A Pavlovian reaction to super-size doses of advertising? Greed, optimism, stinginess, and materialistic guilt thrashing together in a dance of futility that leads straight to the checkout counter? To make matters worse, sometimes I’m so ashamed of the purchase that I can’t even bring myself to return it. While the previous ozark trail screen house version of this tent used beachy-feeling aqua and orange, the current version is a drab olive green more typical of other tents. This doesn’t affect the functionality, but the brighter colors were something we previously praised. A handful of REI customers complain that the tent is not stable in strong winds.
Like the REI model, the L.L.Bean tent uses polyester (ripstop, in this case), which is more resistant to UV damage and absorbs less moisture than nylon by weight. The Woodlands Screen House also has the advantage of eight guylines, whereas ozark trail chairs the Screen House Shelter includes none. In addition, this model has the same bug-deterring flap of fabric along the base as the REI tent, but while the REI’s flap is about 9 inches wide, the L.L.Bean’s flap is about 10½ inches wide.
In other words, decently made and certainly good enough for the occasional camping or outdoor excursion, but not something the avid outdoors person would want to use on a regular basis. ◊Pricing, selection, and availability of store clearance items are determined by each store. Items may be display models or not exactly as shown and may not be available in all stores. Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times.
We eliminated canopies that were not big enough to comfortably shelter a picnic table, concluding that a table is probably the number-one spot where campers would place such a structure. We also eliminated bulky, heavy shelters that are intended to be used as semipermanent backyard fixtures. Queen Bee has been one of my favorite pages to follow! A friend kept sharing her deals so I had to start following and I’m so glad I did. I have been able to purchase so many items at great prices because of her posts. She is great about commenting back to questions or even just saying thanks to people who let her know they picked up an item she posted!
At first glance, it looks like the square footage is quite a bit more than other screen houses in this article. However, because of the sloped angle of the tent walls, there’s less than 195 square feet of usable space. In between trips, we turned a neighbor’s large, flat yard into an ad hoc camping-gazebo testing ground. We erected our shelters just in advance of a 24-hour rain and checked for leaking and rainy-day ambience midstorm. We also timed setup and breakdown times for each shelter, and we repeatedly zipped and unzipped doors and windows, looking for annoying snags.
Got one of these out of a storage unit at auction. Without instructions, it took me about 30 minutes to put it together and get it erected, by myself. Just had to comment after reading these old reviews of folks who couldn’t seem to set it up without either A. I have purchased outdoor sporting goods from Coleman and they not only have much better products, but they stand behind what they sell.
The Ozark Trail Screen House is 13 feet long and nine feet wide, with a standing space that tops out at seven feet high. The tent fabric roof provides shade for 46 square feet of the room. The Screen House is spacious enough for six people, or more around a folding table in an uninterrupted 360-degree panoramic shelter. The shelter has a 10-by-10-foot footprint—the most common size for tents of this type—and a peak height of 7 feet. It will shelter a standard-size picnic table, but with little room to spare.
It has two doors and 100 square feet of usable space. Screen houses are large, mesh-walled tent-like structures that are designed to be set up over a picnic table. The rest of the process was funny too, with wimpy frizzy guylines, and inexplicable bits of plastic that are supposed to tighten them.
The tent comes with an E-cable port shown below so you can get power in. Since 2015, I’ve tested camping shelters and large car-camping tents on weekend trips involving more than a dozen families, and I have talked to dozens more about their tent travails. Over the years, I have evaluated gear for magazines including Wired, Popular Science, and National Geographic Adventure, where I was a senior editor. The shaded part of this screen house is 41.6 square feet and has double-sided material that provides UPF 50 sun protection.