S**N
Lightweight High Quality Fantastic Deal
This review is one of my few at five stars based on the tent design, light weight, and quality. Seller did provide promised bonus inflatable pillow, which is so nice, I've used it at home for a week.Arrived in two days via Amazon Prime. I was sceptical of claims at this price point as specifications of light weight and immediately took to my local grocers to weigh, and as claimed, 4 lbs 6 oz.I was impressed that this tent compares with Nemo Galaxi 2 person at $249, except, this tent has more structural material around load bearing sides, BUT is about a pound lighter (probably the extra tent ground cloth the expensive one's provide)! Same cross bar from door to door to keep sides vertical and provide more interior volume. Poles are aluminum ( not cheap fiberglass).Instructions with pictures are permanently on outer bag flap. Inside is rain fly, tent, a draw string bag containing poles, all in a compression strap. 2 long poles and shorter cross pole. They have quality lightweight aluminum finish and bungee cord inside. Snapped to length in seconds.Assembled in five minutes by one unpracticed man. Clips along tent to quickly attach to poles, strong grommets for poles, triple reinforced where crossbar spreader ends meet fly.Zippers have interior and exterior loop pulls in attractive black and white cordage. Bug mesh is fine enough to keep out gnats, mosquitoes, provide ventilation or give clear view of skies if weather allows you to skip the rainfly. Tent floor is waterproof and comes up 3 inches on each side to keep groundwater out.The rain fly has two large doors on each side so boots and backpack can stay dry outside.Width is good for two full size people and some gear. Room for both to sit up. Above is a removable gear loft, hook to hang flashlight, and enough loops to have two small clothes lines to dry socks, etc.By each door inside tent is a mesh pocket adequate for cellphone, tablet, small items at reach and visible.Outside rain fly tabs for tieing down are reflective. Inside rain fly are tabs to connect to poles to keep space between fly and tent for ventilation. Additional vents at top of rain fly with velcro support to vent moisture out of tent.Pros: LIGHT, Quality compares with $250+ tents, more interior room than most, Easy assembly. Stuffs small, can be used with rainfly, without, or just rainflyCons: Usual cheap aluminum tent pegs, fixed by $10 upgrades. No secondary groundsheet. $10 fix.
A**S
Honest and thorough review
This is a decent tent for the price point. I bought it on sale for $40. I would recommend this to a friend on a budget or someone new to backpacking.Here's a few things about this tent.1. Unfortunately it is not 3.5 lbs. Had I known this I would not of bought it. Weight has to be spot on. It's what many of us look for next to price. Sadly for the seller this mistake or typo could of added cost to their bottom line if I had chose to return it which I highly considered doing just for this reason. This is where it loses a star. It's actually 4 lbs or 3.94 lbs to be precise. And I tested this against other items in the house (bags of rice, beans, etc) to check calibration of my scale. +/- an ounce and it's still closer to 4 than 3.5. It's freestanding and in decent weather you only need two stakes for the vestibules. Leave remaining stakes and guy lines at home and you'll be at 3.54 lbs. Closer to the listed weight.2. Although the tent options for the single person are green and orange, I somehow received red (red fly, orange-red body). Red is also written on the tag. I like the red and actually prefer it over orange, but if I was stuck on getting orange I would be returning this. Once again this hurts the seller's bottom line and leaves them with an upset customer and bad referrals.I'm 6' tall, broad shoulders and a size 12 shoe. My toes touched a little but not enough to annoy me. I was surprised to find that the inside is actually quite roomy. The side walls are near vertical (roughly 15° inward). This gave me ample side room compared to traditional tents that lean between a 25° and 45° angle. This also gives you more room in the vestibules! About the same as the ones on my Kelty 2P tent. No problem fitting my backpack and boots in one vestibule, and a few other handy items in the other.It comes with a decent size gear loft. I don't recall that in the description so I was very pleased. It's rectangular, of good size and looks nothing like my Kelty gear loft which was triangular and looked like my ex-girfriend's gstring. This one held my hat, wallet, flashlight, and few other small items. 2 inside triangle shaped pockets. One on each end. 2 vestibules, 2 full size doors, and reflective material around the 2 vents and near the tie/stake down areas. The fly sheet has adjustable buckles. My $200 Kelty doesn't even have these. The webbing on them is thin, but they seem to hold fine.I was a little concerned about the design thinking the roof would collect and puddle water. I gave it a good hose test and camped two nights in the rain. I had no issues. The floor is thin, as with all 1P backpacking tents. So you'll need to consider adding a tarp as a footprint. This will add about 0.5 lbs to your overall weight. $1.00 at the dollar store but the tarp will be a little small. $4.99 at Big 5 and you get a 6x8 which spans the tent's entire floor and most of both vestibules - which is good for rainy days where you want to set your gear on something dry.Installation: Instructions are lacking. What you do to set this up right the first time is to sleeve the poles, then insert the ends of the right side pole into the left side grommets and the ends of the left side pole into the right side grommets. Taught the vestibules first! Then taught the ends of the fly. Reason for this is one of the door zippers wants to sit on the roof side of the tent pole. This could allow rain in. There's no way around this that I found, but by doing things in this order the design flaw (if I may call it that) will be reduced some. A 3rd velco strap at the top of each door would have been nice. I might add one myself.Some final notes: The stakes are soft and bend very easy. The zippers are on the less expensive side, but if you treat them with care there shouldn't be any problems. There are two zippers per door and they are double sided zippers. Some areas of the tent have extra material (not cut correctly) a few loose hanging threads that will need to be carefully trimmed off with some scissors. Not a big deal. Remember this isn't a $100+ tent.I had some condensation build up. This is normal for most 1P tents though. Not too bad but could of been better. Higher vents would have done a better job for circulation. Being 6' tall I was able to fully sit up inside, my head only hitting the gear loft when it was loaded with items. Tent is nylon. Not as strong as polyester and will tend to collect moisture and sag a little under prolonged wet conditions.The price point and the listed weight (though inaccurate) were the selling points for me. It's a bargain and if treated like a light weight, light material backpacking tent, I expect it will last through several more trips outdoors. Overall I'm happy.
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