A 4-Person Sundome has 9 by 7 feet, while a 4-Person Skydome has 8 by 7 feet. Then, you’d have to clip all the pole clips onto the poles, and there are 14 of them around the tent. So, all these features don’t exactly speed up the process at all. Even after we figured in the size of the air mattress, we still had plenty of room to store our gear off to the sides plus the little bed for our dog Lily. I ordered it with the free shipping and the total cost was a steal, coming in at just under $70.00 (price may vary). The tent took less than a week to get here and I was more than eager to set it up once it arrived.
The rainfly only extends about halfway down on all sides, leaving the lower portion of the tent body exposed, and you won’t find any sealed seams to help keep water out. While the tarp-like material on the bathtub floor didn’t allow water to soak through, the rest of the tent’s construction was a major let-down. We experienced one moderately rainy night in the Sundome and awoke to find a number of puddles on the inside of the tent floor. Furthermore, the walls had soaked through and wetted out.
The dark fabric also helps keep the tent cooler, which is a nice plus in the hot summer months. Cost-wise, the Dark Room will set you back approximately $30 more (depending on current sale prices) compared with the regular Sundome. With a double-wall design and generous use of mesh on two sides and the ceiling, the Coleman Sundome 6 offers very good ventilation. Adding to the breezy feel is its partial rainfly, which when guyed out allows for a significant amount of airflow on warm summer nights. You also get a zippered mesh door and back wall along with a floor vent located at the back of the tent. We had mixed feelings about the overall durability of this tent.
The two main body poles are 8.5mm fiberglass the same size Coleman uses on their Sundome 2 and Sundome 3. On the Sundome 6 they use an 11mm fiberglass pole coleman sundome which is the right choice for that size tent. At the least with fiberglass poles on this Sundome 4 they should have used a 9.5mm pole for strength.
This freestanding tent is in my opinion designed for car camping. It weighs around 22 lbs in the bag so it’s not a tent I would want to have to carry for a long period of time. What differentiates the Elite Model from the regular Sundome is the Elite is a little larger and comes with an LED lighting system and hinged door.
However heavy rain in bad weather might cause the tent to leak. The bathtub floor that comes with welded corners and inverted should keep small rain showers out of the tent. Whilst the tent does come with two storage pockets (which is an improvement on the smaller models), there is still no vestibule with the Sundome.
The Coleman sundome can be set up by one camper – even one without any experience. As always though – we recommend you practice setting the tent up at home before you head out on your trip. It helps you feel more confident in your ability and will speed things up considerably. Even without gear, it’s going to be a fight for floor space. Groups of four or families would definitely be better off investing in a larger model – like the 6 person model. Also, I found that the rainfly pole doesn’t provide enough shading over the door of this Skydome Tent.
So far I have not had one break, but I am very careful when I set up. I measured my poles and I did find some aluminum poles online that are the exact size to fit my tent for $36 for the coleman instant tent pair so that’s an option I would take if I break a pole. For this review, we tested the six-person Sundome, which we think is just about ideal for families of three to four people.