Whether you’re thinking of hitting the road or staying close to home for your next car-camping adventure, you and your loved ones will need a comfortable place to sleep. You might want to compare this product with yet another similar, the KingCamp Oversize Outdoor Camping Dressing Changing Room Shower Privacy Shelter Tent. Check also among Camping Screen Houses, this is yet another type of utility shelters in the camp. We also appreciated the shepherd’s hook stakes that come with the tent. Most of the tents we tested came with basic L-shaped stakes, which tended to spin around in the soil and slip a line.
However, the Wireless 6’s poles were the best fiberglass ones we tested—they left no splinters, unlike those on the Camp Creek 6 or the Copper Canyon LX 6. A senior staff writer at Wirecutter, Kit Dillon has written about everything from backpacks and cooking gear to luggage and road-tripping. All metal parts are made of steel and the fabric is polyester. They do not give a waterproof rating but you have a fly and the walls are the same material. The windows are double-layer with mesh and with zippered panels. There is also a sewn-in shower mat and a 5-gallon solar-heated shower that uses natural light to help heat up the water.
It uses a 1200mm waterproof coating on 68 denier fabric, which didn’t seem to bead as well as higher-rated fabrics, such as those on the The North Face Wawona 6 or the REI Co-op Base Camp 6 (each of those have 1500mm coatings). If you don’t have time to let the fly dry before you pack the Wireless in its duffle, we recommend laying it out when you get home so it doesn’t mildew in storage. To test the tents, we first opened them, splayed out their parts, and tried to put them together without consulting the instructions.
It’s also straightforward to set up, and it is made with sturdy, light materials. Great for backyard overnights, this simple dome-style tent is for anyone who doesn’t want to spend more than $150 on a tent but also doesn’t want to buy another one next year. It has a partial rain fly, but only one door and no vestibule. The Base Camp tents include a low side vent and multiple stuff pockets on the walls and ceiling, which are made of 75D polyester treated with 1500mm of polyurethane waterproofing.
In conducting research for this guide, we heard multiple tales of careful campers who had been using the same tent for 15 years or more. We also wanted self-standing tents, which can stay up on their own. Even so, you should, ideally, stake down each corner securely; in some crowded campgrounds, however, finding a flat spot with soil soft enough to do that can be difficult. A tent that requires staking to stand up—especially a larger, six-person tent—is unwieldy, and it’ll be impossible to set up on a hard surface such as blacktop or on raised wooden tent decks.
With nearly 60 square feet of floor space plus two large vestibules, the Tungsten 4 is roomier than our top-pick tent for couples. It also costs more, though, and is less forgiving of a careless set-up. ozark trail instant cabin Easy to set up and pack away, the Mineral King 3 is a lightweight, two-door tent with a generous footprint and a sturdy dome shape. It’s the perfect choice for three-season multipurpose camping.
Many tents with similar profiles—such as the Big Agnes Dog House 6—either cost more or require you buy the tent body and attachable vestibule separately. The Wawona doesn’t come with a footprint—few tents this size do—but it’s otherwise all-inclusive, ozark trail canopy tent and it is compact considering how much livable space you get. The price also reflects the high quality of the materials, such as the four reinforced aluminum poles, which weigh little yet result in a remarkably strong tent.
But according to our experts, the durability of the floor of your tent is actually more important. If the tent you buy doesn’t come with a footprint (two of our recommended tents, the Mountain Hardwear Mineral King 3 and the Marmot Tungsten 4, do), we recommend purchasing a companion footprint, if one is available. A footprint doesn’t take up much space, is relatively inexpensive, and is much easier to repair or replace than a tent bottom if it tears. Like most dome-style tents, the Wireless 6 withstands wind like a champ—it fared noticeably better than the Camp Creek 6 in 15-mph gusts. The continuous curve of the dome shape allows for wind to pass over and around it. You can also get a nice cross breeze going by leaving the vestibules open.