My experience with Ozark Trail equipment has been to reinforce the old adage “you get what you pay for”. I highly recommend that anyone looking for a good screen house spend the additional money and get a Swiss Gear. Don’t try to save a few dollars and end up with a POS like this one. We also found that, even when fully open, the wagon bed doesn’t lie flat.
If you can afford to spend more on a family tent, we recommend The North Face Wawona 6. Everyone who tested this tent loved it, and it’s not hard to understand why. With plenty of interior space, near-vertical walls, and a gigantic vestibule that could accommodate a golf cart, the Wawona feels more like a tiny home than a tent. The biggest material difference between the Sundome and our other picks is its crunchy, tarp-like polyethylene floor.
One thing I noticed, however, was that the tent wasn’t entirely waterproof. While it held up well against light rain, a few drops managed to find their way inside. Despite this minor issue, the tent’s strong poles and zippers gave me confidence that it would last for many ozark trail chairs more camping trips. The straight-wall design and 180 square feet of living space made the tent feel like a cozy home away from home. I particularly appreciated the room divider, which allowed me to create separate sleeping and living areas without sacrificing space.
Overall, these poles—all of them aluminum—contribute to a particularly sturdy structure, with or without the rain fly. During our testing, our Base Camp shrugged off both a rainstorm and a desert windstorm as if they were nothing. Despite losing some headroom in comparison with the Kelty Wireless 6 and The North Face Wawona 6, both of which measure six-foot-four in height, the Base Camp 6 offers a substantial six-foot-two. At $500, this modified dome-style tent isn’t cheap, but it represents substantial value. 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, and it is compact considering how much livable space you get.
The red and gray combination of the tent makes it stand out among other camping tents. 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.
Prices may vary depending on the size and features of the chosen model. Insects were still able to find their way inside, and it would have been nice to see a tighter mesh to keep them out completely. Additionally, the lighted aspect of the screen house didn’t seem to have a significant impact on my overall experience.
We struggled a bit with transporting it to our camping spot, but we managed with some assistance. It lets you enjoy the beautiful outdoors without being eaten alive by mosquitoes or bugs. Plus, it’s great for keeping camp chairs and dog beds organized. They allow us to convert the screen room into a bedroom on one trip and a bug-free front porch on another, making this tent incredibly versatile. Camping with family has never been this enjoyable — the Ozark Trail 12-Person Instant Cabin Tent with Screen Room has exceeded my expectations.
The Wawona 6 is more complex to set up than a classic dome-style tent like the Wireless 6, but not by much. We recommend doing it with two people, but one person can manage in about 15 minutes. As with any free-standing tent, with this one you stake out the four corners, and then you feed the ozark trail screen house two main tent poles through the Wawona’s fabric sleeves, which go halfway down the tent’s body. The North Face’s color-coded poles make this process easy to navigate. (We were stubborn and didn’t look at the instructions.) Once you identify the front and back, the process is straightforward.
The spacious design provides ample room for up to 12 people or three queen-sized airbeds, making it perfect for a large group or family camping trip. During this period, winds rose up to 35 to 40 knots, and we experienced passing showers as well as direct sunlight and 80-degree temperatures. To mimic heavier rain and to test the tent’s ability to withstand soggy ground conditions, we also soaked our tents with a garden hose. A few weeks later, we brought the front-runners to a platform in an area that had higher elevation, near the Waianae Mountain Range, and camped out overnight in intermittent but consistent rainfall. While the Ozark Trail Screen House 14X12 offers numerous benefits, it is essential to consider its potential drawbacks as well. One potential issue is that the mesh material may not provide complete protection against extreme weather conditions, such as heavy rain or strong winds.