First, Ozark Trail uses sealed seams on this tent, but the fabric itself isn’t made for a rainstorm. You’ll want to give the entire tent a thorough Nikwax treatment before taking it on the road. Second, the fabric feels thin, and a few users have reported ripping it during setup, so you’ll need to take your time both setting ozark trail canopy tent up and taking down this tent. There’s a lot to love here, but as the Ozark Trail Three Room Instant Cabin is still a budget department store tent, you’ll want to be aware of a few shortcomings. First, although this is an instant tent, the unique layout and integrated awning make setup a little more involved than most.
The main thing to know going into an Ozark Trail purchase is that you need to do your due diligence not to overstress the materials because a heavy hand can absolutely damage them. Take time to inspect your tent when you first get it (damages from shipping are common), and don’t ever “force” anything when setting up or tearing down your shelter. Livability describes the overall day-to-day experience of owning and using a tent, and tents that are more comfortable, convenient, and easy to use score the highest in terms of livability. If you’re expecting no rain at all, this is a great, reasonably-priced tent. For pros, the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent is very, very inexpensive, and is by far my least expensive tent for the size. The 14 steel stakes that came with the tent are just your standard tent stakes, nothing impressive.
But with so much mesh on the ceiling, I would not use this tent in a cold climate. There’s no dark room technology though, and it’s quite bright throughout the day. This Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent has only 2 pockets in the entire tent, and both measure about 13 inches in length and 6 inches in width, which is very tiny for such a huge tent. Every single time I open this door, the zipper will snag at least once, sometimes twice, which can be annoying.
This is a freestanding construction, self-supporting and stable as you can realize from the picture below which shows the tent without the fly. But you should certainly not miss staking it properly, the stakes and guylines are included in the package. For all the reasons mentioned above, we’ve found that the Ozark Trail Three Room Instant Cabin is the best Ozark Trail tent overall. Its combination of a spacious floor plan, smart layout, and added livability all work together to make it the stand-out model in the Ozark Trail lineup.
Second, the tall vertical walls and “L” shape make it about as far from aerodynamic as they come. Do NOT phone in the guyline portion of set-up (regardless of the weather) or you’ll risk damaging the tent. Finally, the material of this shelter is noticeably higher quality than many Ozark Trail tents, but the 68D polyester is still not as thick as we’d like. No Ozark Trail tent ozark trail instant cabin is perfect, but as far as full-size family camping tents go, this is the one to beat. The Ozark Trail 9 Person Cabin shares the same shortcomings as the other discount cabins found in the Ozark Trail lineup, most notably being its weather protection and durability. As far as fairweather shelters go, however, this one may be the best value in terms of livability for your money.
I have decided to show you this Ozark Trail tent side by side with some of its competitors with the same declared capacity.
With room for 12 and nearly seven-foot ceilings, it checks all our boxes for a big family tent, but even as cabin shelters go, this one is special. We’ve also put together a handy buyer’s guide down at the bottom as a resource for shoppers who are new to the Ozark Trail brand, so make sure to check it out. There you’ll find all the info you could ever want on the materials, build quality, and weather-worthiness of these affordable tents. The material of the tent body and rainfly are made of 68D coated polyester fabric. There was no info provided by Ozark Trail on the material of the flooring, but it feels like your regular polyethylene bathtub flooring, and doesn’t seem very thick.
You might get a little bit of ventilation through the gap between the ceiling mesh and the rainfly, but I think it’s pretty minimal. The Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent also comes with a room divider, so you can split the tent into 2 rooms, and each “room” can fit 2 queen-sized camping mattresses. In summary, this Ozark Trail Instant Cabin Tent with Built-in Cabin Lights comes with plenty of useful features, this is a pleasant and functional design suitable for summer camping. In any case, I have included this tent in my list of tents with a screen room. The picture below shows how the tent is divided in two parts, the rooms are the same size, around 7 x 10 ft each. The front room is with a huge inverted-T shaped door with zippers on the bottom and in the middle.