tray tables — vary enough that we can’t predict whether anyone would like the foot hammock based on their height alone.

Height (or leg length in particular) could play a role in who finds the foot hammock most comfortable.

Everyone who liked the foot hammock said they would use it again, but only for longer flights, particularly ones that involved sleeping.