Maxi-Towel Jumbo Sized Compressed Towel Tablets (11.5" x 22") - 40 Individually Wrapped Cloth Wipes for Camping, Travel, Gym & Emergency Kits | Ultra-Absorbent Quick-Dry Towels

I really wasn’t expecting much from these towels but I had a good experience with some smaller ones and I thought I would give them a try. I only had experience with one other larger towel, and was made of bamboo. So many of the photos will compare this towel with the bamboo towel, but I got to say the only advantage that the bamboo towel has is that it’s about 50% thinner in it’s compressed form. It also comes in at a dollar to $1.50 apiece for the bamboo, versus 35 cents a piece for these.Size: You can see by the picture of the size of the towels before and after decompression. But this towel was quite easy to decompress and required less water than I expected. I was surprised to see that it had a pattern on it of puffy polkadots. These add thickness to the towel and to it’s superior absorbency while minimizing the bulk. The towel expanded to about the promised dimensions of 12“ x 20“ give or take some stretch. And I was pleased to see that this towel has significantly more surface area than the bamboo one so you are gaining something with that added thickness.It’s hard to see exactly how thick the towel is since it has a texture to it but from what I can tell even the non-textured areas are a little bit thicker than the more woven bamboo one. The bamboo towel’s structure seems a bit more spiderweb rather than a tight weave. I tried to do a picture to show the edges and you can see the difference in thickness. I also placed both over a black polkadot pattern to give you an idea of the opacity and thickness of each of the towels.Strength: I allowed the towel to dry and then held it out and put a 5 pound weight on it and then another 5 pound weight and it seem to give no signs of tearing so this thing is strong.Softness: The towel is quite soft feeling, softer than a paper towel or a baby wipe, much more like a tufted cotton or microfiber on the skin. It’s easily soft enough to use On more sensitive parts of the body.Absorbency: This is the real tale of the tape here. I filled two glasses with equal amounts of water and took this towel and the bamboo one, and dunked them in the water. I waited about half a minute for them to fully absorbed and then quickly remove them from the glasses. Well I did not take exact measurements you can see from the photograph that this towel absorbs significantly more water than the bamboo towel. I also performed this experiment with an equal area of premium paper towel that supposedly “feels like cloth“, it may rhyme with diva ;-) and that one absorbed about equal amount of water to the bamboo one, not nearly as good as this towel.So while it is significantly thicker in it’s compressed form, you are gaining a considerable amount of absorbency for that extra thickness and that right there is probably enough to win me over to this towel.The towel seems quite strong and durable and will hold up to multiple uses if not abused. It dries quickly I mean really quickly, and I was able to do an entire sink full of dishes with just this towel to dry them off. ( kind of a clever way to trick me into doing the dishes too)I really liked the bamboo ones and I got used to how thin they are, but these new ones have won me over. I really wish they could be compressed a bit thinner, but I can’t see any reason to take off any stars. It certainly doesn’t hurt that they’re five times cheaper than the ones I’ve been using. These towels perform excellently and deliver exactly what they promise at a surprisingly cheap price.As a bonus, if you take them camping, they easily catch fire from a spark. So once it’s too dirty to continue using, you have a very effective are fire starter.